Tool Time!

I'm adding this post to remind myself of all the tools I use and need on any dev environment I setup ever.   There are so many useful things, and they're easy to forget.  Then, you spend 20 minutes hunting them down again when you need them.

Of course, this list is sparse right now because I can't remember all the tools I use...

Bash:
https://coderwall.com/p/oqtj8w

Why I hate JavaScript.

Okay, I feel like I should elaborate on why I hate JavaScript, so THIS post is going to be a collection of JavaScript failures from around the net.  True, you may say that they're the result of poor programmers writing bugs, but I'm going to do my best to show examples where it's probably not the programmer's fault.


CASE ONE: DUO LINGO

Duo Lingo is pretty good.  Certainly, it seems to be well coded (though, in all fairness, it's not excessively complicated client-side).  Howerver, sometimes it fails, and when it fails, it fails hard.  Here's a screen where the user is supposed to type what is spoken.  Unfortunately, it doesn't play anything.  Not even when you click the button.  Why is this?  I think maybe it's because JS is terrible and the code to play the sound may have failed to load in one way or another.

Here's how to continue on despite this setback, if you're interested.  In Chrome, right-click the speaker button (#1 in the picture) and select "Inspect element" (In other browsers, you're going to have to find the code for the speaker button.  You should just have to view > source and search for "speaker-audio").  This will pop up the panel above.  Then, right-click the link (#2 in the picture) and select "open link in new tab" (on other browsers, copy and paste this link into a new tab).

And voilà (I just looked up how to spell that... I'm learning Spanish, not French...)!  There you have it.  The sound is there.  The link is in the code.  The button exists.

JavaScript sucks.

I hate JavaScript.

JavaScript is bad.  AWFUL.  If you don't believe me, pick up any book, watch any video, read any tutorial on learning JavaScript and wade through the intro that apologizes for all the bad parts of JS.  Even one of the most recommended books for learning JS clarifies that it's about "the good parts."

Unfortunately, as they say "it's the language of the internet."  Eventually, we all come in contact with it, whether we want to or not.  I'm just making this post to link to all the resources I find that help make sense of the world's most prevalent and terrible language.

JavaScript:
Getting Started (the good parts): http://amzn.com/0596517742
Evangelist: http://yuiblog.com/crockford/
Detecting null/undefined/non-existent: http://lisazhou.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/javascript-detect-null-object/

Popular JS Frameworks:
http://backbonejs.org/
http://marionettejs.com/
http://handlebarsjs.com/
http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/
http://jquery.com/
http://jqueryui.com/
http://meteor.com/
http://angularjs.org/
http://emberjs.com/
http://embeddedjs.com/
http://expressjs.com/
http://meteor.com/

CSS:
Style Inheritance: http://www.vanseodesign.com/css/css-specificity-inheritance-cascaade/
Style Reset (remove browser defaults): http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/01/reset-reloaded/
 SASS (better way of writing CSS): http://sass-lang.com/ 
Compass: http://compass-style.org/



Additional Tools:
Server-side JS: http://nodejs.org/
Grunt Task Runner: http://gruntjs.com/
NPM (Node Package Manager): https://npmjs.org/
Underscore JS library: http://underscorejs.org/ 
Wrapping it all together with Yeoman: http://yeoman.io/
Angular Tutorials: http://egghead.io/
Angular with Express and Node: http://briantford.com/blog/angular-express.htm
Full Stack for Node: http://towerjs.org/


Additional Info:
Video and Book about Single Page Web Applications: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrIFaWJ9Glo

New Site!

I'm not sure how best to transition this blog to my website or if I'm going to do that at all.  But if you're here now, and wonder what I'm doing, then you might want to check out my site:

Nimble Neko.com

From now on, I will be updating that with my current apps.  I still don't know how I'll link it and this blog, but I'll figure that out later.

Star Panda - Delivered!

Star Panda!

           

The Last Thumb Fighter and Wizard's Magic Ball Full

Click the above links to see the apps in Apple's App Store!

Wow, it's been about five months since my last app release....

At this point, making apps is not difficult, it's just very, very time consuming, and of course, life gets in the way.  Between this app and the last, I learned quite a bit of Japanese and spent three weeks touring Japan.

Anyway, this latest app was made for my good friend Natalie.  It was part of this pay-it-forward, craft-along thing.  Eventually, I'll be making another app for another friend as a part of it.  More on that later.

As for Star Panda, it's a fun little arcade game wherein you tour space attempting to collect cute animal friends and avoiding evil space bats and lizards.

  

Again, I was obsessed with a control scheme and made a game explicitly to explore it.  The panda's controls are modeled after the super sheep in Worms Armageddon.  I've always liked how learning to control them was an art in itself.

This was one of the most interesting releases I've had.  I got denied by Apple because my app did not use Game Center.  I had no idea they did that.  Certainly, I've never heard of an app being denied for not supporting Game Center before.  I ended up adding it in, which was exceedingly easy with Corona, but it was still a bummer having to wait another two weeks to release it.

I may start integrating Game Center into all my apps.  At the very least, they won't get denied anymore for not having it.

Well, time to get back to work.  I'm hoping to up my output this year, and those games aren't going to write themselves...