Here’s something useful for any young person in your life. (Or something useful for yourself, if you’ve ever said “Explain it to me like I’m 10.”)
I’ve just released A Tiny Introduction to JavaScript, a free PDF ebook that teaches kids how to code.
Here’s what makes this book unique:
- …
THE TECH GRAVEYARD
We all think we know why technology fails. But what if we’re learning the wrong lesson?
It’s a bit of a tradition over here at Young Coder to spend the month of Halloween thinking about the developer technologies we’ve lost. …
The performance increase is dramatic. But for many applications, the improvement isn’t in the right place.
The most anticipated new Blazor feature — overwhelmingly — is ahead-of-time compilation. Everyone wants it, and plenty of developers are hoping it will help them clear the last remaining hurdle to releasing a real-world Blazor WebAssembly project.
The reality is a little more complicated.
The Blazor compilation model
3 patterns for object creation
If your background is in a traditional object-oriented programming language, you might be thrown by the wild and sometimes lawless world of JavaScript. There are objects here — but they’re really prototypes, and all the syntax about classes and inheritance was bolted on in relatively recent versions. Some OO concepts…
The technology behind Blazor is impressive. But is that enough?
When i first met Blazor, I was amazed by the audacity of the idea. Rather than trying to plug something else into the overloaded JavaScript ecosystem, Microsoft was going to start from the ground up. Again. (Those of you who remember their doomed Silverlight adventure don’t need another reminder.)
It’s…
As the final days of summer draw close, it’s time for our annual summer list of the most popular articles of the season. As always, there were some surprise sleeper hits, and a couple I knew would touch a nerve.
Here they are, in no particular order:
Short and sweet techniques to keep in your back pocket
This week O’Reilly released the third edition of the JavaScript Cookbook, now thoroughly refreshed with modern features and practices. I know this because I wrote some of that content, along with my stellar co-author Adam Scott.
To commemorate this release, I decided to gather up a few of my favorite…
The delicate balance between project requirements and professional development
Would you choose a tech stack to pad your résumé? Do you know someone who overbuilds in the name of professional development?
I ask because I’ve been spending a lot of time recently with Kubernetes, the container orchestrator and cool kid of the DevOps world. I’m a longtime fan of…
A humorous look at the AI pair programmer
I’ve been talking a lot about GitHub Copilot recently. The AI coding assistant is an uncanny mashup of brilliant and boneheaded — a seemingly helpful coding savant that actually needs a lot of babysitting.
What interests me isn’t whether Copilot is the killer AI app for today’s programmers. (Never mind…
Leaked secrets, broken licenses, and the perils of AI-assisted coding
Even for the tech world, the hype around GitHub Copilot is extreme. Its early invitation-only previews have stirred up a mix of excitement, paranoia, and panic. On the plus side, Copilot makes surprisingly astute how-did-you-read-my-mind predictions. Even its critics are often amazed when it suggests an eerily accurate block of…
Matthew MacDonald
Teacher, coder, long-ago Microsoft MVP. Author of heavy books. Join Young Coder for a creative take on science and technology. Queries: matthew@prosetech.com
