Allen Wirfs-Brock, a Mozilla Research Fellow, at YOW 2011, defined what he considers the current era of computing, and some exciting elements of where we are and where we are going in his talk “The Web Browser is a Transitional Technology”.
It looks like YOW 2011 had some fantastic talks to check out.
Author of “Invent with Python”, Al Sweigart, makes the case for teaching programming skills while enabling children to accomplish something, like making a game, not as an end in and of itself, in “Nobody Wants to Learn How to Program”. I believe this is mostly true, and the sooner we approach K-12 CS education similarly the better.
All about Linux: “Bash Shell Scripting”. A concise, quick to read and scan guide to shell scripting.
Good refreshers:
IBM developerWorks: Elliotte Rusty Harold: “Easier testing with EasyMock”.
Mocking in Java: jMock vs. EasyMock.
Steve Klabnik outlines some best practices in API design in “Nobody Understands REST or HTTP”, some of which I admit I need to follow more consistently. As he states in the end:
Seriously, most of the problems that you’re solving are social, not technical. The web is decades old at this point, most people have considered these kinds of problems in the past. That doesn’t mean that they always have the right answer, but they usually do have an answer, and it’d behoove you to know what it is before you invent something on your own.
Good article with clear to use tips.
Michael Hausenblas has an interesting way to think about Open Data in “Open Data – a virtual natural resource”.
Boing Boing: “The Web Kids Manifesto”
NYTimes: “There’s More to Nothing Than We Knew”
NPR.org: “Our Media, Ourselves: Are We Headed For A Matrix?”
Jonah Lehrer explains why it is not for reasons you may think.
Belief, specifically your mindset, whether you believe you have a certain amount of intelligence and cannot do much to change it, or believe you can learn and improve at anything given the time or energy, has everything to do with your true capacity to learn.
Lehrer summarizes with some advice for parents:
The problem with praising kids for their innate intelligence — the “smart” compliment — is that it misrepresents the psychological reality of education. It encourages kids to avoid the most useful kind of learning activities, which is when we learn from our mistakes.
That’s probably as true with inverse as well – insults about innate intelligence – telling a child he or she is “stupid” or is a “dumb ass”.
I’m going to disagree that the ‘sun is setting’ on Rails-style frameworks, however, there is a lot in this to think about: caines.ca: “The Sun is Setting on Rails-style MVC Frameworks”.
There is a circular evolutionary path from thick client, to thin client, to thick client. Are we again moving to an age of thick clients with the browser or smart phone being their host? With the preponderance of so many platforms, I have my doubts, at least in the near-term.
