Guides

Practical, opinionated writing on the formats and workflows behind our converters. No fluff, no gated content.

• JSON Schema vs TypeScript types

  TypeScript checks your code at compile time. JSON Schema checks values at runtime. Here's how to decide which you need — and when you need both.

  6 min read•json-schema · typescript · validation

• Cron syntax cheat sheet

  The reference for reading and writing cron expressions — every field, every operator, common recipes, and the day-of-week trap that catches everyone.

  5 min read•cron · scheduling · devops

• How to validate JSON

  Syntactic vs structural validation, with recipes for TypeScript (Zod), Python (Pydantic), Go, and language-agnostic JSON Schema.

  6 min read•json · validation · zod · pydantic

• YAML vs JSON

  JSON is a wire format. YAML is a configuration format. Here's when each one is the right choice — and the YAML footguns to memorize.

  5 min read•yaml · json · config

• JWT explained

  The anatomy of a JSON Web Token — standard claims, signature algorithms, and the security footguns (alg: none, algorithm confusion, missing exp) that ship real vulnerabilities.

  6 min read•jwt · auth · security

• Base64 explained

  Base64 is encoding, not encryption. Here's how it works, why it inflates size by ~33%, standard vs URL-safe, Unicode handling, and the four places it actually belongs.

  5 min read•base64 · encoding

• Unix timestamps

  What the Unix epoch is, seconds vs milliseconds detection, the 2038 problem, ISO 8601 vs epoch, and timezone handling in JS, Python, and Postgres.

  5 min read•time · unix · iso8601

• UUID versions compared

  How each UUID version is generated, why v7 is winning for database primary keys, when v4 is still the safe default, and the storage choices that make UUIDs cheap or expensive.

  5 min read•uuid · database · identifiers

• Regex cheat sheet

  Character classes, quantifiers, groups, lookaround, and the recipes worth stealing — plus the one bug (catastrophic backtracking) that has caused real production outages.

  6 min read•regex · reference

• CSV pitfalls

  RFC 4180 rules, why Excel opens your CSV wrong, formula injection via = and @, encoding traps, and a checklist for producing safe CSV.

  6 min read•csv · excel · security

• Case conventions

  Per-language naming conventions for JS, Python, Go, Rust, Ruby, Java, SQL — plus the rules for URLs, env vars, CSS classes, and API payloads.

  5 min read•naming · style · conventions

• HTTP status codes

  The status codes worth actually knowing — 201 vs 200, 401 vs 403, 422 vs 400 — plus retry semantics, redirect method preservation, and idempotency.

  6 min read•http · api · reference