Programming
Programming Languages That Aren’t Worth Your Time
As we all know, it seems like new programming languages are created every week. But which ones aren’t worth wasting your time on? I looked at actual listings on Dice to try to spot some trends. In late April, I searched both the entire set of job listings as well as specific job titles to see what skills companies were actually looking for. Here’s what I found. First, it’s safe to say that the Web is the primary focus of… continue…
Adding Custom Fonts to Your Web Pages
The Need for Custom Web Fonts On the Web, fonts have traditionally been limited to those regarded as “Web safe,” which in turn leads to something of a generic look to most company pages. Fonts — that is, the style in which letters, numbers, punctuation and special characters are visually presented — have long been a way in which brands and businesses distinguish themselves in the marketplace. For example, the distinctive Coca Cola font has been nearly unchanged for over… continue…
Finding Your Next Superstar Programmer
Finding Your Next Superstar Programmer (via slashdot) Last month, a story in The New York Times described the peculiar way in which a software company hired a programmer. The firm searched GitHub and other public code repositories in order to recruit (and eventually hire) this employee, who is still working there today; it was someone who had no idea… continue…
Google Glass Kernel Code Hits the Web
Google Glass Kernel Code Hits the Web (via slashdot) The kernel code for Google Glass, Google’s augmented-reality eyewear, is now available for download in a convenient 65.7MB file. “Currently there is a tarball of the kernel source in downloads,” read a short note on code.google.com. “This is unlikely to be the permanent home for the kernel… continue…
Why Technical Interviews Work (And Why They Don’t)
Some developers see technical interviews as just part of the process that they have to put up with when they’re looking for work. Others think they’re great, and a great deal more think they’re the worst thing to happen to programming since <insert most hated programming language here>. Having made a business out of helping people prepare for coding interviews, let me be the first to say this: Technical interviewing isn’t perfect and I don’t think it is the way… continue…
Make Smartphones Smarter With SendEmail
Gathering data and automatically sending email to your smartphone is simple with the tiny Linux machines BeagleBone or Raspberry Pi, with the help of a little program called sendEmail. It’s small, doesn’t take many computing resources and is easy to implement. BeagleBone and Pi are perfect for many hobbyist/entrepreneur/Maker-type Internet of Things projects. They work great from the command line. Another cool feature is the ability to read and set inputs and outputs at the hardware pin level. Suppose you have a magnetic… continue…
What I Learned at the Developers Conference
Being in IT for so many years has made me wear a lot of hats: Web dev on some days, a designer on others and a guy who has friends ask him how to do “simple” things that aren’t all that simple. So it behooved me to grab a ticket and go to the HTML5 Developer’s conference in San Francisco earlier this month. Summary The conference was packed — literally in some cases, as people were bumping shoulders taking notes… continue…
StageXL Moves You Easily From ActionScript 3 to HTML5
So you’re an ActionScript 3 developer creating Flash games, but you can see the writing on the wall. Taking a long view, is it time to move to HTML5? If so, what’s the best approach? Here’s a way you may not have heard of, and it’s open source. Although ActionScript and JavaScript are sort of distant cousins, there is an alternative to having to learn JavaScript: You can learn to program in Dart. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able… continue…
Does Scala’s Enterprise Penetration Threaten Java?
Created in 2001 and running on the JVM, Scala has started gaining traction in the Enterprise space because its use of functional and object oriented programming gives it an advantage over Java. It’s quite rare to see software disruption happening. It’s said that you don’t start recognizing a new Hollywood film star until you’ve seen them six times. The same may be true for new programming languages. A mention here, an article there and up it pops on your “Should… continue…
Working With CodeIgniter’s Controller
Let’s face it, the app we’ve been building isn’t much good without the ability to dynamically add tasks instead of having to pull up a database editor so we can insert them ourselves. Today, we’ll discuss how to create this. But before we do, we have to add a categories drop-down list that pulls its data from the database. That’s extremely easy to do in CodeIgniter. First, let’s add some tasks. Open up your database editor of PHPMyAdmin (or whatever… continue…
Alice Hill
C.S. Magor
Cat Miller
David Brumbaugh
David Chie
Dawn Kawamoto
Don Willmott
Elisabeth Greenbaum Kasson
Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Lekan Oguntoyinbo
Leslie Stevens-Huffman
M Noivad
Mark Feffer
nick kolakowski
Stephen Lahanas
Susan Hall
Vincent Chow
