Jon C. jonchretien

I'm having trouble understanding the benefit of require.js. Can you help me out? I imagine other developers have a similar interest.

From Require.js - Why AMD:

The AMD format comes from wanting a module format that was better than today's "write a bunch of script tags with implicit dependencies that you have to manually order"

I don't quite understand why this methodology is so bad. The difficult part is that you have to manually order dependencies. But the benefit is that you don't have an additional layer of abstraction.

OS X Screencast to animated GIF

This gist shows how to create a GIF screencast using only free OS X tools: QuickTime, ffmpeg, and gifsicle.

Instructions

To capture the video (filesize: 19MB), using the free "QuickTime Player" application:

by Dale Sande

CSS has had a long and sordid past. A developer never sets out with the goal of making a complete and total mess of things. Their intention is not to build something that is practically illegible, impractical to maintain and is limited in scale. But somehow, this is where many inevitably end up. Luckily, all is not lost. With some simple strategies, organizational methods and out-of-the box tools, we can really help get that junk-drawer inline.

For many of us getting started with Sass, at one time or another have created a junk-drawer of files. For most, this was a rookie mistake, but for others, this is a continuing issue with our architecture and file management techniques. Sass doesn't come with any real rules for file management so developers are pretty much left to their own devices.

Large CSS files and increased complexity

CSS started out with very simple intentions, but as [tableless web design][1.1] began to really take a foothold, o

Collections

each(array)

Underscore example:

_.each([1, 2, 3], function(num) { alert(num); });

This article has been given a more permanent home on my blog. Also, since it was first written, the development of the Promises/A+ specification has made the original emphasis on Promises/A seem somewhat outdated.

You're Missing the Point of Promises

Promises are a software abstraction that makes working with asynchronous operations much more pleasant. In the most basic definition, your code will move from continuation-passing style:

getTweetsFor("domenic", function (err, results) {
 // the rest of your code goes here.

NYC Lunch and Learn

September 21, 2012

Neville Li & David Xia

To me vi is zen. To use vi is to practice zen. Every command is a koan. Profound to the user, unintelligible to the uninitiated. You discover truth every time you use it. — Satish Reddy

Vim Basics

NYC Lunch and Learn

September 7, 2012

Neville Li & David Xia

Use Command Line Shortcuts

Basic

Tabletop.js is a fantastic, open-source JavaScript library that lets developers easily integrate data from Google Spreadsheets into their online projects. I've used it, even contributed a minor feature, and love it for prototyping. Non-programmers love being able to update a project via Google Spreadsheets' hyper-intuitive interface.

That said, I'm extraordinarily wary of using Tabletop in production. Instead, at the Wall Street Journal, we use a bit of middleware to "prune" our Google Spreadsheets-based data and then cache it on our own servers. A few brief reasons:

Short-Term Reliability. With Tabletop, your project depends on Google not to rate-limit access to your spreadsheet. Google rate-limits access to their Spreadsheet API, though the thresholds aren't clear. If you're building an app you care about, you don't want to be i

	BIN = ./node_modules/.bin
	SRC = $(wildcard src/*.coffee)
	LIB = $(SRC:src/%.coffee=lib/%.js)

	build: $(LIB)

	lib/%.js: src/%.coffee
	@mkdir -p $(@D)
	@$(BIN)/coffee -bcp $< > $@

	Preferences > Key Bindings - User

	Add:

	[
	{ "keys": ["command+shift+r"], "command": "reindent" , "args": { "single_line": false } }
	]

	The argument allows the command to also work on the entire file in addition to a selection.