Like you I often spend my weekends writing REST APIs for fun. And like you I am often frustrated by the amount of server-side code I need to write just to expose some data to JavaScript. Boilerplate, boilerplate, boilerplate. Ugh! So this weekend, in between bouts of erratic and unsatisfying jetlag-sleep, I decided to try…
Code
Learn to Code (An Intermission): Code.org
The founders of Facebook, Microsoft, Dropbox, Twitter and many more top tech companies have provided their voices and recognisable fizzogs to this latest video from Code.org. Code.org promotes the principle that nobody is born with the ability to code, or play basketball, or drive a racing car: it is a learned skill. The biggest hurdle…
Oracle Appeals Google’s Java Win. What’s next for Dalvik?
This week, Oracle appealed Google’s win at the patent trial over the Java application programming interface (API) being used in the Android operating system. In a new document published this week (PDF), Oracle’s lawyers start by introducing a character called Ann Droid. And then tell a story about Ann ripping off Harry Potter: The Order of…
Learn to Code: Chapter 2 – Black Tie Function
This is the third part of my Learn to Code series. The previous part is here: Chapter 1 – Meet Bob. See Bob. See Bob Run. Run Bob, Run! We last spoke about making Bob run 5 miles. We were going to do that by performing an action – a “function” in programmer parlance…
Learn to Code: Chapter 1 – Meet Bob
This is the second part of a series of articles called Learn to Code. Click here to go to Chapter 0, “Wax on, Wax off”. Learn to Code Well done. You’re now a World class programmer! And you’ve been given a brief by your customer who wants you to write some software for them. The…
Learn to Code: Chapter 0 – Wax on, Wax off
So you want to learn to code? Well this is the right place. I assume no prior knowledge, except knowing how to turn on a computer, open a text editor such as Notepad, and have some idea of the operation of a keyboard. It may not be immediately obvious WHY I’m covering some of the…
Automatic Task List in Visual Studio
The Task List in Visual Studio is apparently very well hidden. But if you’ve ever put a “TODO” comment in some code in Visual Studio, you’ve already started to use it! This is a feature of Visual Studio that has been around since at least VS 2005 and yet I talk to so many developers…
Common JavaScript Gotchas – Part 1
Pop quiz, hotshot, the image shows a common JavaScript ‘gotcha’ – or inadvertent mistake through incomplete knowledge of something. What exactly is happening here? You create a simple function called “getPerson”, and it returns you a JSON object with a single property on it, “name”. However! When you come to use the “name” property, it…