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Coding with Friends: You should be here, too!
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
Posted in Uncategorized
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Why go to a Prolog talk?
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
PluralSight videos: How to change the playback speed
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
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Improve your LINQ with .Any()
LINQ’s .Any() method is under-utilized, given the benefits it brings in making your code briefer, clearer, and more efficient. LINQ in general improves the expressiveness of your collection-manipulating code by using declarative statements instead of imperative foreach loops; .Any() is … Continue reading
Continuous Integration: Early indicators mean inexpensive fixes
Earlier this year, I bought a car—my first new car. Although it fills me with sanctimonious hybrid glee (it really does), it’s making me neurotic with instrument panel indicator lights. The low-tire-pressure indicator after the weather turned cold. The insistent … Continue reading
Best-Kept Secret: MS Word’s Selection Pane saves time, reduces frustration
It’s probably because I never learned to play first-person shooters, but I have a devil of a time in Word selecting the element I want out of a page full of drawing shapes. Trying to select a text box, I … Continue reading
Running JavaScript… With Sneakers!
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
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Come to my Arduino talk: Home-built video game console
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
Posted in arduino, electronics
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Legacy Operating Systems and Legacy Languages: If it ain’t broke, it still needs fixing
In my travels I’ve encountered systems chugging happily along on outdated, discontinued, unsupported technology stacks. Apps written in VB6, FoxPro, Classic ASP, still running without a hitch because the kinks had been shaken out years ago… Software users delicately avoiding … Continue reading
Posted in refactoring
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When to use a Mock and When Not To
When I sit down to write a unit test, my first step is to describe for myself, in English instead of code, what I intend to test. The words I choose give clues as to the structure of the test … Continue reading
Posted in Rhino Mocks, unit testing
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