I’ve been going to GDC for several years now, but this time I am going to attack it differently. I have approached this convention with a whatever will be, will be mentality, but with where we are in the world, I think I need to adapt. So its not a whatever will be, will be mentality, it’s a I will make it be what I want it to be mentality. I know who I am, what I bring to the table, and what I feel I deserve. I have a goal and I have to execute, or I have failed. I came here to win GDC this year and I will do it by any means necessary.

As someone who has had the privilege of working with Angular since its early days with AngularJS to today’s modern Angular framework, I’ve seen firsthand how the ecosystem has evolved. Over the years, I’ve accumulated a wealth of knowledge — and, yes, a few hard-earned lessons — that I believe can help both beginners and experienced developers alike. In this post, I’ll share a few simple but powerful tips that have helped me consistently build Angular applications that are not only functional but also maintainable and scalable.

1: Learn the Angular coding Style guide

One of the first things I recommend to every Angular developer — whether you’re a beginner or an experienced architect — is to familiarize yourself with the Angular Style Guide. This guide, available at angular.dev/style-guide, isn’t just a set of best practices; it’s an essential resource for building consistent, efficient, and optimized applications.

The Angular Style Guide has deep roots. It started as a community-driven initiative by John Papa for AngularJS (Angular 1), and when Angular 2 emerged, John created a similar guide. Over time, it gained widespread popularity and was eventually formalized and adopted by the Angular team itself. Today, it serves as the gold standard for writing Angular code that is maintainable, readable, and scalable.

3. Build with Security in Mind: Protect Your Application from the Start

Security should always be a top priority, especially when your Angular application deals with sensitive data. While it may seem like something to tackle later, thinking about security from the beginning can save you from major issues down the road.

If your app involves authentication, it’s essential to think about how users log in and how their data is protected. Whether you’re using Token Authentication, OAuth, or SAML, choosing the right method is crucial for keeping your app secure.

HttpInterceptors: A Key Tool for Secure Data Handling

In Angular, HttpInterceptors allow you to manage HTTP requests globally, making them a perfect solution for adding authentication tokens to requests automatically. This means that every time your app needs to send secure data, it does so safely, without you needing to manually add tokens each time.

Follow Angular’s Security Guide

Angular has a comprehensive Security Guide that walks you through key security practices, such as preventing cross-site scripting (XSS) and protecting against cross-site request forgery (CSRF). Following these best practices helps you avoid common security mistakes.

Plan Ahead for Future Security

Security isn’t just about addressing immediate risks — it’s about planning for the future. By using Angular’s built-in tools and staying updated on the latest security practices, you ensure your app remains safe as it grows.

4. Follow the Angular Blog: Stay Ahead of the Curve

One of the simplest yet most effective ways to stay on top of the latest developments in Angular is to regularly follow the Angular Blog. As Angular evolves through updates and new releases, the blog is your go-to source for learning about new features, best practices, and important changes.

Why It Matters

Angular is a dynamic framework, and with each new version, new tools and features are introduced that can make your development process more efficient. Features that once required extra effort to implement might become much simpler or more streamlined in newer releases. By keeping up with the Angular Blog, you can take advantage of these improvements early, making your applications more robust and easier to build.

Whether it’s a new feature, a performance improvement, or a change in best practices, staying informed ensures that you’re always working with the most up-to-date tools Angular has to offer.

5. Upgrade Your App Regularly: Stay Current for Long-Term Success

One key practice that’s served me well over the years is upgrading your Angular app regularly. While it may not always be possible, especially for larger or legacy applications, keeping your app updated with the latest stable versions — ideally when they hit Long-Term Support (LTS) — can save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

Why Upgrade?

Upgrading to newer versions of Angular brings numerous benefits:

• Fewer Bugs: By staying current, you avoid the technical debt that builds up when you skip multiple versions. Upgrading incrementally ensures that you’re addressing potential issues along the way, rather than being overwhelmed with a massive upgrade later.
• Performance Improvements: Newer versions often come with significant improvements in build speeds and Angular CLI performance, making your development process faster and more efficient.
• New Features: As Angular evolves, new features are introduced that can simplify your development tasks or improve your app’s functionality. Regular upgrades allow you to take advantage of these features as soon as they’re stable.

A Long-Term Strategy

If you’re in it for the long haul, committing to regular updates is a key part of maintaining a healthy, scalable app. It may require some upfront work, but the trade-off is smoother upgrades and a more productive development environment down the road.

I’ve always been drawn to leadership. Throughout my career, I’ve actively pursued any leadership position that presented itself—even when I didn’t get them, I knew the right opportunity would eventually come along. During my time at AOL Platforms, I had the chance to lead BOLD (Black, Organizers, Leaders and Doers), an employee resource group that gave me valuable experience in mobilizing and inspiring others. That experience helped prepare me for when my big opportunity finally arrived at Caveonix, and it’s been both rewarding and challenging as I’ve had to unlearn some habits to become the effective manager I aspire to be.

I’ll never forget what the department head at AOL told a group of us: “delegate, delegate, delegate.” He shared his own initial struggles with delegation, and now I’m experiencing that same learning curve firsthand.

As a programmer-turned-manager, I’ve always held myself to high standards. My instinct is to tackle problems myself to ensure they meet my quality expectations. But I’ve come to realize something important: while team members might not deliver exactly what I envision the first time around, that’s actually an opportunity—not a limitation.

By letting my team approach problems their way, I’m creating space for them to learn and grow. Yes, I still need to provide guidance and feedback, but now I understand that investing time in teaching pays dividends later when they can deliver exactly what’s needed without my intervention.

These days, I still write code, but I’ve learned to focus my technical efforts on the most specialized and challenging tasks. This balance allows me to contribute my expertise while empowering my team to develop theirs. It’s a shift in mindset that’s bringing me closer to my ultimate goal of taking Aura Studios to the next level—understanding that true leadership isn’t about doing everything yourself, but about building and enabling a capable team around you.

I have been working on this game for a few years, and as time has passed, the options to build it have grown. Unreal has changed their pricing model to make learning and building with the tool much more accessible for broke and aspiring engineers like myself.

Project Aurora has gone through a few iterations over the years. I came up with the idea while trying to think of making a puzzle game that makes sense in the real world. Floating blocks that disappear when lined up doesn’t pass the smell test in the real world, so what should I do? Put them in space! The final frontier and the only place where floating blocks makes sense. From there, things just fell into place—figuratively and literally.

Next came picking the engine. Originally this game was built with XDC, an engine that was presented by Xbox. After they moved away from that platform, I transitioned the game to the Unity Engine. This was a vast improvement, but it wasn’t doing what I wanted. So I moved to Lumberyard by Amazon. Since it was based on the CryEngine, I knew it was going to look great. Lesson learned: that was not the case.

Enter Unreal Engine. As soon as I transitioned the assets over and got things started, I knew I had a winner. After rebuilding the game so many times, the ease of getting up and running could not be ignored. The many resources also showed me that it would be easy to learn how to use and harness the engine for my joy. I have a lot to learn, but I can tell this is going to be a worthwhile journey.

When using complicated programs with lots of features(in my case the PHPStorm IDE), I am a fan of keeping start-up tips going for as long as possible. It may be an annoyance to have to close it out every time, but you tend to find a good nugget of knowledge in there.  Today, I discovered one such nugget and that nugget goes by the name of Emmet.

I am an extreme proponent of saving keystrokes.  As a developer, I will be typing lots and lots of keys in my day, so eliminating these keys will not only make me a more efficient programmer, but it will help me extending my programming sessions.

Emmet has plugins for the most popular text editors out there like Notepad++ and Sublime, so I would suggest that people who use these give it a try and see how it works for you.

I found this picture courtesy of the Cassini spacecraft and NASA’s website and I just had to share. It is absolutely amazing.

Inkscape is a great free tool to use in order to manipulate SVGS, but it does have its fair share of quirks. One thing that sucked away a lot of time for me was figuring out how to make it stop adding a transform to an object once I started to move or modify its scale in anyway. I typically just take the path information from the SVG and then use that for my programming exploits. Having to worry about a transform just makes my life a lot more difficult than it needs to be. After doing a LOT of searching through forums and StackOverflow, I discovered a couple of solutions. I feel its my obligation to share this.

Make sure the Object is in not in a group layer

If the object is nested within a group, Inkscape will automatically apply a transform. So to fix this, just hit Ctrl + Shift + X to bring up the XML Editor. Once it is up, just find the svg node in question and pull it out of the group. This should fix the problem.

Convert any shapes(Circles, Squares, etc) into paths

I thought I was good with the just the first solution, until even after doing that, I noticed some objects were still applying transforms. After more researching, I discovered by accident that the problem is actually the fact that if the object was created with the Inkscape shape tool, then no matter what, if you modify that shape, Inkscape will add a transform. To eliminate that, you just have to convert the shape into a path by pressing Ctrl + Shift + C. Once you do this, you should be able to modify shapes without worrying about transforms being added.

Inspiration seems to come from anywhere at anytime. I love being inspired by the many things around me. I feel the motivation to succeed even more so there is so much around to inspire me. My current inspiration comes by way of Le Pain Quotidien. In an attempt to use their free wi-fi, they threw me on their cool wi-fi landing page. It is pretty simple, clean and interactive. Something I aspire to have in the next iteration of Jon-Claude.net. Thank you Le Pain Quotidien, not only for your delicious Smoked Salmon Omelet, but for today’s inspiration.

The conclusion of the GVN Summer Jam video series. Interviews with Sorwah, Big E and the conclusion of the Dead or Alive 5 tournament.

The next edition of the GVN Summer Jam 6 with an interview with Director of Dead or Alive Tom Lee and others!