3 languages

I need to clarify my interests. I keep getting calls from recruiters who want to hire me to do Perl or database management. So, I am trying out an experiment in self-analysis by describing my enthusiasms as they relate to specific programming languages. I am currently interested in the web software applications of Ruby, JavaScript, […]

Mustache support for Rails 3: generator

At RailsConf, Jeremy McAnally noted that no one had built a new-style Rails generator for the mustache template system. So I’m giving it a try. You can see my progress so far on github. I’ve forked the rails3-generator project started by José Valim and carried on by several contributors, and I’ve added just a little […]

My summer of hustle

The mojitos have been drunk, the neglected lawn work is mostly completed — Memorial Day is over, and now our de facto summer in the United States begins. I’m writing this post more for myself than for you, generous reader. I hope you forgive my brief use of the weblog’s confessional mode. I need to […]

JSConf US 2010: Harder Better Faster Stronger

(Or, my impressions of JSConf US 2010) I wrote a very ambitious (and partially successful) post last year attempting to recap the first JSConf. I can’t even pretend to repeat that feat this year: track B was so good that I spent half my time in it, and I couldn’t get to everything I wanted […]

The iPad ain’t ending anything

The haters are wrong, part one I just finished an excellent blog post by my friend Blake Patterson. It’s about the iPad. Blake realized in the wee hours of Sunday morning that the iPad was actually Alan Kay’s Dynabook, emerging after 40 years in Steve Jobs’ turtleneck-clad arms. Seriously, it’s a great post. Go read […]

Futures, promises, asynchonicity, and concurrency

It’s a concurrent world, and, increasingly, it’s an asynchronous world too. Many things are going on at the same time, and it’s impossible to determine exactly when each is starting or ending. In other words, everything is fast and out of control. As a software developer, both concurrency and asynchronicity are more important concepts than […]

Excerpt from
“Notes on Postmodern Programming”

I’ve wanted to cite this passage a few times now, but I can only find the essay in PDF form. So I’m just going to put the passage here, so I can point back to it in the future. Geeks, if people regularly joke that they couldn’t understand what you do for a living, consider […]

Twitter, geocoding, and JavaScript in Baltimore

I drove up to Baltimore’s Beehive coworking space last night to meet the folks in the Baltimore/DC Javascript Users group. We poked around the Twitter API and looked at both what you could get from the API via JSONP and what you could do with it.