Reading with intention can change your life — Quartz. A random sampling of the world’s most successful people will show one common trait: a love of reading. Reading is the easiest way to continue the learning process, increase empathy, boost creativity, and even just unwind from a long day. But books can also change the way we think and live. Warren Buffet, who says he spends 80% of his time reading and writing, attributes a huge amount of his success to a single book: The Intelligent Investor by his mentor Benjamin Graham. For Malcolm Gladwell, it was Richard Nisbett’s The Person and the Situation that inspired his string of New York Times bestselling books. These are what economist Tyler Cowen calls “Quake Books”—pieces of writing that are so powerful they shake up your entire worldview.
As author and avid reader Ryan Holiday explains: “Whatever problem you’re struggling with is probably addressed in some book somewhere written by someone a lot smarter than you.” So there’s the why of reading, but what about the how? Feel smarter already? Checklist For Learning A New Programming Language. Checklist For Learning A New Programming Language A couple weeks ago, I joined Shopify as a software development intern. As tech is an inherently ever-changing industry, it means that once again I‘m being thrown into a completely new tech stack. Since Shopify is a Rails shop, I’ve spent the last couple weeks trying to navigate my way through Shopify’s huge (and very idiomatic) Ruby codebase. After spending another late night banging my head against my desk (“why does it say my method doesn’t exist when I’ve clearly defined it here?!”)
, my pattern-recognition finally kicked in and I noticed that I’m running into all the same problems I ran into when I first started learning JavaScript. And Python. And C+… I’ve decided to put together a checklist for learning a new language. A few of caveats/disclaimers to begin:* Most of this list is only relevant to standard imperative programming languages since they are what make up the majority of professionally-written codebases. 0. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. From Zero to Front-end Hero (Part 1) — Free Code Camp.
HTML and CSS Best Practices So far what you’ve been learning are the basics of HTML and CSS. The next step is to learn best practices. Best practices are a set of informal rules that improve the quality of your code. Semantic Markup One of the best practices for HTML and CSS is to write semantic markup. For example, the h1 tag tells us that the text it wraps is an important heading. CSS Naming Conventions The next important best practice for CSS is proper naming conventions. In general, I suggest trying out simple naming conventions that make intuitive sense to you. CSS Reset Browsers have small styling inconsistencies from margins to line-heights. Cross Browser Support Cross browser support means that your code supports most up-to-date browsers.
CSS Preprocessors and Postprocessors Since the introduction of CSS in 1990s, CSS has come a long way. CSS preprocessors are CSS language extensions that add bells and whistles like variables, mixins, and inheritance. Grid Systems and Responsiveness. 16 Beginner Freelance Projects to Fit Your Personality Type. Do you remember those personality tests we all took in high school? The ones that told us what our future career would be? The ones where you always ended up jealous of the friend who was told she should be a movie star while your results said you’d do best as a librarian?
(No? Was that just me? Nevermind…) While there are a ton of different personality assessments out there, the most well-known is probably the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which gives you your Myers-Briggs Personality Type (MBPT). To break this down in simple terms: there are four segments to your personality, each with two possible outcomes: whether you’re an introvert (I) or extrovert (E), sensing (S) or intuitive (N), thinking (T) or feeling (F), and judging (J) or perceiving (P). If you know your personality type, you can predict what sorts of projects and work scenarios will make you successful, what kinds of jobs you will love, and even things like what kind of freelance projects are best for you. 1. 2. 3.
What should you learn to get a [better] coding job — Swizec’s Nightowls. What should you learn to get a [better] coding job A lot of people ask me things like ”What should I learn to get a programming job?” Or ”How can I get a job as an engineer in Silicon Valley?” Here’s an actual quote from last week: So, I need some advice. The implication is usually which technology should you learn to get a job. Wanna know a dirty little secret? Any technology you’re likely to have heard of is a good pick. If companies are using it, then you can get a job doing it. Ok, fine. There’s another caveat — your choice of tech matters a lot more when you’re a programmer or developer than when you’re an engineer. Your real job as a software engineer isn’t to write code. Your job is to ask questions and to find edge cases that the product people didn’t think of.
Sure, you’ll write the code in the end, or maybe you’ll hand off the spec to a coder, but your real job is coming up with the spec. Don’t just learn a technology; learn how to solve problems with a technology. Start digging. Model-View-Controller (MVC) Explained Through Ordering Drinks At The Bar — Free Code Camp. CIO.com - Tech News, Analysis, Blogs, Video. CIO.com - Tech News, Analysis, Blogs, Video. Modest list of programming blogs. I'm trying some experimental tiers on Patreon to see if I can get to substack-like levels of financial support for this blog without moving to substack!
Some programming blogs to consider reading This is one of those “N technical things every programmer must read” lists, except that “programmer” is way too broad a term and the styles of writing people find helpful for them are too different for any such list to contain a non-zero number of items (if you want the entire list to be helpful to everyone).
So here's a list of some things you might want to read, and why you might (or might not) want to read them. Aleksey Shipilev If you want to understand how the JVM really works, this is one of the best resources on the internet. Bruce Dawson Performance explorations of a Windows programmer. Camille Fournier This blog is mostly on career growth and management. Chip Huyen One of the rare blogs that has data-driven position pieces about the industry. Chris Fenton Cindy Sridharan Dan McKinley Erik Sink. Quora. What is design? Why is it important? Blog | Femgineer. Motherboard | Home. The Four Conditions for Creative Brilliance - Levo. I was talking with a man who is responsible for envisioning the future of how we will light our world (He’s a VP in the marketing department of Philip’s LED division, Lumileds, who is reducing the power needed to generate light by up to 85%) and he was sharing with me his ideas.
I can’t tell you what they are because I’ve signed an NDA, but suffice it to say they are REALLY cool. Is Creativity A Trait Or A Condition? He wanted to know from me how he could get the rest of his team to think as creatively as he does. Maybe they just aren’t as creative as he is? I think they are. As a thoroughly mundane attribute of being human, each of us has a connection to what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, and it is my experience that moments of heightened creativity have more to do with tapping into a universal creative archetype than any unique attribute of a specific person. [Related: 29 Tricks for Kickstarting Your Creativity] Where Is The Zone And How Do I Get There? 1. 2. 3. 4. Computational Fairy Tales. Responding to Ajax with Rails - Personal Development. After showing how easy it is to use Ajax with Rails and how Rails makes Ajax easy behind the scenes, the one thing left to explore is what Rails doesn’t do for you: responding to the Ajax request.
When I last showed my To Do app, I skipped responding to the Ajax request from the server using a trick: $(".my-form, #completed, .delete, .all-complete, .clear").on("ajax:success", function(e, data, status, xhr) { location.reload();}); Using the ajax:success callback, I reloaded the window to show the changes that were made by the Ajax request.
This required a reload for every action, which isn’t efficient. This week, I went back to my application and figured out how to properly have Rails respond to the Ajax request without a page reload. This required changes to the Controller and the View. The Controller The Controller is responsible for receiving requests from the user and updating the model and view appropriately. A few things to note: The View Let me explain what is happening: Further Reading. Big Think | Videos, articles, and tips to help you succeed, from the world's leading experts. Big Think | Videos, articles, and tips to help you succeed, from the world's leading experts. Meagan Waller – a blog about software. Happy Bear Software | Web Application Development. Self-taught developers learn by doing. They build one project after another, make mistakes and slowly develop their sensibilities around software development.
This is a familiar story if you taught yourself to code. Not all developers expand their knowledge outside of what they need to meet today's requirements. Some stick to blog posts, tutorials and stack overflow. While these are useful during day-to-day software development, they won't help to build deep understanding of the software work with every day. Reading to build technical knowledge gives you context. Reading for learning Reading for learning isn't the same as reading for pleasure.
Reading anything containing new knowledge will require multiple passes. In the first pass read the title, introduction, conclusion and section headings. Look up the things you're not familiar with and find out just enough about them to understand the text you're reading now. In your second pass work through each section carefully. Books Source code. How to Make Money Blogging - Guide for 2015. Updated July 8, 2015 If you’ve ever wondered how to make money blogging, you’ve come to the right place. As an 11-year veteran blogger, this is what I’ve learned. First, here’s my story in a nutshell… How I went from hobby blogger to pro blogger Without any technical or computer skills, I started a blog in 2004 (here’s how).
Since then, my husband traded a 9-to-5 job he hated for a part-time job he loves, together we homeschool our kiddos and my full-time online income makes up the bulk of our income. It takes time, creativity and hustle—a lot of all three—but it’s absolutely doable. The 5 Basic Steps Here are the five basic steps if you want to make money blogging. Establish your home baseProduce valuable contentBuild relationshipsGrow your platform (and branch out)Choose and implement streams of income If you find yourself getting overwhelmed as you read through, you’re normal! Alright, let’s break it down. 1. If you want to make money blogging, obviously you’ll need a blog. 2. 3. 4. 5. Learn Programing By Copying. I finished this programming book and I still don’t feel like a real programmer. What do I do next? This is a question that I get asked a lot having been involved in LaunchCode STL. There are a million things to learn, but we all have to start somewhere.
Most people start with a book that takes them so far and then drops you off in the middle of nowhere when you’re finished. The answer to that is actually remarkably simple: I tell people to build software they would use. Most people seem to mistake this advice for something that it’s not. I typically start hearing ideas for software they wish they had. To clarify, I’m saying that you should build your own version of the software you use every day. Do you use url shorteners like bit.ly or Twitter’s t.co? Have you ever used a pastebin like like pastebin.com? It is up to you to fill the gaps. Build something without the help of any libraries and you will learn programming. The Planet D: Adventure Travel Blog.
Ruby Railer - Coders helping Coders. Code. Excel with Code | Become better at building and selling products. Happy Bear Software | Web Application Development. Articles and Notes | StuartEllis.eu. The Hashrocket Blog.