Articles about web development, the tech industry, and leadership by Adam Waselnuk.
I'm a founder on a mission to connect millions of people through the magic of roleplaying games.
This is what I am up to right now, and these are my professional highlights.
Principles and Mental Models
Articles
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Deep Work is not what I thought it was
03 Nov 2022
I used to think that Deep Work felt something like this:
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How to get Stripe subscriptions from Zapier
21 Jan 2022
The Stripe API allows you to fetch a list of your subscriptions by date range using the
created
param. To get a date range, you have to pass the value as a dictionary. This is where I got stuck - it took me way too long to figure out how to pass a dictionary from Zapier. I’m used to havingfetch
available, or an API client library. -
I'm joining LegendKeeper to help create the best app for Game Masters and Worldbuilders
06 Aug 2021
There was a huge step change in my life and business this week. I’ve officially joined the team at LegendKeeper to help create the best app for Game Masters and Worldbuilders.
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I made my FIRST EVER software sale
07 May 2021
On May 6, 2021 I soft-launched a new Premium Pass on my website for random TTRPG generators. About an hour later I got the Stripe notification:
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Why we homeschool
07 Apr 2021
Recently, a friend messaged me on Twitter and asked: “Why do you homeschool?”
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I made my first dollar on the internet
02 Feb 2021
As a new founder, my first revenue goal was a humble one: make $1 on the internet. I am happy to say that I hit that milestone on Sunday (Jan. 31, 2021)! I can’t put into words how much positive energy it gave me. Having that first bit of real revenue for my business has given me confidence that I can make more. The words of Jack Butcher ring true:
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Year In Review 2020
31 Dec 2020
Combat with real longswords. Leading a team through the sudden transition to remote work under insane circumstances. Learning what it feels like to have a tweet go viral. Walking away from a secure job and a guaranteed million dollars to start my own business that made zero dollars. Feeling helpless as I waited to hear if my father in law was dead while watching my wife cry in a way I’d never seen. These are some of the highlights from my life this year.
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Introducing the Wazel Brothers Build (wbb.fm) podcast
24 Nov 2020
After going out on my own to build a business, I started doing a weekly call with my brother Brandon. I noticed that every time we spoke I got a ton of value out of the conversations. Brandon knows a lot about building businesses and possesses many strengths that I am lacking. We compliment each other very well.
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Building in Public
02 Nov 2020
I am convinced that building my business in public is the right thing to do. I won’t unpack the many reasons why it is a good idea, others have already done that. Instead, I want to share my personal take on it after 2 months of working as an indie developer. I’ve learned that, though the directive is simple, building in public is not easy. It can be an alluring time sink that distracts you from the real work.
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Newsletters as Data
15 Oct 2020
Newsletters are all the rage in the tech industry right now. A link to a substack profile is quickly becoming a prominent feature of many Twitter profiles. While building Novus Bestiary, I stumbled upon a valuable approach to building my newsletter. Thinking about my newsletter as data allowed me to stand up a 40+ page website in a couple of weeks with no outsourcing.
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Failproof Projects
09 Sep 2020
Now that I have quit my job to build a business, I have lined up the first two projects I will bring into the world.
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Into The Unknown: Leaving Shopify to Build a Business
27 Aug 2020
I’m leaving Shopify today. I’m saying farewell to an amazing job, a known career path, and a constant paycheque. I want to build my own business.
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The distance between things
17 Sep 2018
It can be useful to think of a software system as a physical space or geography. There are small towns inside of larger regions. Things have neighbours and things within a neighbourhood tend to be related. You might notice this when people talk about things being far or near. For example: “This change will have far reaching effects” or “This method should move closer to that class”.
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Practical Object-Oriented Design in JavaScript
03 Apr 2018
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Prioritizing UX work: a set of lenses
23 Oct 2017
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Talk Devvy To Me: HackDays 16 at Shopify
11 Jun 2016
Yesterday marked the end of another spectacular HackDays at Shopify. HackDays is a magical event we have at Shopify once per quarter. Every employee gets the chance to pitch any project they want that will benefit our customers, ourselves, or our community. People join whatever project interests them the most and then they have two days to get together, design an MVP, and ship it!
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Understanding the Elm type system
27 May 2016
The Elm programming language offers the best of functional programming in the browser. Elm was my introduction to using a static, strong type system. Adjusting to using types wasn’t easy at first, but as I continue to explore Elm I find that my programming style is changing for the better.
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Elm quick tip: restricting a number
08 Feb 2016
Here is a quick tip for restricting a number in Elm. I came across an interesting function in the standard library while building a form with some number inputs. I wanted to keep the numbers entered by the user restricted to a known range. Consider the following code:
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Studying Functional Programming in 2015: A retrospective
12 Jan 2016
In this post I discuss my exploration of functional programming in 2015 and walk through some of the basic ideas using JavaScript for code examples. Skip to the bottom for a huge list of interesting links!
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Project: Here Be Taverns
28 Mar 2015
Find inspiration for your next story or role playing game! "Here Be Taverns" generates random fantasy taverns to suit your mood and your story's setting. Read on for a discussion about what I learned building this super fun Ruby on Rails application.
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Taking the next step: Front End Developer at Shopify
20 Feb 2015
It’s official: On March 9, 2015 I will be starting my new job as a front end developer at Shopify. I couldn’t be more excited about it and I want to talk about why I’m so excited and why I am making this transition.
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Project: Forefront
01 Feb 2015
An opinionated command-line tool for generating front end boilerplate and workflow.
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10 things I learned in my transition from web designer to developer
28 Jan 2015
I started my career in the web industry as a web designer. I was totally in love with HTML and CSS and could write some really basic JavaScript. I spent most of my time thinking about the visual design of a webpage.
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Experiment: Electronic Life
24 Jan 2015
This isn’t what you might call an experiment in the usual sense. The code does not explore any cutting edge web technology. What it does do is demonstrate rock solid object oriented javascript.
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