I’ve just launched a new side project in the form of a JavaScript guitar pedalboard. It’s a handy crossover of my coding and guitaring hobbies. Try the pedalboard out for yourself!
The original intention for the project was to build a delay pedal, but after a Wednesday evening of hackery, I had …
Tag: Coding
Could I learn programming?
Sure, I say. Almost anyone can.
So long as you’re okay with unceasing, Sisyphean frustration.
Clive, it feels like the ‘magic‘ of coding may well be patience and persistence?
PyScript is a Pythonic alternative to Scratch, JSFiddle, and other “easy to use” programming frameworks, with the goal of making the web a friendly, hackable place where anyone can author interesting and interactive applications.
Richard, can’t help but be reminded of what we discussed all those years ago
I really love the idea of a space/platform where people add their own pieces and it grows over time, not exactly sure what that is though.
The Vanilla JavaScript Repository
Modern PHP Cheat Sheet from the book Front Line PHP
john (johnjohnston.info)Kids in school can have this sort of fun too, perhaps helping in maths and in skills like problem solving, working together and practical skills. Scratch and micro:bits can be a a lot of fun in a primary classroom.
John, I enjoyed Vannini’s push back on coding. It reminded me in part how Seymour Papert put it, that coding is ‘hard fun’:
How do we make writing become hard fun? One way is to develop for kids “writable” activities that they love to do. The building of robotic devices acquires “writability” because it lends itself to stage-by-stage description. Its writability is further enhanced by the use of word processors and digital cameras. But beyond technology there is the attitude in the learning culture. An example of what I mean was brought up by a teacher who objected to the idea that children should be allowed to write about what they liked. “When they go to work they’ll have to do what they are told.” Therein lies a source of many kids’ failure in reading. Of course we should teach children the skill of self-control needed to carry out orders. But mixing up learning that skill with learning to write defeats both purposes.
The department has partnered with Channel 10 to deliver coding@home TV for primary and secondary students.
For some of us—isolates, happy in the dark—code is therapy, an escape and a path to hope in a troubled world.
Craig Mod talks about the meditative nature of coding and its abolity to provide some control in moments when the world seems to be spiraling. “An escape with forward momentum.”
Break the problem into pieces. Put them into a to-do app (I use and love Things). This is how a creative universe is made. Each day, I’d brush aside the general collapse of society that seemed to be happening outside of the frame of my life, and dive into search work, picking off a to-do. Covid was large; my to-do list was reasonable.
…
Therein lies part of the attraction: moving through that jumble — with all of its perverted poetics of grep and vi and git and apache and .ini — and doing so with a fingers-floating-across-the-keyboard balletic grace, is exhilarating. You feel like an alchemist. And you are. You type esoteric words — near gibberish — into a line-by-line text interface, and with a rush not unlike pulling Excalibur from the stone, you’ve just scaffolded a simple application that can instantly be accessed by a vast number of humans worldwide.
Although coding maybe therapy, I think the other challenge is finding an itch worth scratching.
The challenge to me is to go beyond the question of instruction and understanding of different languages. Beyond debates about fitting it within an already crowded curriculum. Instead the focus should be on creating the conditions in which students are able to take action and create new possibilities. Maybe this involves Minecraft, Ozobot or Spheros, maybe it doesn’t. Most importantly it involves going beyond worrying about training or competency, as Ian Chunn would have it, and instead embracing the world of making by leading the learning.
Mod also provides some background to the process behind writing the piece.
At least one HTML element a day for 30 days. Improve your semantic HTML game, one day at a time. #30DaysofHTML
Jen Kramer and Erika Lee breakdown HTML one element at a time.
I’ve told this story at conferences – but due to the general situation I thought I’d retell it here.
A few years ago I was doing policy research in a housing benefits office in London. They are singularly unlovely places. The walls are brightened up with posters offering helpful services for p…
For an early stage startup, building solutions like this can be a superpower.
This is why I think “no code operations”** is the next great job in tech. If I were thinking about how to break into a startup right now, I would start building with these tools immediately. Even better, I’d start my own business on the side with only these tools. How far can you get with Airtable, Zapier and a website? Go for it, and develop your go-to-market chops and business building prowess along the way.
I enjoyed this piece Ben. I feel have achieved so much just within Google Sheets, including collecting together information, organising responses and generating a timetable.
Jeremy Cherfas (jeremycherfas.net)What I would absolutely love, and might even be prepared to pay for, would be to have a live human being explain some basic ideas to me. There are tons and tons of online tutorials, as I know, but most of them start from a point that is already beyond me. I’ve spent all my spare time over the past three weeks trying to get there from here, and I am finally prepared to admit I cannot do it.
Google’s experiment using AI to create poems in the style of past poets. This reminds me of Ian Guest’s debate about poetry versus coding. I imagine some would worry that this might be considered as ‘cheating’, however what interests me is the opportunity to easily create and then deconstruct the structures associated with the text.
Another example of AI generated text is Mark Riedl’s Generating Parody Lyrics.
via Clive Thompson
John Philpin unpacks the question, should everyone learn to code? His response is nuanced. He suggests that learn to code if you have a love and interest, but do not feel that it is an occupation that is guaranteed to make a lot of money. Instead, choose something that you are passionate about, understanding that appreciating how technology works is an important part of any business.
You wouldn’t think about running a business if you didn’t have the fundamental understanding of law and accounting, why would you assume that it is ok not to understand technology.
For me this comes back to Douglas Rushkoff’s message: program or be programmed.
Rushkoff’s discussion is broken down into ten modern day commandments:
- Time and the push to be ever present.
- Place and the disconnection with the local.
- Choice and the pressure to forever choose.
- Complexity and the ignorance of nuance.
- Scale and the demand of the global spread.
- Identity and the digital self.
- Social and contact as king.
- Facts and the demand to tell the truth.
- Openness and the importance of sharing.
- Purpose and the power of programming.
This reminds me of something I wrote a few years ago:
The challenge to me is to go beyond the question of instruction and understanding of different languages. Beyond debates about fitting it within an already crowded curriculum. Instead the focus should be on creating the conditions in which students are able to take action and create new possibilities. Maybe this involves Minecraft, Ozobot or Spheros, maybe it doesn’t. Most importantly it involves going beyond worrying about training or competency, as Ian Chunn would have it, and instead embracing the world of making by leading the learning.
Anyone can learn to code on iPad or Mac with these 10 activities designed for beginners ages 10 and up.
The challenge was, Spreadsheet Kid, from a BCcampus Kaltura URL, can I devise something that will take that and extract that mp4 URL?
I explain below, but for those who want to cut to the chase, you can make a copy of my spreadsheet and explore/play/criticize.
I really need to dig into the world of xpath.
Click on the code or the sidebar to see which is what. Use the Tab key to browse via keyboard.
2-in-1 Windows PC is fun and functional—but embarrassingly hefty.