Recently I was having trouble understanding some code. Specifically it was a leetcode solution that even though I read the solution a few times and watched a video it wasn’t sticking.
I came across this Python Tutor and pasted in a leetcode solution and pressed play. It scans the code and generates a visual debugged view of it! It’s also free and didn’t even require a signup. What I was most impressed with was the way it handled objects and recursion.
Give it a try at pythontutor.com and it’s not just for JavaScript, it also supports Python, C, C++, and Java.
CSS Grid is a CSS layout module that enables two-dimensional layout. CSS Grid is CSS’s newest layout module and has been designed to create flexible and responsive layouts. While it can be difficult to learn CSS Grid due to its new syntax and layout ideas, the rewards are worth it. With CSS Grid, you can create grid-based layouts with CSS, which means that your layouts will be more flexible and responsive. In addition, CSS Grid is well supported by modern browsers, so you can be sure that your layouts will look great on all devices. So if you’re looking for a new way to create CSS layouts, CSS Grid is definitely worth considering.
It takes time to learn CSS Grid but don’t give up, there’s a fun way now
CSS Grid is a powerful layout tool for web developers, but it can be tricky to learn. For junior developers, the process can be even more daunting. That’s where CSS Grid Garden comes in! This fun and interactive game makes it easy to understand CSS Grid, and makes the learning process enjoyable. With CSS Grid Garden, players learn by completing progressively more challenging levels. As they advance, they build up their skills and confidence, until they are ready to take on real-world projects. CSS Grid Garden is the perfect way for junior developers to learn CSS Grid – it’s easy, it’s fun, and it gets results!
At the time of writing this there are 28 levels that teach you CSS grid from basic to advanced concepts. The levels are colorful and fun as well.
It’s completely free and offers an easy to use built in css editor that updates in real time.
How many levels can you complete? Try the game by visiting https://cssgridgarden.com/
I just learned about this setting after finally getting frustrated of clicking “Proceed.” Geez I wish I knew about this simple setting long ago… so much time wasted! I do lots of local development and we’ve had team members include ssl certs in repositories, or type in the following command “thisisunsafe”, etc. Who knew the solution was so simple 👍
Now we can simply get around that by copying and pasting the following command into your browser
chrome://flags/#allow-insecure-localhostYou will then be taken to Chrome’s development flags page as shown in the screenshot below. Simply enable it and restart Chrome
Now you’re all set to kick up a local dev server and never have to click proceed ever again.
If you’re looking for a great screen recording software that is free and easy to use on a mac, giphy.com’s screen recorder is a great option. It’s completely free to use, and it has a ton of great features.
Just head to giphy.com and download giphy capture. Then, select the area of your screen that you want to record. You can also choose to record your entire screen or just a portion of it. The giphy.com recorder also lets you choose whether or not to include audio in your recording. If you choose to include audio, you can either record your own voice with a microphone or use the system audio. This is great if you want to record a video tutorial or walkthrough.
Came across this fantastic video by this fantastic YouTuber. Just wanted to share it as I felt it really did a great job demonstrating the value in knowing these width properties.
For even more information check out their respective mdn entries:
Or Watch it on youtube here: 3 useful CSS values that most people don’t know about
I help run a bi-weekly algorithm coding guild at work where we solve many programming problems together. It’s a very fun and rewarding experience and I get exposed to many different programming languages. Sometimes, when I “shift gears” between languages, I mix up the prototype methods in javascript.
The one I recently flubbed was shift() and unshift(), which seems silly but when you’re moving fast its an honest mistake to make!
Let’s review their MDN entries
Array.prototype.shift()
Array.prototype.unshift()
How I always remember the difference:
If we literally break up the words into letters (similar to split() lol) you might notice something:
["u","n","s","h","i","f","t"]
// vs
["s","h","i","f","t"]The way I see it, unshift is “updating” our array above, “shift” with two additional characters in the front (“u” and “n”). In my mind I also remember this by matching up the “u” of update and “u” of unshift. Shift on the other hand complements this as its missing the “u.” In fact this is even how unshift() works! It prepends characters to the front of the array.
Hope this little trick helps you! Remember we update (think “u”) with unshift… with two characters in the front of the word shift > unshift.
See the Pen Bouncing DVD JS logo by Andy Sciro (@spssciro) on CodePen.
Hopefully you know about this bouncing DVD logo screensaver, my mind goes right to watching it in class or seeing it on a bus. Either way over the years its almost become a meme, there’s something just so satisfying about when it hits the corner lol.
Watch it here: Happiness comes from the simple things
(Yes I know the video above is fake, but still thought it really captures the feeling)
With that said, I tried to make it in pixi.js in an afternoon. It surprisingly wasn’t too hard when we utilize pixi.js’s tint api. Essentially though all we need to do is when the logo hits the “wall” just randomly generate a new tint.
If you want to learn more about the tint api you can read more about it here in the docs:
https://scottmcdonnell.github.io/pixi-examples/index.html?s=demos&f=tinting.js&title=Tinting
As always because its on codepen.io so feel free to fork it! You can view the source here, if you want you can replace the logo (it’s a base64 encoded string), because I’m too cheap for codepen premium!!
Watch: How Steve Wozniak Brought Color to Personal Computers
Here is a fascinating talk by the famous Steve Wozniak that resonated with me. The key takeaway here is his point about where and WHEN he is the most creative. Wozniak goes onto explain that’s how he came up with the idea of color display for the mac.
“When you’re without sleep, and when you’re going to sleep your inner head goes briefly into this period of really…creativity kind of thinking. It’s not restricted to the normal thoughts of life, and the day. When you’re waking up your head’s a little like that too, well my head was kind of in this floating half-asleep state and out.”
TLDR; When you’re sleep deprived and working hard on a project, when you drift off to sleep that’s the time you may be the MOST creative. Pretty cool.
A few days ago I was trying to make the Javascript logo in photoshop to put onto a blog post banner but couldn’t quite get the font for the logo right. I was playing guessing games with sans-serif fonts but then finally googled it to learn more.
Long story short the font appears to be made by House Industries, its called “NEUTRA TEXT BOLD FONT”
View the font on House Industries
However, throughout my little journey to figure this out I found out some interesting facts about the logo. It was actually kinda cool to see how it came into the community’s possession.
1. It’s a community logo released at JSConf (with love).
So apparently this logo was released in 2011 at JSConf2011, but was used for almost a year and a half prior by the community. The logo lives in Github user voodootikigod’s repo and the community has since contributed various versions, media formats, and tweaks to it.
2. You can use it for anything
On the logo’s Github it states, “We are releasing this under a MIT license so you can print it on anything, use it anywhere, and never have to worry about royalties, licenses, and other such things. So yeah use it for anything! View license here.
3. The font is available here.
In the Logo’s Github pull request history you can see Pull request #5 where there is an HTML/CSS version being created. The discussion on that PR has users trying to identify the font, with that said it’s revealed that the font is “Neutra Text Bold.”
4. My little test… Yes that’s the font for sure 🙂
So I loaded up the font in photoshop alongside the famous Javascript logo and Yep that’s it! Check it out, perfect!
