All my blog posts and articles
The Worst Programmer I Know –The great thing about measuring developer productivity is that you can quickly identify the bad programmers. I want to tell you about the worst programmer I know, and why I fought to keep him in the team.
Costs exposed: Monorepo vs. multirepo – Julio Merino (jmmv.dev) –In software engineering organizations, there are certain practices that keep costs under control even if those seem more expensive at first. Unfortunately, because suc...
Read more →Wonder Tools at ONA ⚡️ –Tools I’m sharing at the Online News Association Conference
Practical Stimulus: Building a Counter Component –In this article, we will build a counter component using the Stimulus JavaScript library. This simple example will demonstrate a bunch of useful features of Stimulus such as managing state, handling events, and targeting DOM elements.
Ruby’s Hash is a Swiss-Army Knife –A Hash is a built-in data structure in Ruby that maps values to keys and has a constant-time O(1) lookup. This article shows the capabilities of this simple, but equally powerful tool. We’ll start with the basics but also cover some obscure but equally useful features of hash.
Specifications Grading: A Method for Improving Student Performance –Last revised: 10/07/2021 by JP Overview Are you looking to increase student motivation and the quality of their academic work? If yes, consider specifications grading. According to Linda B. Nilson, Ph.D. the traditional higher education grading method is broken and specifications grading offers a solution with benefits for both students and faculty. Nilson published her…
Specifications grading with the EMRF rubric –A useful rubric for implementing specifications and other forms of mastery grading.
A non-mathematical introduction to Kalman Filters for programmers – Pravesh Koirala –Read my manifesto on Code as an alternative to Mathematics. Code for this article can be found on this Colab Notebook should you choose to follow along. Why Kalman Filters? Kalman filters are ingenius. If you have never heard of them, then a very intuitive (and arguably reductive) way to think about them is to
The costly mistake so many make with numpy and pandas –What happens next() will shock you
Shale – Ruby object mapper and serializer for XML, JSON, TOML and YAML –Shale – Ruby object mapper and serializer for XML, JSON and YAML
Rails Generate Migration — Everything you need to know –This article is a reference for generating migrations in your Ruby on Rails app — I cover the basics like adding columns and tables, adjusting column types (and loads more), plus some tips and tricks…
What is the difference between Turbo and Stimulus, and what exactly is Hotwire? –
Whoops. That doesn’t work at all. Let’s ask it to improve it: 
Opinion | I’m a Student. You Have No Idea How Much We’re Using ChatGPT. –
Python packages with pyproject.toml and nothing else –I’ve been using setuptools and setup.py for my Python packages for a long time: I like that it works without me having to think about installing and learning any additional tools such as Flit or pip-tools or Poetry or Hatch .
Building a Creative Practice –Could it even be the key to longevity?
Collections –We curate collections of images, books, audio and film, shining a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives. Leaning toward the surprising, the strange, and the beautiful, we hope to provide an ever-growing cabinet of curiosities for the digital age
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