Talk: “The Web Browser is a Transitional Technology”

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.

Some JavaScript and Node.js starter links

O’Reilly Radar: Mike Loukides: “Why a JavaScript hater thinks everyone needs to learn JavaScript in the next year”: If you have avoided JavaScript, this is the year to learn it. There’s no excuse — and if you don’t, you risk being left behind. (I hate statements like this, but if it encourages more back end folks to get familiar with a language that applies everywhere, it is a good thing.)

I hope to have a simple little project that parses SVN logs and produces visualizations up on github soon.

The resources and people below have been helpful on my journey into JavaScript and Node.js:

Eloquent JavaScript

Douglas Crockford

The Node Beginner

reddit: node.js

Felix’s Node.js Guide

Node Tuts

So what language/skill will you be learning this year?

Rafe is going to be investing in learning JavaScript and Node.js. After some server-side JavaScript work last year with Alfresco WebScripts, I’m inclined to to continue to dig in further myself.

First up is finishing “Eloquent JavaScript”.

Related, recent reads:

Steve Yegge: “The Universal Design Pattern “

Sam Ruby: “Planetary Exploration”

JavaScript, JavaScript: “Exploring JavaScript for-in loops”

w2lessons.com: “Why You Need to Learn JavaScript”

Data Journalism and Visualization with an Example

Guardian: Paul Bradshaw: “How to be a data journalist”

ProPublica: Jeff Larson: “The Rainbow Connection: How We Made Our CDO Connections Graphic” (tools mentioned: google-refine (formerly Gridworks), Raphaël, JSON)

Programing Links March 7th, 2009

Mike Taylor on Kernighan and Plauger’s “The Elements of Programming Style” (gotta buy and read this)

Eli Bendersky: “The server-side Javascript meme”

PragPub–March 2010: Jason Huggins: “JavaScript: It’s Not Just for Browsers Any More”

“Algorithms are Thoughts, Chainsaws are Tools”, reviewing a short film by Stephen Ramsey on “Live Coding”. Read it and watch it.

Alex Clemesha: “Tools of the Modern Python Hacker: Virtualenv, Fabric and Pip”

Deseret Tech: “NoSQL v. SQL is the worst holy war ever.”

Dennis Forbes: “Getting Real about NoSQL and the SQL-Isn’t-Scalable Lie”

Jesse Legg: “Emacs for Python Programmers: Basics”

the official hudson weblog: “Hudson at PyCon”

The website of Lei Chen: “Setup Perfect Python Environment In Emacs”

Extra Cheese: “Python vs. Ruby: A Battle to The Death”

Martin Fowler: “ConversationalStories”

Code Monkeyism: “What Developers Need to Know About Agile”

Coding Horror: “Cultivate Teams, Not Ideas”

Geoff Sowrey: “What makes a Senior Developer?”

Related:

“The Modelers’ Hippocratic Oath”

Practical Common Lisp

impromptu