Dimitri De Franciscis

Hi, my name is Dimitri De Franciscis

I'm a freelance Full Stack Developer, Digital Creative, Lifelong Learner.



From the blog

P5.js Scratchpad

Some years ago I started to learn Processing, a Java-like environment for creative coding. Later on, I discovered p5.js, a JavaScript library that started - I guess - as a porting of Processing to JavaScript, but now it's an indipendent project on its own. I have been using it to create …

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Fri 10 November 2023

Export Tasks from Nirvana to Zenkit - Part 2

In the first part of this series I showed you how to export data from from Nirvana, process it, then import as "raw" CSV files into Zenkit. In this second part we will see how to use advanced Zenkit features such as field conversion and views.

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Mon 30 July 2018

Export Tasks from Nirvana to Zenkit - Part 1

I am quite a fan of GTD - Getting Things Done® methodology, and productivity tools in general. Over the last few years I've tried different workflows, applications, even Bullet Journal to stay organized and do things. In this article I will show you how to move your tasks and projects from Nirvana to Zenkit.

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Mon 23 July 2018

Secure, Flexible and Scalable Build Configuration with Maven

Many of the projects I'm involved in use Maven as build system due to its reliability, widespread use, and flexibility. However, I often find myself hurdling around bad choices with regard to the build process. In this article I'd like to illustrate some of the most useful techniques to implement …

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Tue 24 October 2017

Deploy React Applications in a Servlet Environment

Modern web applications using React and other frameworks are often distributed as static websites. It is undoubtely the simplest, cache-friendly and dead-cheap solution. However, some enterprisey projects (think about data-entry and legacy business applications) need to be deployed in a constrained environment like a Java JEE Servlet Engine (Tomcat, Jetty …

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Tue 19 September 2017

Keep A Markdown Journal To Get Your Projects Done

Software development is hard. Organizations, small and large, can be very inefficient sometimes: people waste their energy on endless meetings, vague specification documents, pointless "reply-to-all" emails. Working as a freelancer in such environments is perhaps even worse, as you're supposed to be the hyper-efficient 10x developer unicorn that can make …

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Sun 01 January 2017

Intellij Live Templates for Javascript Development

I'm a IntelliJ IDEA user since late 2013. After a long (and not without problems) liaison with Eclipse IDE, and before that with the glorious Borland JBuilder, I wanted to try something new. Not that Eclipse was bad per se, it was just getting heavier and buggier release after release, and the plugin ecosystem wasn't anymore something you could rely on. I remember also giving NetBeans a last chance: NO WAY. So I thought "What's all this fuss around JetBrain IntelliJ IDEA?"

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Tue 27 December 2016

Book Review: The Pragmatic Programmer

It's been a long time since I wanted to read this book, given enthusiastic reviews from various influential programmers. After "digesting" it (it took me almost three months) I can confirm the absolute value of this publication! Title: The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master Authors: Andrew Hunt, David Thomas …

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Mon 14 January 2013

Recensione Pragmatic Programmer

Era da tempo che volevo leggere questo libro, viste le ottime recensioni da parte di addetti ai lavori o personaggi "influenti" del variegato mondo della programmazione. Ora che l'ho "digerito" (ci ho messo quasi tre mesi per leggerlo tutto!) non posso che confermare l'assoluto valore di questa pubblicazione! Titolo: The …

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Mon 14 January 2013

Book review: NoSQL Distilled

Today's book review is about the very interesting, and long-awaited, book from Pramod J. Sadalage e Martin Fowler. Title: NoSQL Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Emerging World of Polyglot Persistence Authors: Pramodkumar J. Sadalage, Martin Fowler Language: english Editor: Addison Wesley (September 2012) NoSQL: beyond buzzwords The term NoSQL …

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Mon 22 October 2012