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I’ve been using JavaScript for a while now, but only really programming in anger with it during the last year. I’ve found it in turns frustrating and enlightening, ridiculous and brilliant. I have never felt so empowered by a language and its ecosystem, so I thought I’d take some time to write about why that is. I’m starting with a ramble through the history of JavaScript, or rather my undoubtedly inaccurate understanding of it, to provide some context for where and how I’ve been using it"
JavaScript Garden is a growing collection of documentation about the most quirky parts of the JavaScript programming language. It gives advice to avoid common mistakes, subtle bugs, as well as performance issues and bad practices that non-expert JavaScript programmers may encounter on their endeavours into the depths of the language.
JavaScript Garden does not aim to teach you JavaScript. Former knowledge of the language is strongly recommended in order to understand the topics covered in this guide. In order to learn the basics of the language, please head over to the excellent guide on the Mozilla Developer Network.
Solarized is a sixteen color palette (eight monotones, eight accent colors) designed for use with terminal and gui applications. It has several unique properties. I designed this colorscheme with both precise CIELAB lightness relationships and a refined set of hues based on fixed color wheel relationships. It has been tested extensively in real world use on color calibrated displays (as well as uncalibrated/intentionally miscalibrated displays) and in a variety of
"The frameworks are listed in a clearly table with different color deposited. Descriptive icons show you at a first glance the existing features. Each framework offers a description with a possibility to add a review or download the framework."
In the interests of creating employment opportunities in the Java programming field, I am passing on these tips from the masters on how to write code that is so difficult to maintain, that the people who come after you will take years to make even the simplest changes. Further, if you follow all these rules religiously, you will even guarantee yourself a lifetime of employment, since no one but you has a hope in hell of maintaining the code. Then again, if you followed all these rules religiously, even you wouldn't be able to maintain the code!
You don't want to overdo this. Your code should not look hopelessly unmaintainable, just be that way. Otherwise it stands the risk of being rewritten or refactored.
The most obvious way to improve your coding is to write more code. Everybody knows that. However, another activity which I guarantee will improve your coding is the complete opposite of writing. I will state this as plainly as I possibly can:
If you want to dramatically increase your programming skills you need to be reading other people’s code.
Thank you for writing such a heartfelt critique of the Fizzbuzz screening question. I’m not writing to argue with your observations: I think we both agree with your points.
Here's a perfect example of how the computer field is broken:
In a post at Coding Horror, based on earlier posts at Imran on Tech and Raganwald, the author parrots what the others state, that programmers can't program. With lots of exclamation points.
Why make such a breathtakingly grandiose claim? Because of what happens in interviews. It would seem that the originator of this newest fooflah created a series a tests given during the interview process and found:
Between Reginald, Dan, and Imran, I'm starting to get a little worried. I'm more than willing to cut freshly minted software developers slack at the beginning of their career. Everybody has to start somewhere. But I am disturbed and appalled that any so-called programmer would apply for a job without being able to write the simplest of programs
I've hired dozens of C/C++ programmers (mostly at the entry level). To do that, I had to interview hundreds of candidates. Many of them were woefully poorly prepared for the interview. This page is my attempt to help budding software engineers get and pass programming interviews.
One of the nice things about using a tiny problem is that anyone who has written actual code in the last six months will solve it in less than ten minutes. This is good because (a) it leaves more time for talking about important things, and (b) if the candidate can’t solve the problem you will find out right away and save yourself a lot of grief.
I hear this from almost every software company. "We hire the top 1% or less," they all say.
Could they all be hiring the top 1%? Where are all the other 99%? General Motors?
I had an insight the other day.
Quiz: If you get 200 resumes, and you hire 1 person, are you hiring the top 0.5% of software developers?
"No," you say, "your screening process is unlikely to find the best person out of 200."
Agreed. OK. Let's say you had a magical screening process that actually allowed you to find the "best" person.
"No," you say, "people are good at different things. There's no absolute, forced ranking of developers that makes sense."
Agreed. Let's simplify for the moment and assume that all software developers in the world could be ranked in absolute order of skill, and that you had a magical screening process that found the "best" person from any field.
Now, when you get those 200 resumes, and hire the best person from the top 200, does that mean you're hiring the top 0.5%?
"Maybe."
No. You're not. Think about what happens to the other 199 that you didn't hire.
After a fair bit of trial and error I’ve come to discover that people who struggle to code don’t just struggle on big problems, or even smallish problems (i.e. write a implementation of a linked list). They struggle with tiny problems.
So I set out to develop questions that can identify this kind of developer and came up with a class of questions I call “FizzBuzz Questions” named after a game children often play (or are made to play) in schools in the UK.
You are not a Software Engineer. You do not build skyscrapers. You do not build bridges.
You grow gardens.
You are a Software Gardener.
Do you try to plan your gardens in such detail that you know where each leaf will be positioned before you plant a single seed? Do people expect estimates (or are they promises in your organisation?) on exactly how many flowers will have bloomed in one years time? Do you have a bonus tied to that? Things that would be perfectly reasonable to plan for a skyscraper seem a little ridiculous when you are talking about a garden.
CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Underneath all of those embarrassing braces and semicolons, JavaScript has always had a gorgeous object model at its heart. CoffeeScript is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way.
The golden rule of CoffeeScript is: "It's just JavaScript". The code compiles one-to-one into the equivalent JS, and there is no interpretation at runtime. You can use any existing JavaScript library seamlessly (and vice-versa). The compiled output is readable and pretty-printed, passes through JavaScript Lint without warnings, will work in every JavaScript implementation, and tends to run as fast or faster than the equivalent handwritten JavaScript.
A casual J tutorial
What is J?
J is not much like any other programming language that you’ve used before. Sure that’s a pretty trite sounding thing to say, but… you’ll see!
J is based in large part on the APL programming language, and falls into the loose family of APL-based, array-oriented programming languages. The main other languages in this family are K and Q.
Let’s get going
J easily works as a calculator, and you’re probably familiar with most of the arithmetic verbs (operators) already. The symbol for division is different than most other languages, but it should still look familiar.
Eloquent JavaScript is a book providing an introduction to the JavaScript programming language and programming in general.
The book exists in two forms. It was originally written and published in digital form, the HTML version of which includes interactive examples and a mechanism for playing with all the example code. This version is released under an open license.
I have published a revised version of the book on paper. The structure of this version remained largely the same, but the whole text has been thorougly edited and updated. You can order from Amazon here. There is still an interactive coding environment for this version, as a separate page.
February Headline: C# and Python are closing the gap on PHP
The rise of C# and Python are continuing in 2011. Both languages scored another old-time high this month and are now busy with overtaking PHP. Other interesting news is that we started to add results of Chinese search engine Baidu and reintroduced Yahoo!. These search engines now only count for 3% each until all false positives have been weeded out. This change has already some effect: JavaScript is back in the top 10 while SAS and Transact-SQL both lost much ground.
The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.
The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TIOBE index can be found here.
I’m fascinated by the way Facebook operates. It’s a very unique environment, not easily replicated (nor would their system work for all companies, even if they tried). These are notes gathered from talking with many friends at Facebook about how the company develops and releases software.
This document shows you how to write and build your first operating system in x86 assembly language. It explains what you need, the fundamentals of the PC boot process and assembly language, and how to take it further. The resulting OS will be very small (fitting into a bootloader) and have very few features, but it's a starting point for you to explore further.
After you have read the guide, see the MikeOS project for a bigger x86 assembly language OS that you can explore to expand your skills.
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