Last week, my little sister asked me to show her how to program - she wanted to write
her own random fairy tale generators. She learned quickly, and had the skills she wanted in about an hour.
I picked JavaScript as a good beginner language (it just beat Ruby - since with Javascript she could easily put her code on a web page and show others her work). We both opened up a shared document in SubEthaEdit, and activated web preview. As either of us typed, the final result of the JavaScipt program showed in the preview. It was a great way to teach, and to learn.
We ran though all kinds of things about variables, objects, and arrays. We used fairy tale variable names:
She has decide that camelCasing variable names is ugly, so she writes her variables LikeThis.
I did not show her functions, or control structures yet. When she wants to do something she can't do with her current knowledge, that will be the time to learn new things.
Sample application code for a
Restaurant Locator done in
Flex. (Flex has quite a lot of potential for use building web based enterprise application)
Darn. OS X now has it's first Microsoft sized, blatant security hole. Best instructions keeping yourself safe are at
Daring Fireball.
Now I've got to go "patch" my Mac friend's computers.
The ever cool
SubEthaEdit now supports regexs for find/replace. This nice - I take advantage of regex powers in BBEdit.
I've learned a lot of technical usability basics from Jacob Nielsen. His latest article goes way beyond technical debates into
website strategies for selling to large businesses. He is amazingly correct about helping people inside an organization sell your product.
I've been programming since seven this morning - fourteen hours (with mealtimes, driving to and from work, and playing a round or two of IT game). That's what I get when I work fixed hours and one place, and then besides that have two different freelance clients who really need something right now. It's been like this for the past week or so. I'm finding it hard at the end of the to pull back from a world of abstractions and elegance and relate to the real world, or to people - I just want to be a hermit.
Today I have thoroughly immersed myself by turns into: