Tags: fun

plainJS - The Vanilla JavaScript Repository

Some more useful snippets of JavaScript. The functions and helpers are particularly handy if you’re weaning yourself off jQuery.

Essential Vanilla JavaScript Functions

The title is overkill, but these functions ported from PHP to JavaScript could be useful (especially for dealing with arrays).

mbeaudru/modern-js-cheatsheet: Cheatsheet for the JavaScript knowledge you will frequently encounter in modern projects.

A handy guide to navigating all the new-fangled JavaScript.

Even Racists Got the Blues – The Geeky Gaeilgeoir

The perils of self-translation.

I’m often baffled by the number of people who seem to think that you can translate from one language to another simply by pulling the words of one language from a dictionary and plugging them into the syntax of the other. It just doesn’t work that way, friends.

Read to the end for a wonderfully delicious twist in the tale.

Amadán.

New A List Apart wants you! · An A List Apart Article

We’re getting rid of advertisers and digging back to our roots: community-based, community-built, and determinedly non-commercial.

I approve!

A List Apart has given me so, so much over the years that becoming a supporter is quite literally the least I can do.

And so can you!

Three Readings and a Festival | Unbound

More on that event with Brian Aldiss I was reminiscing about: that was the first time that Kate unveiled part of her Purple People book:

Jeremy insisted this would be an excellent opportunity for me to read an excerpt from Purple People, and so invited me onto the stage with those illustrious, wordy wizards to share an early indigo excerpt. I was quite literally shaking that night (even more than a talking tree, ho ho), but all was jolly. I read my piece without falling off the stage, and afterwards, folk made some ace and encouraging comments.

Now the book is being crowdfunded for publication and you can take part. It’s currently 59% funded …come on, people, let’s make this happen!

I’m a Google Manufacturing Robot and I Believe Humans Are Biologically Unfit to Have Jobs in Tech - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Normally a McSweeney’s piece elicits a wry chuckle, but this one had me in stitches.

Humans are also far more likely to “literally cannot right now.” I have never met an automaton that literally could not, though I have met some that theoretically would not and hypothetically might want to stop.

Malaphors | Unintentional blended idioms and phrases – It’s the cream of the cake!

Some of these really tickle my fancy bone.

That’s the icing on the iceberg

You let the horse out of the cart

What planet are you living under?

That opens a whole other kettle of fish

The cat’s out of the barn

Patience comes to those who wait

That’s right up my cup of tea

Despicable Design — When “Going Evil” is the Perfect Technique

I really like this “evil” design exercise that Jared has documented on Ev’s blog.

I broke them up into small groups of three, spreading each role across separate groups. I then asked each person to grab a sheet of paper and make their own list of ways they imagined the product’s user experience could be made worse.

Purple People by Kate Bulpitt: Unbound

Kate’s book—a “jolly dystopia”—will get published if enough of us pledge to back it. So let’s get pledging!

There’s a curiously coloured scheme afoot in Blighty. In an effort to tackle dispiriting, spiralling levels of crime and anti-social behaviour, the government has a new solution: to dye offenders purple.

IndieWeb is on Open Collective

You can help support the indie web community with their fairly modest costs: about $200 each month for hosting, domain names, and the like. Also:

We want IndieWeb events to be as accessible as possible, regardless of personal barriers. Because of this, we have offered a travel scholarship fund in the past to underrepresented groups thanks to our generous sponsors. Your support will allow us to continue to offer and expand this scholarship fund, helping make sure that IndieWebCamps represent everyone.

What football will look like in the future

I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely surprised, delighted, and intrigued by an online story like this.

Code clarity - Anthony Ricaud

Breaking down programming tasks into smaller chunks …and naming things.

I’ll take a piece of paper and write the function names I’m going to implement. Or I’ll do it directly in my code editor, with real functions or comments.

It allows you to focus on one problem at a time. When you’re writing those function names, you are thinking about what the code should be doing. When you’re implementing the functions, you are thinking about how the code should do it.

Worst volume sliders possible – Designer News

Truly awful interfaces …made real.

It’s not working! Should I blame caching?

Finally, the answer to one of the two hard questions in computer science.

Passive-Aggressive Art Gallery — Justin Cousson

I should do this in the Clearleft kitchen.

Fluid Paint

The texture here is shockingly realistic.

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.

New Telegraph Who Dis? T-shirt – Bird Fur

This is my kind of T-shirt.

On Style Maintenance | CSS-Tricks

This is a very thoughtful analysis of different approaches to writing maintainable CSS, which—let’s face it—is the hard bit.

I often joke that I don’t want to hire a code ninja. Ninjas come in the middle of the night and leave a bloody mess.

I want a code janitor. Someone who walks the hallways of code, cleaning up pieces, dusting up neglected parts, shinning up others, tossing unnecessary bits. I prefer this gentler, more accurate analogy. This is the person you want on your team. This is a person you want in your code reviews.

Also, can I just say how refreshing it is to read an article that doesn’t treat the cascade like a disease to be wiped out? This article even goes so far as to suggest that the cascade might actually be a feature—shock! horror!

The cascade can help, if you understand and organize it. This is the same as any sophisticated software design. You can look at what you’re building and make responsible decisions on your build and design. You decide what can be at a top-level and needs to be inherited by other, smaller, pieces.

There’s a lot of really good stuff in here to mull over.

My hope for this article is to encourage developers to think ahead. We’re all in this together, and the best we can do is learn from one another.