found drama

get oblique

review: Data Structures and Algorithms with JavaScript

by Rob Friesel

Data Structures and Algorithms with JavaScriptMike McMillan’s Data Structures and Algorithms with JavaScript (O’Reilly, 2014) uses JavaScript as a vehicle for introducing a number of fundamental computer science concepts. It reminds me a little bit of Tom Stuart’s Understanding Computation 1 — that is, it’s a book about CS topics that targets people without a CS background. One might consider both books to be a gentle introduction to computer science, or “computer science for the layperson”. 2 Continue reading →

  1. I reviewed Understanding Computation last year. It was the first book that helped me to really understand the differences between “computer science” and “software engineering”.[↩]
  2. As condescending as it sounds, there were a couple of times where I thought a good subtitle for it might have been something like “A Field Guide to Real World Computer Science”.[↩]

Linkdump for March 25th

by Rob Friesel
  • Microservices
    James Lewis & Martin Fowler:

    There’s no reason why this same approach [Amazon’s “you built it, you run it”] can’t be taken with monolithic applications, but the smaller granularity of services can make it easier to create the personal relationships between service developers and their users.

    (tagged: service-oriented architecture SOA )
  • flexbox in the real world
    Good write-up by Sean Fioritto on how to use flexbox layouts in "real" projects. He covers four scenarios (including when to use the flexie.js kinda-sorta polyfill) and talks about some of the pitfalls of each. He doesn't go through the basics of the flexbox syntax, but he's kind enough to link out to some good resources on the subject.
    (tagged: css flexbox )
  • velesin/jasmine-jquery
    How have I not seen this before now? The matchers are an obvious win, but even more exciting are things like HTML fixtures and event spies. Yes, yes, and yes.
    (tagged: JavaScript jQuery Jasmine testing )
  • Why I’m Excited About Object.observe
    Amjad Masad, writing about one of the most exciting up-coming ECMAScript features. Object.observe should simplify (and give performance boosts to) a lot of MVC-type application code.
    (tagged: JavaScript ECMAScript Object.observe )
  • Why can’t we find Front End developers?
    By Jose Aguinaga; no pithy sound-bites to pull out, but a couple of thought-provoking statements. I don't agree with every little bit (e.g., some of the most successful front-end engineers that I know don't have CS backgrounds, though they do have a respect for the discipline), but most of what he says is right on.
    (tagged: front-end engineering )

Linkdump for March 16th

by Rob Friesel
  • Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
    Credit: Illustration by Tim Enthoven

    Written by Yiren Lu for NYTimes.com; such a great piece. This pull quote doesn't quite summarize it, but it comes close:

    Since the acquisition, Biswas, who is 32, has fought to retain the spirit of the vanguard, but his struggle reveals an implicit fear — that young engineers might be willing to work at Meraki but not at Cisco (because it’s too big and fusty), or that clients might be willing to buy from Cisco but not Meraki (because they don’t really trust start-ups).

    Lu does a fantastic job of capturing the conflicts and paradoxes that are bound up in the broader discourse that surrounds this. (And as an aside, I was pleased to see that Lu ended it with a bit of an optimistic note since there's so much temptation to emphasize the doom-and-gloom here.)

    (tagged: start-ups innovation Silicon Valley )
  • Lesser-Known JavaScript Debugging Techniques
    Amjad Masad with a write-up of a few clever JavaScript debugging techniques that are pretty amazing. Added bonus: debug_utils on Github.
    (tagged: JavaScript debugging )
  • CSS performance revisited: selectors, bloat and expensive styles
    Really interesting research results by Ben Frain. The short version seems to be that you shouldn't worry about your selectors (they rarely make a difference) but be mindful of what's going on { inside the braces }. The post reminds me a bit of Nicole Sullivan's 2012 CSS Summit talk where she talked about using Chrome DevTools to chase down rendering performance bottlenecks. (Short version there: profile! profile! profile! because the problems are almost never what you think they are.) And/but, this seemingly throwaway line caught my attention:

    Also be aware that when I performed the test I discarded the first couple of results as they tended to be unusually high in some browsers.

    If this were consistently true, and it looked like there were some kind of priming effect happening, wouldn't that be something you want to know more about?

    (tagged: CSS performance Ben Frain )
  • ∞ things I didn’t know about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
    Mathias Bynens' Kod.io 2014 presentation. The whole thing is fantastic, but slide #98 is far and away my favorite.

    (tagged: HTML CSS JavaScript lolwut )
  • Sass 3.3 is Released
    Tl;dr: they've added maps, source maps, more flexibility to the parent selector operator, and fixed some pernicious bugs with variable scoping.
    (tagged: Sass SCSS CSS )

Linkdump for March 5th

by Rob Friesel

search term haiku: February 2014

by Rob Friesel

zen of Angular
data analysis (Leek)
weird scarecrow painting

“Search Term Haiku” is a series wherein I examine this site’s log files and construct one or more haiku poems from search terms and phrases that led visitors to the site. Where possible, I attempt to keep the search phrases intact. However, as these are haiku poems, I do need to follow the rules.

Linkdump for February 6th

by Rob Friesel
  • DalekJS
    "Automated cross browser testing with JavaScript" … like a not-so-clunk Selenium, perhaps? Looks like an interesting project and worth coming back around to.
    (tagged: DalekJS browser automation testing )
  • Extending silent classes in Sass
    Harry Roberts outlines a technique for using Sass %placeholders that "shadow" their classes, allowing you to better control the output of your @extend directives.
    (tagged: Sass SCSS CSS )
  • Sass: Mixin or Placeholder?
    Hugo Giraudel with an explanation of when to use a @mixin and when to use a %placeholder in Sass.
    (tagged: Sass SCSS CSS )
  • The Failures of "Intro to TDD"
    Justin Searls:

    When I reacted to their answers by telling the class that TDD's primary benefit is to improve the design of our code, they were caught entirely off guard. And when I told them that any regression safety gained by TDD is at best secondary and at worst illusory, they started looking over their shoulders to make sure their manager didn't hear me. This did not sound like the bill of goods they had been sold.

    (tagged: testing TDD test-driven development )
  • Using PhantomJS at scale
    At SmugMug Sorcery:

    As you can probably already guess, this is incredibly naive.

    Great story about how they built, verified, and load tested their "Phantom Renderer" application.

    (tagged: PhantomJS Node.js performance testing )
  • The New Javascript Problem
    Good take on new by Reginald Braithwaite. Boils down to: new has some problems, and you're probably better off using factory patterns.
    (tagged: JavaScript )

Vermont Science Fiction – wrap-up and thanks

by Rob Friesel

A big thanks to Andrew, the team at Phoenix Books, and everyone else involved in making the Vermont Science Fiction event happen. And many more thanks to everyone that came out to support me and the other authors. It was fantastic group on both sides of the lectern, and a lot of fun for all.

As I mentioned during the reading, I think that this quote from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities captures the science fiction spirit so well:

Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

me, reading

And now, that novel; shared again with you… Continue reading →

what ended the terrorism of the south

by not another Rob?

HamdenRice at Daily Kos:

That, my friends, is what ended the terrorism of the south. Confronting your worst fears, living through it, and breaking out in a deep throated freedom song. The jailers knew they had lost when they beat the crap out of these young Negroes and the jailed, beaten young people began to sing joyously, first in one town then in another.

Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did.