February 2012
21 posts
Plain Old JavaScript →
“…what I fear about many of today’s frameworks is just how deeply they need to intertwine themselves with my code.”
What’s the future of the book in the iPad era? →
“What is the future of the book in the iPad era? We are at a unique meeting point for all things digital & analogue. Right now is a very exciting time to be involved with storytelling.”
6 Best HTML5/CSS3 Presentation Frameworks →
“Today we come with the best HTML5/CSS3 presentation tools/framework by which you cans create your slide show.”
MarkPad →
“A WPF Markdown editor inspired by Downmarker.”
Sublime Package Control →
“A full-featured package manager that helps discovering, installing, updating and removing packages for Sublime Text 2. It features an automatic upgrader and supports GitHub, BitBucket and a full channel/repository system.”
Introducing the New Developer Experience →
“…Visual Studio 11 demands less of your focus, and instead allows you to focus far more on your code and the value that you can add to your applications.
Learning To Use The :before And :after... →
“If you’ve been keeping tabs on various Web design blogs, you’ve probably noticed that the :before and :after pseudo-elements have been getting quite a bit of attention in the front-end development scene — and for good reason.”
OS X Command Line - Sublime Text 2 Documentation →
“Sublime Text 2 includes a command line tool, subl, to work with files on the command line. This can be used to open files and projects in Sublime Text 2, as well working as an EDITOR for unix tools, such as git and subversion.”
Every Time You Call a Proprietary Feature “CSS3,”... →
“…proprietary [browser] features of today are no better than ActiveX and IE filters. Their only difference is better PR, as we haven’t faced the consequences yet.”
On the Decline of the GPL →
“What both organizations have realized is that very little code, in practice, is competitively differentiating… if the code is not a competitive advantage, it is likely not worth protecting.”
JavaScript: Warts and workarounds →
“The key to seeing JavaScript as elegant is understanding its warts, and knowing how to avoid, work around or even exploit them.”
Five HOT CSS3 SKILLS OF 2012 →
“In this article, we’ll walk through five CSS3 CSS3 methods, media query tips, and CSS gems to learn in a few minutes.”
There and Back Again - My Return to .Net... →
“Working in webforms is only slightly better than your doctor telling you that your crabs have super-herpes.”
2 tags
A re-introduction to JavaScript →
“JavaScript has a reasonable claim to being the world’s most misunderstood programming language. While often derided as a toy, beneath its deceptive simplicity lie some powerful language features.”
1 tag
The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings:... →
“There is no canonical metric for determining platform traction; we employ half a dozen or more internally at RedMonk, depending on context, which incorporate everything from GitHub LOC rankings to LinkedIn group membership data. But one of our favorites… compares and contrasts the rankings of programming languages on GitHub and Stack Overflow to provide a broader view of language...
Building Twitter Bootstrap →
“Most components and many of the finer details surrounding them were designed and built by pairing designers with developers. Together, our process for each new feature or design component matured to ideation, debate and feature review, implementation, and lastly abstraction and documentation. It made the development of our internal tools rather smooth, helped us avoid feature creep and code...
Why Metro now rules at Microsoft →
“Metro takes its design cues from way-finding graphics used in transportation signs. The bold, clear lettering and iconography are key to helping commuters find their way to subways and air travelers navigate to their boarding gates. Shum, Flora, and the others on the team believed that focus on clarity and readability would be crucial to the new interface.”
The Incredible Em & Elastic Layouts with CSS →
“This article will walk you through creating a basic elastic layout; what exactly an “em” is and how to calculate them, how to use ems to create an elastic layer for content with scalable text and images, including basic vertical rhythm.”
Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcut for locking the screen →
“This holy shortcut is: ⌃ + ⇧ + ⏏ (Control + Shift + Eject)”
Semantic markup and CSS frameworks →
“…while I agree that most redesigns will involve changing markup, I disagree with the underlying premise that a redesign is a purely visual undertaking, and I disagree with the whole idea that one *should never have to touch* the markup.”
Apple’s great GPL purge →
“…I decided to take a look at how much software [Apple was] using that was only available under the GNU public license. The results are illuminating…”
January 2012
15 posts
JavaScript pattern and antipattern collection →
“A JavaScript pattern and antipattern code collection that covers function patterns, jQuery patterns, design patterns, general patterns, literals and constructor patterns, object creation patterns, code reuse patterns (upcoming), DOM and browser patterns (upcoming). Weekly roundups (pattern updates) will be regularly tweeted.”
Expanding your horizons →
“…if you seek to be a better developer, dig deep and learn the real basic building blocks for our profession.”
Programming and Civility →
“…hacker culture has much to offer in terms of what good education looks like. Many of the best practices of the software development world carry over to education as well.”
Why Apple's products are 'Designed in California'... →
“One could argue that Apple’s success has come at the expense of the American manufacturing workforce, but… it seems the workforce Apple would have needed in America never existed to begin with.”
How to enlist ADO commands into an NHibernate... →
“NHibernate does afford a way to make calls using the plain old ADO.Net API. To be more precise, NHibernate allows users to enlist IDbCommands into NHibernate transactions.”
Using Rake to Make Your Builds Majestic →
“Rake is a software task management tool, written in ruby for managing ruby projects. By leveraging gems like albacore, rake can be used to automate tasks such as builds, configuration, assembly versioning, database deployments, unit testing, etc. for .NET projects as well.”
Sublime Text 2 Tips and Tricks →
“Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible code editors to be released in a long time! With a community and plugin ecosystem as passionate as this one, it just might be impossible for any other editor to catch up. I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.”
SOPA and the oblivious →
“…the only way to keep your freedom - on the Internet or anywhere else - is to defend everyone else’s freedom as well, by keeping your government tiny and starved and rigidly constrained in what it can do.”
SOPA is a Red Herring →
“During all the shouting about SOPA and proposed blackouts to ‘protest’, the organization that actually runs the DNS root servers, ICANN, the backbone of the web, has been quite busy in plain view on changing the game, in favor of the government… The real change, that of your privacy online, is being made in plain sight by former Director of the National Cyber Security...
Donald Knuth talks about his life on Web of... →
“Donald Knuth (b. 1938), American computing pioneer, is known for his greatly influential multi-volume work, ‘The Art of Computer Programming’, his novel ‘Surreal Numbers’, his invention of TeX and METAFONT electronic publishing tools and his quirky sense of humour.”
Parallel Javascript - Baby Steps →
“Lately the ideas for a parallel, shared memory JavaScript have begun to take shape. I’ve been discussing with various JavaScript luminaries and it seems like a design is starting to emerge. This post serves as a documentation of the basic ideas; I’m sure the details will change as we go along.”
Web programs written in C++ are no big deal →
“…since I”m not chasing the shininess… I can spend those cycles on other things… [a]t some point, you just have to shut up and make stuff.”
I Didn't Leave .Net, .Net Left Me →
“I have the desire and ability to keep going, but it’s not going to be enough to get me over the roadblocks that have been put in front of me. And it all comes down to one single word: Express.”
Hackers Said to be Planning to Launch Own... →
“Hackers reportedly plan to fight back against Internet censorship by putting their own communications satellites into orbit and developing a grid of ground stations to track and communicate with them.”
12 resolutions for programmers →
“It’s important for programmers to challenge themselves. Creative and technical stagnation is the only alternative. In the spirit of the new year, I’ve compiled twelve month-sized resolutions.”
December 2011
12 posts
Mono in 2011 →
“This was a very interesting year for Mono, and I wanted to capture some of the major milestones and news from the project as well as sharing a bit of what is coming up for Mono in 2012.”
SOPA and the oblivious →
“…the only way to keep your freedom – on the Internet or anywhere else – is to defend everyone else’s freedom as well, by keeping your government tiny and starved and rigidly constrained in what it can do. Otherwise, the future you’re begging for is SOPAs without end.”
5 tags
An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S.... →
“Today, a group of 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers sent an open letter to members of the United States Congress, stating their opposition to the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills that are under consideration in the House and Senate respectively.”
A Case Against Using CoffeeScript →
“…this post is going to sound like I hate CoffeeScript. After a couple months of reviewing and writing CoffeeScript I’ve got a few beefs I’d like to get off my chest. Since there’s very little educated criticisms of the language out there, I’m happy to fill the gap…”
Predicting Microsoft's Future by Examining the... →
“Although a host of lawsuits waged in the wake of Microsoft’s US antitrust trial a decade ago have long since come and gone, this one [Novell’s WordPerfect anti-trust lawsuit] continued even though Novell was sold to Attachmate. And in the past few weeks, this lawsuit actually went to court. And perhaps even more amazing, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates even appeared to testify...
The Barbarians are at the Gates →
“We software developers have had a virtually infinite reserve of computer power laid out in front of us by the hardware developers. Every time we needed more capability, they were there with the answer. And so our technology — the technology of software development, has changed very little.”
The Heart of Unix →
“Most people claim that it’s the configurability of Linux that keep the users coming. That may have attracted me at first, but what attracts me now is its programmability. When you interact with the shell, *you are writing programs to be interpreted*.”
2 tags
Phil Haack is a GitHubber →
“Today we are joined by the one and only Phil Haack. Phil hails from Seattle, Washington where he’s been leading the development of both ASP.NET MVC and NuGet. He will be helping make GitHub better on many fronts with a special focus on all you Windows developers out there.”
Gow - The lightweight alternative to Cygwin →
“Gow (Gnu On Windows) is the lightweight alternative to Cygwin. It uses a convenient Windows installer that installs about 130 extremely useful open source UNIX applications compiled as native win32 binaries.”
The Query of Despair →
“I don’t think anyone can help me…”
Persistence →
“He who accepts life for what it is and never allows himself to be overwhelmed by it does not need to seek refuge for his crushed self-confidence in the solace of a ‘saving lie’. If the longed-for…
Things on which I am stewing →
I have about an hour before the November STL ALT.NET meetup begins, so I thought I would quickly jot down some things on which I have been stewing for the last few months, not because I think…
November 2011
13 posts
Departures →
“It was a tough decision to make, but I’ve decided to leave Microsoft to try something different. This is my last week as a Microsoft employee.”
Python Ecosystem - An Introduction →
“What follows… documents the basics of Python ecosystem for web application development for our interns, trainees and experienced developers who shift to Python from other platforms.”