As a (former?) developer, this is so frustrating. People on the beta versions of the OS should not be allowed to leave reviews.
Category: Programming
There has to be a better way to get reviews for apps than those annoying pop-ups.
Alex Knight explains how Feedly has ignored the requests of content publishers by refusing to identify the number of subscribers for a given feed:
> Feedly is an extremely popular news reader service. They claim to have 12 million users, so they are by far the biggest concern to us at the moment. Since they aren’t reporting their user agent, this makes it extremely difficult for content producers to tell if anyone is checking out what they do. We have made numerous attempts to contact Feedly via email and on Twitter (see our tweets here and here), however, they have yet to provide any promising information about if and when they will start providing this data. In September Feedly released an API, which we dutifully did all of the integration on day one with their provided sandbox access. We are now into November, and they still refuse to give us access to their production API. Meanwhile we don’t have access to anything and they make money out of your content.
That is just unacceptable for a company in the RSS space. Shame on Feedly.
Categories
Debugging
> Debugging is like being the detective in a crime movie where you are also the murderer.
I love it.
> If you see a job listing that doesn’t specify a salary range, assume it’s so low that they’re embarrassed to include it, they don’t respect you enough to tell you, or their heads are so far up their asses that they think you should just be dying to work there at any salary, none of which bode well for employment there.
I agree 100%.[^fn1]
[^fn1]: My agreement applies to *all* job postings, but it is especially true with programming positions.
Brent has recently updated his coding style to be the *right* way to use braces when coding.[^fn1]
[^fn1]: Of course, I am kidding that it is the only right. Though, his new style is my preferred way, as well.
Categories
Dear Recruiter
I have not had a programming job in over 5 years, but I still get the same recruiter garbage. I have tried to be nice with my Textexpander-snippet responses, but maybe I should replace them with this letter.
It is posts like this that emphasize one of the keys of Google Reader: it’s ability to handle and normalize tons of different feeds. In addition to syncing and subscription management, it is going to be key for new RSS solutions to get that right.
Categories
Everyone Should Learn to Program
Derek Sivers:
> The most common thing I hear from aspiring entrepreneurs is, “I have this idea for an app or site. But I’m not technical, so I need to find someone who can make it for me.”
> I point them to my advice about how to hire a programmer, but as most of the good ones are already booked solid, it’s a pretty helpless position to be in.
> …
> Yes, learn some programming basics. Just some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript should be enough to start.
> …
> You don’t need to become an expert, just know the basics, so you’re not helpless. You can do all of this in less hours than it takes to watch “The Wire”, and it’s much more rewarding.
I completely agree with Mr. Sivers’ advice.
Categories
Why Objective-C is Hard to Learn
This helped me understand why I was having some trouble wrapping my head around some of the syntax of Objective-C. This is worth a read since, unfortunately, it looks like Apple is not moving away from Objective-C any time soon[^f1731].
[^f1731]: Despite [John Siracusa’s pleas](http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/14).
A really, really good piece from the guys over at *Polygon.* It shows how much actually goes into making those like $2-3 “downloadable content” add-ons that are available for music games.
Categories
Pick Your Programming Language
A handy little chart to help you pick what programming language you want to learn.
(h/t [Gabe at MacDrifter](http://www.macdrifter.com/2012/11/chart-for-learning-programming-languages-link.html))
Categories
Preprocessing CSS
Converting my CSS to SASS is one of the upcoming enhancements I plan on making to my site.
Categories
Java to Objective-C Conveter
I might not develop an iOS application using this, but it could be helpful for experienced Java programmers using Objective-C for the first time[^f5048].
[^f5048]: I think it would be similar to learning HTML by doing something in the Dreamweaver GUI and then seeing what HTML the program writes in the “source view.”
Categories
Diet Coda 1.1 Update
As [explained on MacStories ](http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/macstories/ad-supported/~3/x-4CdE__6RM/), [Diet Coda](http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=r*bqlTuiXSo&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fapp%252Fdiet-coda%252Fid500906297%253Fmt%253D8%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30)[^f0733] now offers the ability to upload images from your camera roll to your server via FTP. I am hoping this is finally *the* solution for handling posts with images going forward[^f1006].
[^f1006]: I have really struggled to find something that works well. I had one alternative, however, I could only get it to work via plain FTP. I deciding that trying to increase the security on my server was more important than sticking with that workflow.
[^f0733]: Affiliate Link (as is the post link).
Categories
Siracusa on Being a Programmer
> “When you’re a programmer…you have the ability to do whatever you want really, really quickly in the crappiest possible way.”
\- John Siracusa
(via [Merlin Mann](http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/31421512915))
Categories
Learning to Scale WordPress
If you run a WordPress blog that gets anything more than “decent” traffic, you are going to want to add this site to your RSS reader.
(via [Jonathan Christoper](http://mondaybynoon.com/20120904/scaling-wordpress/))
This was always a pet peeve of mine back in my web development days[^hc].
(via [Jonathan Christopher](http://mondaybynoon.com/20120904/why-relative-urls-should-be-forbidden-for-web-developers/))
[^hc]: Using absolute URLs is different from hardcoding the url or domain in the URL. Please do not hardcode domains.
Categories
A New Way to Learn Computer Science
> I’m incredibly excited to take this opportunity to announce a new project that I’ve been leading here at Khan Academy: [Khan Academy Computer Science](http://www.khanacademy.org/cs).
> We’re releasing a completely new platform that targets people with no programming knowledge and gives them an engaging and fun environment to learn in.
> Over everything else we wanted to emphasize creativity and exploration and make it approachable for people of all ages, including young kids.
This is great. The continuing importance of computers in all aspects of our lives means that we will need more quality programmers to write the systems that run them. I hope kids everywhere take advantage of this.
Categories
JavaScript for Cats
Quality introductory tutorial to JavaScript. Very cool.
(via [Jonathan Christopher](http://mondaybynoon.com/feeder/?FeederAction=clicked&feed=Posts+%28RSS2%29&seed=http%3A%2F%2Fmondaybynoon.com%2F20120819%2Fjavascript-for-cats%2F&seed_title=JavaScript+for+Cats))