Categories
tech

Basic Web Development

Tai Chi
Learning to code can be like learning Tai Chi.

Q: Web development—with the wide range of backend and frontend languages, frameworks, and all of the tools and dependencies developers deal with on a day-to-day basis building apps and sites—is inherently complex. What advice do you give folks who are just starting out in web development?

 1) When someone is getting started in web development, I usually focus on three things. First, you have to learn your foundations. Get good at HTML, responsive CSS3, and vanilla JavaScript. This will be of use to you no matter where you’re working.

2) Second, pick something and get good at it. Pick a single frontend framework and a single backend framework and get to know them well. Try a variety of projects in them; find the places they annoy you; get to know the communities; dig in deep; give back.

–by Matt Stauffer
https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/on-becoming-a-web-artisan

Categories
Education

Update on the Google Library Project

Sad update on the problems of trying to scan all the books in the world, and make them available.

Categories
tech

The Smartphone is “Digitizing” More and More of the World

Quotes from a talk by Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson: A Lesson From Amazon’s Bezos:

I remember one of these all-hands meetings, somebody asked a question, and I don’t even remember what the question was,” said Lawson. “But I remember what Jeff’s response was. Jeff said, ‘We are a software company, just as much as that other company down in Redmond,’” a reference to Microsoft (MSFT).

What a great definition of what it is to be a software person: people who solve business problems with magnetic particles; not just developers, but people throughout a company who are able to see business problems who are trying to solve them through this lens. Software people fundamentally believe any problem can be solved once you pull that problem into the realm of software.”

And, “It’s a great time to be a software developer,” said Lawson. That’s because the smartphone is “digitizing” more and more of the world, bringing into into the domain of software.

 

Categories
tech

Delightful Interview with Kent Beck on creating JUnit

Interview done in 2005. Memorable quote: Testing is like flossing–good for you but most people don’t do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zaCvLVU70o

Categories
tech

Google Chrome Engineer Says Windows Defender ‘the Only Well Behaved Antivirus’, Cites ‘Tons of Empirical Data’

Interesting article on why Google engineers think Windows Defender is best antivirus software.