mikemct

tech musings

Month: April, 2012

April 25, 2012

Around the Web: Wednesday, April 25, 2012

by mikemct

Cool article about the history of navigator.appCodeName. – It’s always interesting to see how petty, sloppy, and clever monolithic software developers used to be. It just takes a little perspective to really see it.

More companies are moving to a 4-day work week. - I really believe in the positive effects of adequate rest and I’m excited to see where this leads in a couple of months from now.

An awesome list of various agile “smells”. - I’ve certainly smelled all of these at one point or another.

Google has launched Google Drive to compete with Dropbox. Drive’s prices are going to gut Dropbox, with 5 GB of free storage and a secondary tier of $2.50/month for 25 GB (vs. 2 GB free, ~$10/month for 50 GB at Dropbox). Google continues it’s pattern of “innovation through renovation”.

Open Source All the Things! – If you’re a software developer and you haven’t released anything to the open source community, I highly suggest you contribute something. Your contribution can be as little as a bug fix on someone else’s project, but it’s immensely rewarding.

How to Start a Startup – A must-read for entrepreneurs by Paul Graham.

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April 24, 2012

Writing a HTTP Request Library with PHP and cURL

by mikemct

If you’re tasked with building a full-fledged service for the web, having a go-to library for requests saves a lot of headache for folks utilizing your APIs. Today, we’re going to build a generic library for retrieving resources via HTTP using PHP and cURL. It’s not incredibly difficult and I’ll walk you through my reasoning as I build it. In no time at all, you too can have an awesome, badass HTTP library.

So, first things first. My primary use case is a developer named Steve using a REST API I’ve built that spits out objects in JSON format. Although I love having a lot of customizable functionality in anything I write, I’m primarily concerned with writing something that has a dead simple syntax that’s easy to remember.

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April 18, 2012

Around the Web: Wednesday April 18, 2012

by admin

The world’s two worst variable names - Note to self: stop being such a dick with my variable names.

Zippopotam.us - I love open APIs. Zippopotam.us is a RESTful API that spits out zip code data for over 50 countries in JSON format.

Code Club - An initiative in the UK to have an after school program in 25% of all UK public schools by 2014. I often fantasize about nationwide elective school courses in programming and actual computer science here in the US. Our public education system is screaming for reform and I think–if they haven’t already–other countries will distance us in terms of scientific discoveries and innovations. I remember taking a computer class when I was 10 or 11 that consisted of a then 10-year-old typing tutor program; at the time, I could already type at 80 WPM and knew how to program in BASIC. I was required to attend this class twice a week for a couple of years. See also: Coder Dojo.

We’re all fucked.

Banjo – Social Super Powers - It’s always nice to see an app that encourages people to interact with each other in person.

Tim Schafer’s Top 5 Pitch Tips for Kickstarter Success – Great advice that goes beyond game development.

Bootswatch - Free themes for Twitter’s Bootstrap.

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