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  We need a programming language for the rest of us

Recently I took on the enormous task of learning Objective-C from the bottom up and I was struck by something I couldn’t shake: this is too hard. An experienced developer might scoff at me for saying that, but it’s true. I’ll be honest about my education, Calculus II was the most math I ever took, I have an advanced degree from Berkeley in Journalism. I am a proficient HTML/CSS developer and can glue enough javascript together to solve almost any problem that has presen...

   Code.Programming,Expectation,Easy-to-use     2011-07-22 02:20:09

  That “JavaScript not available” case

During some interesting discussions on Twitter yesterday I found that there is now more than ever a confusion about JavaScript dependence in web applications and web sites. This is a never ending story but it seems to me to flare up ever time our browsing technology leaps forward. I encountered this for the first time back in the days of DHTML. We pushed browsers to their limits with our lovely animated menus and 3D logos (something we of course learned not to do again, right?) and we were ...

   JavaScript,Security,Banned,Reason     2012-01-04 02:37:35

  What Level Programmer Are You?

Everybody's talking about how programming is the skill that we all are going to need. [Except those folks who might feel that most programming could be turned into wizard-like tools. Insert long discussion about Strong AI.] But what's a programmer? Is the guy who set up his own Apache Web Server a programmer? How about the guy who created a complex Excel spreadsheet? The guy who made his own RPG level? Minecraft players? When we say "Everybody is going to have to know programming" what, e...

   Programmer,Skill,Level,Criteria     2012-02-08 10:07:41

  Programming: the benefits of taking a break

This post lists several benefits of taking a break during programming. You work smarter, not harder. Once, I worked really hard on a feature. For two weeks, 12 hours a day, I put in a lot of effort. After those two weeks, I took a break and came up with several ideas that made much of the work unnecessary.You think more clearly. Being tired has a similar effect as being drunk. At the end of a day, I often kid myself that I’ll just get this one thing finished quickly to have a fresh ...

   Programming,Tips,Break,Tired     2011-07-28 09:04:29

  Which one has a worse reputation, JavaScript or PHP?

There has a been a lot of criticism of PHP over being a badly designed programming language. JavaScript seems quite a similar language with loose-typing and flexible array declarations/memory management, but is widely adopted by industry leaders such as Google. Google even has a JavaScript style guide. Many people think that PHP has a worse reputation than JavaScript. Carlos Ribeiro gave his analysis on a high level which doesn't touch the language syntax. Attributing JavaScript success to it be...

   JavaScript,PHP,reputation,comparison     2014-05-03 06:26:10

  In praise of impractical programming

Although it’s become a cultural mainstay now, I still remember when I first saw that thick book — the one with the wizard on the cover — about a school for magic where wonders are easily conjured by those who know the proper spells. Of course, I’m talking about the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. There was that other book with the spells, but the “Wizard Book” sincerely claimed to teach magic. For the past few years, I’ve been ...

   Impractical Programming,Structure,Scheme,Practical     2011-12-05 12:28:58

  ARM adopts 64-bit architecture

ARM has disclosed technical details about its new v8 architecture - the first to include a 64-bit instruction set - at ARM TechCon 2011 in Santa Clara, California.The next-gen architecture will expand the reach of ARM processors in the consumer and enterprise markets where extended virtual addressing and 64-bit data processing are required.According to ARM CTO Mike Muller, ARMv8 architecture consists of two main execution states: AArch64 and AArch32. 

The AArch64 execution state int...

   ARM,Processor,64 bit,Architecture,v8,Nvidia     2011-10-28 10:31:52

  Twitter OAuth the easy way – simple post to twitter script

After Twitter introduced mandatory authentication with OAuth, many of the current scripts for posting content to Twitter don’t work anymore. OAuth can be great for more advanced authentication, but for a simple post to twitter script, it seems like a little overkill. In this post you’ll learn how to create a simple script that uses a quick and dirty version of OAuth for posting new tweets to Twitter. How to create a simple script Simplified, Twitter OAuth involves sending both ap...

   Twitter,OAuth,PHP,Auto tweet     2012-02-25 12:51:07

  Commonly used AJAX frameworks

Have you ever wondered to design your website like desktop applications? Fortunately, with AJAX we can achieve this. By using AJAX, we no need to refresh the whole page when we just want to update a portion of a website such as the weather information or news panel. This makes our web apps look like desktop applications and bring good user experience to our visitors. You can create an XMLHttpRequest object every time when you want to initialize an AJAX call, unfortunately you may need repeat eve...

   AJAX,framework,jQuery,Dojo,YUI     2012-06-27 04:40:05

  Advanced event registration models

On this page I explain the two advanced event registration models: W3C’s and Microsoft’s. Since neither is cross–browser supported, their use is, for the moment, deprecated. W3C and Microsoft have both developed their own event registration model to replace Netscape’s traditional model. Though I’m not impressed by the Microsoft model, W3C’s is very good, except for one crucial vagueness. Unfortunately few browsers support it at the moment. W3C W3Câ...

   JavaScript,Event model,this,bubble,capturing     2011-12-27 09:20:44

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