Using Docker to provision databases for development and testing

Containers are all the rage now, but is there any reason to put database servers in containers? I personally don’t really see any reasons to put database servers in docker containers for “normal” production systems (exceptions exist), because I think that if we can avoid unnecessary layer in running software, we should. When it comes […]

Interactive Computing with Jupyter Notebooks

What is Interactive Computing? Interactive computing is a fancy term for programming where we issue commands to a running program and get results right away. Examples of Interactive Computing: spreadsheet applications REPL (Read Eval Print Loop): interactive language shells editor plugins that run the code or tests as we type and display results Jupyter Notebooks […]

Fixing wi-fi after Fedora update on Thinkpad X1 Carbon 7th gen

I recently bought Thinkpad X1 Carbon, the latest 7th generation laptop from Lenovo, but unfortunately not everything works so smoothly yet on Fedora linux. I installed a new Fedora 30 and discovered some not-so-serious glitches, which are sometimes to be expected with new hardware on linux. But then I updated all my packages and BIOS […]

Automation with shell scripts

What is a shell? Shell is a term to describe computer interfaces that we use to interact with our operating system. Shells can be graphical or text based using a command line. We are typically using a graphical user interface, in other words a graphical shell to control the computer. When we open a command […]

Debugging Python programs

There are different ways to debug Python programs, from printing information to the console using basic print() function to using a full-fledged debugger. In this article we will have a look at some basic tools that we can use, including less known tools like PySnooper or stackprinter. I have created an accompanying repository python-debugging with […]

Measuring Python code complexity with wily

It is good to have some idea about our code complexity. This is especially true for large codebases and large teams where complexity can seriously slow down development and introduce bugs. Every developer probably has some opinion whether a particular code or project is complex, but what if we want to express it with some […]

One year with Vue.js

Okay, okay, it’s been more than a year, but I couldn’t resist the title. Sorry! This is a write-up about how I started with Vue.js and how I use it to develop my side project.

Digital nomading in October in Thessaloniki, Greece

Travel & what to see Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece, it is a student city full of bars and tavernas. The most known site is the White Tower which houses a little museum about the city’s history and a roof with 360° view. You can take a little boat ride around the […]

Writing test cases with given, when and then

At my previous workplace we worked with Groovy and Grails and I had the opportunity to use testing framework for Groovy called Spock. Spock uses labels to divide test cases into different blocks. That way, data definition and final asserts are separated from the code under test, which is typically a function or a method […]

Convert Markdown text to HTML and to plaintext in JavaScript

Let’s create a small JavaScript module that will be able to convert formatted text in Markdown to HTML and to plaintext. I chose Marked.js as my library of choice because with this library it is very easy to modify the output. Here is our basic module to convert Markdown to HTML:

import marked from "marked"

const mdOptions = {
  // whether to conform to original MD implementation
  pedantic: false,
  // Github Flavoured Markdown
  gfm: true,
  // tables extension
  tables: true,
  // smarter list behavior
  smartLists: true,
  // "smart" typographic punctuation for things like quotes and dashes
  smartypants: true,
  // sanitize HTML tags
  sanitize: true,
  // ... other options
}

export function convertToHTML(markdownText) {
  marked.setOptions(mdOptions)
  return marked(markdownText)
}