nichoth nichoth

TypeScript and currying

In functional programming you often want to apply a function partly. A simple example is a function add. It would be nice if we could use add like:

var res2 = add(1, 3); // => 4

var add10To = add(10);
var res = add10To(5); // => 15

ZeroMQ vs Redis

This document is research for the selection of a communication platform for robot-net.

Goal

The purpose of this component is to enable rapid, reliable, and elegant communication between the various nodes of the network, including controllers, sensors, and actuators (robot drivers). It will act as the core of robot-net to create a standardized infrastructure for robot control.

Requirements:

A Guide to Functional Programming Lingo for JavaScripters

Functional programming gets a bad wrap about being too hard for mere mortals to comprehend. This is nonsense. The concepts are actually quite simple to grasp.

The jargon is the hardest part. A lot of that vocabulary comes from a specialized field of mathematical study called category theory (with a liberal sprinkling of type theory and abstract algebra). This sounds a lot scarier than it is. You can do this!

All examples using ES6 syntax. wrap (foo) => bar means:

function wrap (foo) {

Auto-deploying built products to gh-pages with GitHub Actions

This is a set up for projects which want to check in only their source files, but have their gh-pages branch automatically updated with some compiled output every time they push.

A file below this one contains the steps for doing this with Travis CI. However, these days I recommend GitHub Actions, for the following reasons:

It is much easier and requires less steps, because you are already authenticated with GitHub, so you don't need to share secret keys across services like you do when coordinate Travis CI and GitHub.
It is free, with no quotas.
Anecdotally, builds are much faster with GitHub Actions than with Travis CI, especially in terms of time spent waiting for a builder.

Outcome-Oriented Programming

Mike McNeil, Aug 2014

Humans are not very good at planning. We have no problem running scenarios, thinking through possibilities, and pondering "what if?" questions. I might plan to not eat my cousin's birthday cake before she gets home, for instance. If I'm very serious, I might write down my commitment; or if I'm unsure about the pros and cons, use some organizational tool like a T-chart.

But when it comes to making a decision in the moment, all bets are off. The cake is a goner.

Predictive Analysis vs. Process Design

Below, I've included a figure containing a decision tree diagram.

npm run scripts to handle the following:

LESS for CSS pre-processor
browserify for npm dependencies
watchify for fast incremental bundling
LiveReload browser refresh on bundle change
LiveReload CSS injection on *.less change
budo to serve port 9966 and bring together some of the above tasks
babelify for ES6 -> ES5
errorify to show syntax errors in the browser during development

The Apparatus of CongressEdits

Sometimes you write a piece of software and it gets used for purposes you didn't quite imagine at the time. Sometimes you write a piece of software and it unexpectedly rearranges your life. I'd like to tell you a quick story about a Twitter bot named @CongressEdits. It tweets when someone edits Wikipedia anonymously from the United States Congress. In this post I'll give you some background on how the bot came to be, what it has been used for so far, and how it works. @CongressEdits taught me how the world of archives intersects with the world of politics and journalism. To explain how that happened I first need to give a bit of background.

Wikipedia

According to [Alexa][alexa] wikipedia.org is the 6th most popular destination on the Web. You are probably used to seeing Wikipedia articles near the top of your Google search results. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, so long as you can stomach [wikitext][wikitext] and revert wars. Wikipedia is also a platfor

from streams session

end-of-stream - specify a callback to be called when a stream ends (which is surpsingly hard to get right)
duplexify - compose a Duplex stream from a Readable and a Writable stream
pump - pipe streams together and close all of them if one of them closes
pumpify - combine an array of streams into a single duplex stream using pump and duplexify
through2 - tools for making Transform streams
from2 - tools for making Readable streams

from "participatory modules" session

	{
	"name": "my-app",
	"version": "1.0.0",
	"description": "My test app",
	"main": "src/js/index.js",
	"scripts": {
	"jshint:dist": "jshint src/js/*.js",
	"jshint": "npm run jshint:dist",
	"jscs": "jscs src/*.js",
	"browserify": "browserify -s Validating -o ./dist/js/build.js ./lib/index.js",

	# Hello, and welcome to makefile basics.
	#
	# You will learn why `make` is so great, and why, despite its "weird" syntax,
	# it is actually a highly expressive, efficient, and powerful way to build
	# programs.
	#
	# Once you're done here, go to
	# http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html
	# to learn SOOOO much more.