I'm about a week into learning iOS and Swift 2.0 and I am pleased and impressed. For reference, I'm using this course (currently $59 on StackSocial). This week, I went through the basic Swift language sections and lessons about creating a basic … [Read more]
Finding Things Fast in Emacs
I use emacs, and it is super powerful, but out of the box, it has some rough edges. Finding files in stock emacs isn't great. I used to use a plugin called find-things-fast (https://github.com/eglaysher/find-things-fast), but a previous employer … [Read more]
Starting to Learn iOS, Swift
I have a project idea that has been bugging me for years, and I finally feel like it's time to work on it. It's an app, with a server-side back end. In the past I had been focused on startups and making a business, but I realized that at this point … [Read more]
Faking an ActiveRecord Attribute
Recently, I had a problem in Rails that took some extra research to solve. In the process, I read numerous StackOverflow posts, mailing list posts dating back to 2008, and tried, like, a million things before coming to a fairly clean solution. The … [Read more]
#sfcljs August Meetup – Om vs Reagent vs Quiescent, Converting to Om
[UPDATE: Added links to slides for some of the talks] ClojureScript is my new toy, so I was glad to see the San Francisco ClojureScript Meetup plan a new event, and all of the talks were about Om, which made it even better. It was a great event at … [Read more]
Notes on Core.Async Webinar
Recently, David Nolen of Cognitect held a webinar about "Designing Front End Applications Using core.async". I'm a huge fan of David's teaching style (see his tutorials on Enlive, LightTable+ClojureScript, Om Basic and Om Intermediate) so I cleared … [Read more]
Running Windows Programs on OSX Using VMWare Fusion
I recently needed to run a Windows application (TurboTax Business) on my Macbook. I know about Parallels, dual boots, etc but those either cost money or seemed like too much work. Based on my experience with the incredible pain of getting a modern … [Read more]
Take a Detour, Love Your City
Last week, Andrew Mason, founder and former CEO of Groupon, launched a new company. The company, Detour, makes “immersive, location-aware audio walks”. Just like Uber turns your GPS-enabled smart-phone to your personal driver, Detour turns your phone … [Read more]
Learning ClojureScript and Om
I missed a few weeks (months?) of writing about my learning sprints, because I've been way out of the routine that let me do independent work. At the end of April, I went to RailsConf in Chicago and had tons to process from everything I learned … [Read more]
Fast Rails Tests Through Behavior Verification
[This was originally posted on Manilla's tech blog, which is no longer up. RIP Manilla] Most Rails developers have a love/hate relationship with their tests. We love testing, we love writing tests, we love the confidence that a robust test suite … [Read more]