This weeks #piqueOfTheWeek is Learnable Programming by Bret Victor . Its a long read but well and truly worth it. The abstraction section crystallised for me the concept of starting low level and then abstracting out to higher level and how that can directly relate to the TDD approach of taking the smallest possible step to pass. The abstraction is only necessary to pass the more complex or…
This weeks #piqueOfTheWeek is a great article by @benhowdle , Everything Changes But You . Backbone has served me well in recent years but for me React has been a game changer and I have chased it hard. React sits well with me and I feel it's heading in a direction that I want to go. It has spurred on my interest in Functional Programming. My current direction might be different from Bens but…
It was only a matter of time before I picked up a functional language. If I had to place a bet my money would have been on Clojure but the @thoughtbot Giant Robots Smashing into Other Giant Robots podcast led me to Haskell. I am excited to learn a new language and know there are benefits from learning concepts even if I don't use the language directly but as always my concern is if that is the…
Having just accepted a role at SitePoint hiring/being hired is something thats been on my mind the last few weeks. So on that theme this weeks “ Pique of the Week ” is The person they’ll become by Jason Fried . Its an oldie but a goodie. For me I am constantly amazed that the further I go in my programming career the quicker my learning accelerates. Now at my most experienced I am moving faster…
For the past fourteen years (almost fifteen including my time as a temp) I have worked at Optus which is one of the largest telecommunications companies in Australia. That time is shortly coming to an end. I have never mentioned my employer in the past for several reasons. I didn't want to publicly criticize them and equally I do not wish to offer false praise. I liked the idea of being able to…
My second “ Pique of the Week ” is Discover Graph Databases with Neo4j and PHP by Christophe Willemsen . I've been meaning to look into graph databases for some time and that interest was spurred on again when Facebook announced Relay and GraphQL at React.js Conf . So when Discover Graph Databases with Neo4j and PHP dropped into my feed reader this week I couldn't ignore it. Like everyone else I…
For my first ever “ Pique of the Week ” I’m picking a great article by Vigets Josh Korr , An Uncomfortable Missing Part of the Accessibility Discussion . I love it when someone puts into words what I have been thinking. I love it even more when they provide the clarity that I was struggling to achieve in my own thoughts. Josh article discusses the fact that “Accessibility has a cost”. So on that…
I’ve been meaning to start this series for a while but this week I have finally gotten around to it. What is it? So each week, roughly, I will try to post about one thing that has piqued my interest. Hopefully it will provide some interesting links for anyone following along at home. So heres the first one. A11y
I built a doubly static site using React (inc react-router) and Webpack. You can see the current demo here on GitHub or continue reading the following post that explains the steps I took during this experiment. This post proves the basic concept and there will be a followup post covering the fine tuning needed to put this into production. Why My blog currently uses Jekyll. Its a great way to build…
Apple is awesome and I follow MacRumors because I find all that awesome addictively interesting. However recently I felt that articles with anything negative about Apple came with something else, an unnecessary defence of Apple as if Apple itself was writing the article. Case 1: Finnish Prime Minister Again 'Blames' Apple for Country's Economic Struggles Case 2: Bendgate and the end of article…
I've been meaning to start blogging for a long time and now I have finally gotten around to it. The real inspiration that finally got me going was my recent move into the command line. My what? Well let me explain... Around November 2013 my employer decided it was no longer OK for devs to work on their own laptops and that everyone would benefit if we all use the same company PCs and the lovely…