Rob Dominguez

If you want to learn more about me, check out these posts. I've also got all my social links available right here.

Cool things I write about

I work as a software engineer and primarily focus on documentation and DX at Hasura. Most of the posts you'll find talk about efforts made in automating mundane tasks, speeding up workflows, and learning new technologies. Hopefully something will spark an interest or help you with a small portion of a problem you're facing. Or, at the very least, entertain you 🤷‍♂️

I spent nearly a decade in the classroom and working with some amazing educators. As such, there's a pretty large backlog of pedagogical and education-specific content.

Recursion: Your Code's Dungeon Crawler

October 24, 2024 14:00

Recursion can be intimidating, but with the right approach, it's like uncovering a maze, one room at a time. In this post, I break down recursion step by step, using a dungeon crawler analogy to guide you through it.

Why AI in Your Editor May Be Slowing You Down: The Case for Short Feedback Loops

October 11, 2024 11:45

The allure of instant answers in your IDE is undeniable, but are AI-powered coding assistants really helping us code smarter, or are they leading us down a path where we lose sight of what we're building?

The One-Liner That Will Save You in Changelog Meetings

September 27, 2024 13:45

Ever panic at the thought of remembering what you shipped last week? This simple Git command has your back.

GitHub Actions? How About Terminal Actions!

September 19, 2024 17:05

I'm lazy, and you probably are too. Why waste time opening a browser when you can trigger your GitHub Actions from the terminal?

I Can't Quit You: Streamlining Tasks with Neovim

May 05, 2024 14:52

It's a cheesy, tired joke about not being able to quit Vim. But, I just love this gif so much — it seemed right.

A Week in Portugal

April 19, 2024 01:22

After a week at Google Next, I spent the following week with my teammates in Lisbon. What time is it? Where am I? Your guess is as good as mine.

Lessons Learned from Google Next 2024

April 11, 2024 23:42

If there was a drinking game to describe the last four days of my life, it would be about the number of booths at Google Next that have 'AI' in their title. For real.

A Bit Rusty

April 03, 2024 17:27

A few weeks ago, I embarked on a journey to learn Rust. Am I done? Of course not! However, I'm dangerously literate...and a able to write at least this site 🎉

Building a Chatbot with AI

October 13, 2023 15:36

My curiosity recently got the better of me. I built an open-sourced chatbot for use with Docusaurus. Though, it can easily be re-worked to take any directory and vectorize the data within it for simple, intuitive natural-language queries and conversations.

Unleashing the Power of Vector Databases and Embeddings: Beyond Relational Data

September 17, 2023 17:56

Graphs aren't just for your pre-Algebra classes and plotting X-Y coordinates 🤓 Too often analysis of our relational data is too limiting, offering only a slice of insight into more complex and complete hypothesis of what our data is trying to tell us.

I pay my assistant $1.35 a month

July 05, 2023 21:14

Clickbait? Maybe. Maybe not. All you have to do is click here to find out if I'm really that cheap and lack that much empathy. Don't you want to find out... 👋

Runbooks Can Save Your Life

May 30, 2023 20:36

That's a bold statement, but I've learned to harness the power of writing processes and procedures down into a reproducible and replicable set of steps.

Little Shortcuts, Big Timesavers

February 10, 2023 03:08

Snippets, macros, aliases, automation...all of these things involve a little work up front to make life easier down the line.

Combining Todoist and Reclaim for 10x productivity

November 28, 2022 23:46

Yeah, that sounds like clickbait. However, you'll be amazed once you see what you can do by offloading as much low-level thinking and processing to technology.

One Project to Rule Them All

May 20, 2022 22:15

I've been re-reading The LOTR for the past few months and I am definitely in a Middle-Earth headspace...Recently, I completed my last large-scale project for the school I've worked for over the past decade: a single site for all of our student publications.

Building Interdisciplinary Content

March 25, 2022 15:48

In continuing work to identify a spectrum of interdisciplinary approaches to instruction, I got the chance to build a Mars lander simulator for my students. Science? Math? Dev? All of the above!

Shopping Shortcuts with Snipcart!

March 18, 2022 14:18

I needed to create a 'simple' storefront for a project at work while also demonstrating for my students how JavaScript can be used to generate HTML and improve workflows. Snipcart was clutch!

Wordle, Wordle, Wordle!

February 08, 2022 21:26

Obsessed with the game? I've honestly never played...but I got really curious at the algorithm behind the word choice each day! Check out this post to see into the code and how the 'random' word is chosen.

Books: 2021

December 13, 2021 19:46

I read a wide-ranging swath of books this year. For this year-in-review, I note some of my favorites and what my key takeaways are.

Mental Models from Breath of the Wild

November 08, 2021 20:45

Recently, my coworkers and I have spent a lot of time researching and discussing the construction and organization of knowledge. As such, I quickly settled on using a map of Hyrule to explain my views on metacognition.

Heroku's Rotating Credentials

October 29, 2021 16:40

Recently I created a client site that utilizes NextAuth.js for authentication. I needed the user data to persist in a database, but the connection configuration can be a pain with Heroku's rotating credentials. Read this post to see how I solved it.

QR Carpool

October 29, 2021 16:36

QR codes have surged in popularity since the start of the pandemic. As such, they've even made their way into our carpool system at work; gone are the days of shouting over radios...now, there's an 'app' for that.

Using React's Context API

October 29, 2021 16:36

Have you ever seen a 'no context' account on Twitter or Instagram? Unfortunately, this post probably isn't as exciting as one of those, but there may be a few (unintentional) laughs involved. I just learned about React's context api and, man, is it great.

What's that code again?

October 29, 2021 16:35

A 7+ hour drive from Cedar Rapids, IA back to Birmingham gave me plenty of time to build out a game for my students. I'm also close to launching a complete curriculum coupled with features for teachers looking to save some time and energy. This is as close as to 'building in public' that I've been comfortable with to date.

Stripe Webhooks and Next.js

October 29, 2021 16:35

Webhooks are nothing new, but I'm just realizing their potential when paired with API routes in Next.js. For a SaaS I'm currently building, I needed a way of programmatically generating licenses for users after purchase. With Stripe webhooks, it was a snap.

Modular Apps with the JAMstack

October 29, 2021 16:34

Developing web apps using the JAMstack is pure nirvana. The modular nature and growing range of services (many that are open source) makes for blistering development speeds. In this post I discuss the creative opportunities the JAMstack brings to building new services.

Secret Santa's Secret Helper

October 29, 2021 16:34

Last year my wife facilitated a 'Secret Santa' exchange. She needed a fair and anonymous way of pairing people and I saw a fun opportunity to solve a problem.

The Tutoring Bar is Open

October 29, 2021 16:33

Over the summer, a group of my colleagues and I read a book by Daine Tavenner called Prepared. In it, this revolutionary educator describes a strategy called the 'tutoring bar' and how teachers at her schools use it on a daily basis. In an effort to teach more effectively during hybrid learning - and for my own satisfaction and desire for greater student achievement - I gave it a try.

Lessons Learned: Building with LaTeX and Using Hooks

October 29, 2021 16:33

That's a weird sounding title. In reality, this post is all about lessons learned via an abandoned project. In it, I talk a little bit about self-expression and using the useEffect hook for the first time.

Work the problem: Hybrid Teaching

October 29, 2021 16:31

Hybrid teaching is a great case-study in understanding the difference between fact and perception. Is it easy? Arguably, no. However, there are some efficient ways to reframe the way we think about it in order to make our lives, and the lives of our students, easier.

Lessons Learned from The Martian

October 29, 2021 16:27

The Martian should be celebrated as one of the greatest, nerdiest, most kick-ass pieces of literature ever written. For any teacher that likes to utilize a problem-based approach in class, look no further than Mark Watney's attempts to stay alive on the red planet.

Automating Shameless Plugs

October 21, 2021 18:55

One of the motivations that first hooks people into dev is the ability to automate workflows. The further down the rabbit hole you go, the more and more opportunity you see for making things more efficient. While this blog is a record of problem solving strategies, it's also an opportunity for shameless self-promotion...so why not make it as easy as possible to automate that part?