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Avoid Git First Drafts – John Kurkowski

http://johnkurkowski.com/posts/avoid-git-first-drafts

Avoid Git First Drafts. Git pull - rebase. I’ve decided for myself there are times for both, that is, there are times for merge commits and not. There’s no hard rule, but I use the former when I want to demarcate a feature occurring over several commits. I use the latter if a series of commits can be logically squashed to 1-2 commits before pushing; rebasing here means a tighter, linear history that is easier to follow. In both cases still I clean up and squash commits before pushing. No creator gets the...

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Ongoing Learning in Breadth & Depth – John Kurkowski

http://johnkurkowski.com/posts/ongoing-learning-in-breadth-&-depth

Ongoing Learning in Breadth and Depth. To those overwhelmed by all the programming languages and tools you can learn, changing daily, I’d like to offer some peace of mind. In my previous article. I questioned the rampant, disconnected proliferation of code. I don’t know why it is stuck the way it is. I dream of a revolution that cleans it up, but I don’t know how. Nevertheless, I have some tips on what you can do now in your ongoing learning of programming tools. First, a frustrating, inspiring anecdote.

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Credo – John Kurkowski

http://johnkurkowski.com/posts/credo

Here’s a collection of the high-level concepts I’ve adopted over the years. I think they add human value to customers and teammates alike and GTD value. All while keeping me happy with my career in the otherwise often bitter IT ecosystem. First make it possible. Then make it beautiful. Then make it fast. Suffering-oriented programming. Functionality is an asset, code is a liability. Additional code is the enemy. Do whatever I can to be lazy and code less. Defining but not bulletproof themes. In programmi...

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Accumulating More Than One Failure In A ValidationNEL – John Kurkowski

http://johnkurkowski.com/posts/accumulating-multiple-failures-in-a-ValidationNEL

Accumulating More Than One Failure In A ValidationNEL. This is an adaptation of an internal blog post I made for Gravity. Engineers. To preface, Gravity likes to use 2 very predictable patterns throughout its Scala codebase, which is very important for a TIMTOWTDI language like Scala. It expresses so much of Gravity’s business logic, so it is valuable to see its familiar syntax over and over. It captures success and failure states better than traditional imperative means. Since then, Scalaz 7. However in...

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Paint By Types – John Kurkowski

http://johnkurkowski.com/posts/paint-by-types

In the debate between static vs. dynamic types, I always knew static types could catch programmer errors here and there. If a programming language does the type system right though, types also self-document better and can even guide a program’s whole architecture. UPenn’s CIS 194 - Introduction to Haskell. Made this click for me. CIS 194’s Week 5 lecture. Offered a particular, brief exercise demonstrating the potential. This type signature reads: a function that takes 2. S and returns an. In concert, thi...

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Don't Learn to Code, Learn to Program - But Come Back in 10 Years – John Kurkowski

http://johnkurkowski.com/posts/dont-learn-to-code-learn-to-program-but-come-back-in-10-years

Don't Learn to Code, Learn to Program - But Come Back in 10 Years. I want to discuss why programming and coding are not the same, and why I can no longer support the Learn to Code movement. I can no longer tell my friends to learn coding. Although I’m passionate about it, it’s too arcane and insular for mainstream practice. Come back when programming gets its act together. By offloading humanly-infeasible work onto a machine. It is the promise of an amplified knowledge worker. To ameliorate this, there a...

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Code As Craft As Career? – John Kurkowski

http://johnkurkowski.com/posts/code-as-craft-as-career

Code As Craft As Career? I see 2 paths of career programmers around me: 1) transition to leadership, 2) keep coding, master its craft. Respect to people who follow either, if that’s what you like. I lean toward the 2nd path because I like creating. Really though, I want a 3rd path, something fundamentally more productive than coding. Am I the only one looking for something more? I would trade everything that I ever learned about C to know how to play the piano, even a tiny bit. Meanwhile code craftsmansh...

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1st Class UX for Web Programmers – John Kurkowski

http://johnkurkowski.com/posts/1st-class-ux-for-web-programmers

1st Class UX for Web Programmers. Programmers often talk about their tools making functions 1st class, or objects 1st class. What about making UX 1st class? Is a conference about the JavaScript thick-client framework, Ember.js. In 2015, of the conference’s 16 talks, there were 5 talks centered around UX and design. Designing for Ember Apps. Ambitious UX for Ambitious Apps. Interaction Design with Ember 2.0 and Polymer. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Design Is How It Works. But I’m not a designer!