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> David Wesst

David Wesst, otherwise known as "Wessty" or "DW", is a JavaScript enthusiast, currently working as an Enterprise Java Developer for the University of Manitoba.

After earning his Bachelor of Computer Science (B.C.Sc.) nearly 10 years ago, David has continued in software development, focusing primarily on rich web experience development and design. Although a fluent developer, David's strength lies in his strong communication skills and his ability to gather and translate requirements between both technical and business-centric teams.

DW's passion for software development goes beyond the workplace, and into the community. In his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, he has served on the Winnipeg .NET User Group for the past many years. His contributions to the development community locally, and beyond, resulted in being awarded the Microsoft MVP Award in the area of Internet Explorer for the past 5 years running.

You can learn more about David and his community activities at davidwesst.com.

> Blog posts

JAN
27
2023
Defining the Problem before the Solution
David Wesst
Before you create a solution, you need to understand the problem. It sounds obvious enough, yet I see developers (including myself) getting into the code and design phase before they really understand the problem they are trying to fix. These are the steps I take a properly understand a problem I am trying to solve, prior to coding or solution-ing anything.
JAN
12
2023
Docker Build Hangs When Adding Key with apt-key in WSL2
David Wesst
The solution to the problem where an apt-key command seems to run forever in your docker build.
JAN
5
2023
Highlight Reel for 2022
David Wesst
When a new year arrives, it is a great opportunity to take a moment to reflect on where you started at the beginning of the year, and where you ended. When I look back on 2022, I noticed events reflected in my GitHub contribution graph that highlight some common cycles in my own behaviour. I want to take a moment to document this, and hopefully you can use this an example to examine your own progress and behaviour patterns that might be aiding (or impeding) your own personal and professional growth.
DEC
20
2022
Speaking at Tech Events Helps You Grow
David Wesst
A large part of my career growth is tied directly to speaking at tech events like conferences and user groups. I have had many people ask me about my experience and wanted to share it for others who might be wondering what benefits actually are.
DEC
14
2022
Docker Desktop for Linux is not the same as Docker Engine
David Wesst
With Docker for Desktop available for Linux (which I like), I managed to get myself confused regarding its role on my Linux-based development machine. This post clarifies a few things I discovered while triaging an issue I had trying to test my GitHub Workflows locally.
DEC
7
2022
Prairie Dev Con 2022 Takeaways
David Wesst
The talented speakers that come together for Prairie Dev Con always bring fresh ideas to my mind and give me pause to think about my own efforts and how I can learn from their experience. Although not a complete list, these ideas the ones that stood out the most from Prairie Dev Con 2022.
DEC
1
2022
Open Graph Tools and Resources for Web Nerds (Like Me)
David Wesst
A compilation of tools and resources I used to implemented the Open Graph Protocol (OGP) for my website to make posts and pages more engaging on LinkedIn and other social networks.
NOV
19
2022
Does GDPR Apply to Personal Websites?
David Wesst
While rebuilding my personal website in 2022, I wanted to know how or if GDPR applied to my little side project. My internet sleuthing did not bring up any clear and cut answers, but I put together some thoughts that might help others answer it for themselves.
NOV
10
2022
How much is enough documentation?
David Wesst
Documentation is important, but it takes a lot of time and if you are a solo developer, what documentation to you really need? Still, good docs can provide the context I forget after putting a project on the shelf, or explains how to fix something in older code I use, but haven't touched in a long time. So how much is 'enough' documentation and what types of documentation do I need to invest in give my future self the the best value for the effort I put in?
NOV
2
2022
How to fork (a repo) like a boss!
David Wesst
Everyone thinks about forking. It is a natural thing, yet how do get the job done and fork? I used to ask myself the same thing, until I learned these pro-tips and forked like a boss.
JUN
28
2021
I Can Teach Your Dog Quantum Physics
David Wesst
It's true! I read a book about it and everything. Let me breakdown the highlights of this book that does a pretty good job of explaining the physics behind quantum computing.
JUN
17
2021
What Value Does Making Content Bring to Me? (not a typo)
David Wesst
I realize it's a selfish question, but if the post isn't valuable to me then why would it be valuable to you?
JUN
3
2021
My Secret Addiction to Likes
David Wesst
I decided to take a month off of contributing to social media. More specifically Twitter and YouTube, but Facebook and Instagram as well. That single month has turned into just over three months now, and I learned a few things about myself and how I think my return to some social media will be a good thing.
MAY
24
2021
Lucky Number v7
David Wesst
I fixed up my blog-website-thingy again. I'm calling this v7, although I'm pretty sure there are a few incarnations of the site that were lost early on in my years, but v7 seems about right for the content I'm sharing here. In any case-- I thought I'd share the "why" around the new website revamp and how I think a project like this is just what I need.
NOV
10
2020
From Travis CI to GitHub Actions (and GitHub Pages)
David Wesst
We recently migrated the continuous integration and deployment workflow for the Western Devs website from Travis CI to GitHub Actions. These are the steps I followed to get it done.
NOV
9
2020
New Artwork and a Complete Rewrite...ish | Out the Door Devlog
David Wesst
My effort continues on Out the Door with some new artwork, a rewrite (of sorts) to fix the build process, which has led to something of a self-driven code review.
OCT
23
2020
A Solo Gamejam Experience | A Ludum Dare 47 Story
David Wesst
Wonder what it takes to be a solo amateur game developer in a global gamejam? DW summarizes his Ludum Dare 47 experience in this video.
SEP
18
2020
Game Portfolio Self Evaluation (in prep for Ludum Dare 47)
David Wesst
Ludum Dare 47, a weekend long global gamejam, is coming up in a few weeks. In order to prep for the event, I decided to take the time for review and reflect on my game portfolio to see what I learning objective and goals I can set for myself.
JUL
2
2020
Release Notes for Little Shop of Wall Street 0.1.0-beta
David Wesst
Little Shop of Wall Street has a 0.1-beta release!
FEB
19
2020
How Github Makes Game Making Easier for Noncoders
David Wesst
DW goes through five things he's been using in Github while designing his latest prototype that require zero coding skills.
FEB
4
2020
Jan 2020 Devlog
David Wesst
Did you know that I really try and make video games and not just talk about them? Me neither, but this video will fix all that!
JAN
21
2020
Where to Find Your Gamedev Community
David Wesst
Four places to find your new game development and/or design and/or technology community and figure out if it's even good!
JAN
13
2020
No Cost Game Design Toolbox
David Wesst
Want to design games but have no money? Never fear, for my game design toolbox (and process) can help get you started!
NOV
26
2019
GitHub Game Off 2019 Game Jam featuring DW
David Wesst
For the past month I have been participating in the GameOff 2019 Gamejam hosted by GitHub over on Itch.io and I've been devlogging about it over on my YouTube channel.
SEP
27
2018
Streaming Code and Play on Mixer every Thursday and Sunday
David Wesst
This month I started livestreaming game code and gameplay every Thursday and Sunday night at 9:30pm CT
MAR
28
2018
F12 Chooser is a Dev Tool Thing
David Wesst
The F12 Chooser is a development tool thing that I like and you should know about if you want your web application or web extension to support Microsoft Edge.
MAR
15
2018
Picking between TypeScript and JavaScript
David Wesst
Which one should you pick: TypeScript or JavaScript? They are both great languages, people always ask me when you should use one or the other. This post puts that to rest.
MAR
13
2018
Crowdsourcing Documentation is Cool
David Wesst
The idea of these large enterprises crowdsourcing their technical documentation is pretty cool. More cool than I had originally realized, and I want to take a moment to explain why I like it and why you should get involved yourself.
SEP
20
2017
Windows Subsystem for Linux is Cool. No really, it is.
David Wesst
With the Fall Creators update of Windows 10, you can go to the Windows Store and install Linux. Yeah, that's a thing now and it's pretty cool.
SEP
19
2017
Sonar, the Linter I Never Knew I Wanted
David Wesst
Meet Nellie the Narwhal, the official mascot for Sonar, the linting tool for the web. Nellie represents a tool that is long-overdue. It provides any web application the ability to verify they are meeting a high level of quality when it comes to their web applications, and not miss any common mistakes.
SEP
18
2017
Service Workers and PWAs are Super Cool
David Wesst
One of the core items highlighted by the Microsoft Edge team, along with many others who were just web professionals, was the importance of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). I started out thinking they were something that could be interesting one day, but left the conference convinced that this will change the way we think of the web.
AUG
17
2017
Posh-GVM, the Groovy Version Manager for Powershell
David Wesst
Here's another dev thing I use: Posh-GVM, a Groovy version manager that works for Windows.
AUG
16
2017
Jabba, the Java Version Manager for Everyone
David Wesst
Here's another dev thing I use: Jabba, a cross-platform Java version manager that works for Windows.
AUG
15
2017
NVS, the Node Version Manger for Everyone
David Wesst
Here's another dev thing I use: NVS, or the Node Version Switcher. It works on Windows and it's great.
AUG
3
2017
IstanbulJS Code Coverage Reports in VSTS
David Wesst
Here's another dev thing I use: IstanbulJS in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) builds and display the test reports as part of the build reports.
AUG
1
2017
Mocha Test Reports in VSTS
David Wesst
Here's another dev thing I do: Display my MochaJS test report in the Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) build report.
MAY
2
2017
Conquest April 2017 Devblog
David Wesst
This is the April 2017 update for my video game project I call "Conquest".
APR
3
2017
Introducing My Game Project - March 2017 Devblog
David Wesst
This is the first of monthly status update posts on my video game project I call Conquest.
MAR
14
2017
How to Compile TypeScript into a Single File with SystemJS Modules with Gulp
David Wesst
I decided to move a TypeScript project from AMD modules (i.e. RequireJS) to SystemJS, still using Gulp. In this post, I walk you through the sample project I've created and share the lessons I learned along the way.
MAR
7
2017
Initial Thoughts on Using Phaser
David Wesst
As a side project, I started making another JavaScript-based video game and decided to go with Phaser as my framework of choice. Here are my initial thoughts about Phaser after using it on my project for the past two months.
NOV
21
2016
How to Blog with VSTS (Part 4)
David Wesst
I wanted to understand how to use Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) for a "real" project. Being a noob, I decided to move my blog to VSTS to understand how _any_ project can benefit from ALM practices using VSTS. In part 4 of 5, we setup a _Build_ script.
NOV
14
2016
How to Blog with VSTS (Part 3)
David Wesst
I wanted to understand how to use Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) for a "real" project. Being a noob, I decided to move my blog to VSTS to understand how _any_ project can benefit from ALM practices using VSTS. In part 3 of 5, we start to make plans and _Work_ on our blog.
NOV
7
2016
How to Blog with VSTS (Part 2)
David Wesst
I wanted to understand how to use Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) for a "real" project. Being a noob, I decided to move my blog to VSTS to understand how _any_ project can benefit from ALM practices using VSTS. In part 2 of 5, we get our blog into source control.
OCT
31
2016
How to Blog with VSTS (Part 1)
David Wesst
I wanted to understand how to use Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) for a "real" project. Being a noob, I decided to move my blog to VSTS to understand how _any_ project can benefit from ALM practices using VSTS. In part 1 of 5, we get things setup.
OCT
24
2016
How to Use Global NPM Packages on a VSTS Self-Hosted Build Agent
David Wesst
I setup a self-hosted build agent in Visual Studio Team Services. My build installed global NPM packages, but the tasks that used them later on in the script would fail because they were unable to use them. This post describes what I did to get them working.
OCT
3
2016
Windows Not Required - The New Microsoft Development Story (Video)
David Wesst
I delivered a presentation at the Winnipeg .NET User Group last week, where I recorded it and posted it on YouTube. I go over a number of Microsoft development tools and technologies that don't require Windows and deliver the demos on my Linux machine.
SEP
26
2016
How to Fix node-gyp Error on Windows
David Wesst
Whenever I get a new machine, I pull down a new project using the `npm install command and get an error related to python and node-gyp. This post will remember the fix for this problem that I always forget.
SEP
19
2016
How to Build ReactJS with Gulp
David Wesst
I started to tinker with React last week and needed to do some digging on how to transpile the React JSX files using Gulp. In this post, we walkthrough my newly updated Gulp task that transpiles JSX and JavaScript files.
SEP
12
2016
How to Compile Typescript into a Single File with AMD Modules with Gulp
David Wesst
The lessons I learned and the steps I took to compile TypeScript modules into a single file with AMD modules using Gulp, along with how I consumed those compiled modules in my HTML application.
AUG
29
2016
How to Use Highlight.Js with Bower and Gulp
David Wesst
One of the best libraries I've seen for syntax highlighting on the web is highlight.js, IMHO. The catch to using the library is that it takes a bit more effort to setup than just adding a script tag and being done with it. In this post, I'll walk you through the steps I took to get this up and running with Bower and Gulp.
AUG
16
2016
Mobile First Design Tips
David Wesst
When redesigning my personal website and blog, I started from scratch and attempted to apply a mobile-first design approach. Here are a few tips that I picked up along the way while creating and implementing my new design that might prevent some mistakes on your own sites.
JUL
18
2016
Keeping Your Edge on an Extended Break
David Wesst
A few quick tips on how I kept up-to-date in the professional world while taking a four month hiatus for parental leave _without_ giving up time with my daughter.
FEB
29
2016
Using text-overflow:ellipsis with Inline Flex
David Wesst
Two out of three Dave's hit this obscure CSS problem that turned out to be expected behaviour. David Wesst walks us through the reason why and how to fix it.
FEB
22
2016
JavaScript Framework or JavaScript Core (Part 2)
David Wesst
Is it always better to use JavaScript Frameworks? David continues his analysys and shares the pros and cons of writing your JavaScript from scratch.
FEB
16
2016
JavaScript Framework or JavaScript Core (Part 1)
David Wesst
Is it always better to use JavaScript Frameworks? David analyzes the pros and cons of using JavaScript frameworks versus only using core JavaScript.
FEB
8
2016
Exploring JavaScript Game Frameworks
David Wesst
David reviews a handful of JavaScript-based game frameworks he went through before selecting one for his new game.
JAN
14
2016
Why ChakraCore OSS is Important
David Wesst
It's pretty cool that Microsoft has released the source code of their JavaScript engine Chakra. But, why it is important and how do developers actually benefit from this?
JAN
1
2016
Looking Forward into 2016
David Wesst
DW documents and shares his planning session for 2016 based on what he's learned from 2015.
JAN
1
2016
Highlight Reel for 2015
David Wesst
David Wesst takes a moment to look back at his personal and professional development throughout 2015.
DEC
7
2015
Code - The Visual Studio for Everybody
David Wesst
Last week I delivered three presentations: one at the Winnipeg .NET User Group and the other two at Winnipeg Code Camp. Being as awesome as we are, the user group presentation was recorded and has been published on the YouTube page.
NOV
20
2015
Inspiration From MVP Summit 2015
David Wesst
I'm back from the summit and have had a week to digest everything I saw. And now I will share with the top three topics that really stuck with me.
OCT
28
2015
My Favourite Online Dev Tools
David Wesst
I'm talking about online or web-based tools, not toolboxes. So entire development suites like Cloud9 or Visual Studio Online are off the table because they are full tool suites. These tools are simple, but continually help me out in a pinch.
OCT
21
2015
Using Java Build Script Tasks in Visual Studio Code
David Wesst
I previously shared how I setup a custom problem matching in Visual Studio Code for compiling Java and displaying the errors inline with a custom problem matcher.
OCT
14
2015
Custom Tasks for Java in Visual Studio Code
David Wesst
Now that I'm a Java Developer, I no longer worry about the bloating feeling I get when I need to open up the original Visual Studio. Now I worry about opening another instance of Eclipse. Don't get me wrong, Visual Studio and Eclipse are both great tools, but there are plenty of times where I don't need to bring a forklift just to move a single box.
OCT
7
2015
Capturing HTTPS Traffic in Java with Eclipse and Fiddler
David Wesst
I've been struggling with a JSON parsing error where my application is using the Spring to send and receive messages from a RESTful Web Service. It's pretty straight forward: I've annotated my object properties to match up with the appropriate JSON keys, Spring takes my POJO and turns it into a JSON string sends the request along with the JSON as the body to the HTTPS endpoint, et voilà!
SEP
22
2015
Downgrading Windows Phone 10 Technical Preview - The Lowlights
David Wesst
I have to say that I really did like the Windows Phone 10 technical preview. I think that the new phone OS is heading the right direction, and that if you have a secondary device or want to be "hardcore" , you should install it and check it out.
AUG
12
2015
Western Devs (and MVP) Found My Spirit Animal
David Wesst
What you're looking at is a lobster, in a ditch, drinking scotch, whose mouth is on fire. That is my spirit animal that was created on the Twitter-verse through the power of the Western Devs, which I would not be a part of had I not become an Microsoft Edge MVP with Microsoft.
AUG
10
2015
Docker on Windows 10 Problems
David Wesst
UPDATE -- Solution Found Another Western Dev that goes by the name of Dave White found a solution and I confirmed that it works. The solution entails using a test build of the new Docker tool suite, so use at your own risk, but it does work! You can find the solution from Dave White here, and learn more about the man himself here.
AUG
7
2015
Running Tomcat Apps on Docker through Eclipse
David Wesst
If you didn't already know, Docker is pretty cool. Not sure what it is? My fellow Western Dev Kyle Baley explains it really well and provides some great cases about why Docker is fantastic. This post is an example of Docker being fantastic and should be considered a warm-up to Docker.
AUG
1
2015
Considerations When Migrating Your Blog
David Wesst
I'm talking about small-scale, personal blogs or projects. The word "enterprise" isn't used once to describe any part of the project, yet there are plenty of things I had to consider (or decide along the way) before I completed the migration. Eventually, I ended moving my Ghost blog to a Hexo-based static blog, that is hosted on Github Pages under a new subdomain.
JUN
12
2015
Conference recap extravaganza!
David Wesst
I've been head down preparing and delivering presentations all over the place for the past few weeks, and wanted to share the latest happenings, along with where you can get your hands on the material if you weren't able to attend.

David Wesst

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