This is the personal blog of Ben Houston (bio here), a 3D computer graphics software developer. For a quick overview of the work I am proud of, see my portfolio. I've worked on projects like Web3DSurvey, Three.js, Deadline, Krakatoa, and Exocortex VFX plugins. I'm also an entrepreneur, having founded Land of Assets, Threekit, Clara.io, Exocortex, and Frantic Films Software.
TanStack Start runs on Nitro, and Nitro's default Node output can split server code across many files. On Google Cloud Run, that file fan-out can add seconds to cold starts. Bundling the server and pre-warming Node's compile cache reduced first render time on this site.
Static API keys in environment variables and files are too easy to steal. A better model is proof-of-possession, where every API call must be signed by a non-exportable private key that is available only through a constrained signing interface.
Understand what React is doing when your components render, pause, skip work, commit to different hosts, hydrate server HTML, split work with Server Components, and hand animation off between frames.
Testing command-line tools is deceptively hard - hanging processes, lost stderr, temp file juggling, and unreadable failures. I built vitest-command-line to make CLI testing in Vitest simple and robust.
Part 7 of the React Internals series. React Server Components split a tree into server-only and client-interactive pieces, serialize the server result as an RSC payload, and still rely on SSR and hydration for the Client Components that reach the browser.
Part 6 of the React Internals series. Server-side rendering creates an initial HTML snapshot on the server; hydration lets react-dom attach event handlers and fibers to that existing DOM instead of replacing it.
Part 8 of the React Internals series. Animating through setState re-runs React's render-commit loop every frame; react-spring instead commits a target once and writes intermediate frames straight to the DOM (and, via a separate adapter, to React Three Fiber's scene graph).
A practical introduction to Tailwind CSS for people who know basic CSS and want to understand utility classes, React className patterns, responsive variants, and why zero-runtime CSS fits modern React better than styled-components.
Part 5 of the React Internals series. React's reconciler produces host operations, and renderers such as react-dom, React Native, and React Three Fiber implement those operations for different platforms.
A primer on how CSS attaches styles, resolves conflicts, sizes boxes, hides and overlays content, and lays out modern UI with flexbox and media queries.
Part 4 of the React Internals series. React can skip component calls, reuse finished subtrees, and avoid host mutations when props, state, context, and output prove the work is unchanged.
Part 3 of the React Internals series. React schedules fiber work with lanes, interrupts lower-priority renders, keeps committed UI intact, and uses Suspense boundaries when a subtree cannot finish yet.
