Link archive: January 29th, 2017

Callback Hell

At first when I was reading this JavaScript coding guide, I thought “Isn’t this exactly what promises address?” but that is then addressed further down:

Before looking at more advanced solutions, remember that callbacks are a fundamental part of JavaScript (since they are just functions) and you should learn how to read and write them before moving on to more advanced language features, since they all depend on an understanding of callbacks.

Fair enough. In any case, what you’ll find here is mainly good advice for writing modular code.

Calling Bullshit

A proposed syllabus for critical thinking: Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data.

Our aim in this course is to teach you how to think critically about the data and models that constitute evidence in the social and natural sciences.

Practical tools and case studies are also provided.

We built a PWA from scratch - This is what we learned

A nice straightforward account of building and testing a progressive web a… I mean, website.

I think every website from now on should use some of the Progressive Web App features. It’s even confusing to call it “Apps” as it applies to all websites and apps.

Life plus Linux: Look before you paste from a website to terminal

The (literally) hidden dangers of copying code snippets from the web and pasting them into the command line.

This cautionary tale backs up a small tip I heard for getting to understand how found code works: deliberately type it out instead of copying and pasting.

DirtyMarkup · Tidy up your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code

A handy prettifier for front-end code. Useful if you’re trying to find something inside code markup, CSS, or JavaScript that’s been minified.

Detecting text in an image on the web in real-time - Tales of a Developer Advocate by Paul Kinlan

The text detection API is still in its experimental stage, but it opens up a lot of really interesting possibilities for the web: assistive technology to read out text, archiving tools for digitising text …it’s all part of the nascent shape detection API.