The post you don’t want to read on the topic I don’t want to write about

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Sharon Cichelli

I’m going to give you a phrase of power. Use it wisely. Ready? I want to hear what you have to say. If you know a developer who ought to be presenting at conferences or writing blog posts and isn’t, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Coding with Friends: You should be here, too!

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Sharon Cichelli

Come hang out with us this Thursday. Polyglot Programmers of Austin is a co-working study group for people learning a new programming language (or their first), 2nd and 4th Thursdays. We bring our laptops and work individually or in pairs … Continue reading →

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Why go to a Prolog talk?

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Sharon Cichelli

I’m famous!* At this year’s CodeMash conference, O’Reilly Media interviewed CodeMash attendees about our languages and technologies of interest, and I’m in it. Now take note of my face starting at 1:15, when I’m asked what programming language I’d like … Continue reading →

Posted in Conference | Tagged | 5 Comments

PluralSight videos: How to change the playback speed

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Sharon Cichelli

Once I discovered the secret of how to adjust the playback speed of PluralSight’s training videos, deciding to subscribe became trivially easy. It was never the financial cost that stayed my hand, because the content is excellent, relevant, and plentiful; … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Running JavaScript… With Sneakers!

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Sharon Cichelli

Code-review time. I haven’t written significant JavaScript in forevs, but I hit upon a use case well suited to it, had a blast coding it up, and am confident that I’ll be completely mystified by it three months from now. … Continue reading →

Posted in arduino, JavaScript, refactoring | 5 Comments

Come to my Arduino talk: Home-built video game console

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Sharon Cichelli

This Thursday at CTXNA, I’ll give an intro to the Arduino microcontroller, including a walk-through of how I followed PragPub’s instructions to build a video game console. Please join us! No experience necessary. Interactive and fun. Bring your Arduino projects … Continue reading →

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An Object Lesson in Binary Compatibility

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Sharon Cichelli

A riddle for you, friends: When is changing a method from return void to return Something a breaking change? If you already know the answer, then why hadn’t you told me? Could’ve saved me a fair bit of embarrassment. Ah … Continue reading →

Posted in Open-Source Software, refactoring | 4 Comments

Using Syntax to Model the Domain

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Sharon Cichelli

I’m fascinated by the small syntactic decisions that bring code closer to representing the business domain. Never mind the class inheritance examples from text books (“Dog IS-A Pet,” which has nearly never been relevant), I mean using properties, methods, and … Continue reading →

Posted in DDD | 6 Comments

Diffing Files to Avoid Easy Goofs

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Sharon Cichelli

A good habit learned at my last job has saved me a lot of embarrassment and bugs (same thing): Before committing a set of changes to source control, I look at the diff of each file. Look at the changes, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Microcontroller Projects and Source Code

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Sharon Cichelli

Welcome, Ignite/Dorkbot Science Fair Party Goers. Here are details on the two projects I had with me at the Science Fair. I used the open-source Arduino microcontroller. Arduino programs are called “sketches.” I keep my Arduino sketches on the collaborative … Continue reading →

Posted in arduino, electronics | Leave a comment