Neuroscientists find that interpreting code activates a general-purpose brain network, but not language-processing centers --- The findings suggest there isn't a definitive answer to whether coding should be taught as a math-based skill or a language-based skill. In part, that's because learning to program may draw on both language and multiple demand systems, even if -- once learned -- programming doesn't rely on the language regions, the researchers say. […] While the programmers lay in a functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) scanner, the researchers showed them snippets of code and asked them to predict what action the code would produce. The researchers saw little to no response to code in the language regions of the brain. Instead, they found that the coding task mainly activated the so-called multiple demand network. This network, whose activity is spread throughout the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain, is typically recruited for tasks that require holding many pieces of information in mind at once, and is responsible for our ability to perform a wide variety of mental tasks.

A microsite that shows off fonts designed for writing code.

Open source, experimental, and tiny tools roundup --- This is a list of smaller tools that might be useful in building your game/website/interactive project. Although I’ve mostly also included ‘standards’, this list has a focus on artful tools & toys that are as fun to use as they are functional. The goal of this list is to enable making entirely outside of closed production ecosystems or walled software gardens.

Just because something is going to break in the end, doesn't mean that it can't have an effect that lasts into the future. Joy, wonder, laughter, hope—the world can be better because of what you built in the past.

Darius Kazemi linked to this, and notes: "The only change I had to make was installing `babel-loader@7` and `webpack-cli` as dev dependencies."

MJML is a markup language designed to reduce the pain of coding a responsive email. Its semantic syntax makes it easy and straightforward and its rich standard components library speeds up your development time and lightens your email codebase. MJML’s open-source engine generates high quality responsive HTML compliant with best practices. MJML rolls up all of what Mailjet has learned about HTML email design over the past few years and abstracts the whole layer of complexity related to responsive email design. Get your speed and productivity boosted with MJML’s semantic syntax. Say goodbye to endless HTML table nesting or email client specific CSS. Building a responsive email is super easy with tags such as and . MJML has been designed with responsiveness in mind. The abstraction it offers guarantee you to always be up-to-date with the industry practices and responsive. Email clients update their specs and requirements regularly, but we geek about that stuff - we’ll stay on top of it so you can spend less time reading up on latest email client updates and more time designing beautiful email.

Prefixing is one form of “namespacing,” which is just a fancy way of saying that names in this space belong to a specific project. However, prefixing (and suffixing, which is less common) is a hack from a time when no solution existed for the PHP language. PHP 5.3 introduced an official method of namespacing, so the standard has existed for years. Because WordPress 5.2 bumped the minimum PHP requirement to 5.6, it is time for developers to shed their old habits and catch up to the rest of the PHP world.

A small group of programmers wants to change how we code—before catastrophe strikes. --- “The problem is that software engineers don’t understand the problem they’re trying to solve, and don’t care to,” says Leveson, the MIT software-safety expert. The reason is that they’re too wrapped up in getting their code to work. “Software engineers like to provide all kinds of tools and stuff for coding errors,” she says, referring to IDEs. “The serious problems that have happened with software have to do with requirements, not coding errors.” When you’re writing code that controls a car’s throttle, for instance, what’s important is the rules about when and how and by how much to open it. But these systems have become so complicated that hardly anyone can keep them straight in their head. “There’s 100 million lines of code in cars now,” Leveson says. “You just cannot anticipate all these things.” […] Programmers were like chess players trying to play with a blindfold on—so much of their mental energy is spent just trying to picture where the pieces are that there’s hardly any left over to think about the game itself. […] “Human intuition is poor at estimating the true probability of supposedly ‘extremely rare’ combinations of events in systems operating at a scale of millions of requests per second,” he wrote in a paper. “That human fallibility means that some of the more subtle, dangerous bugs turn out to be errors in design; the code faithfully implements the intended design, but the design fails to correctly handle a particular ‘rare’ scenario.”

Viewed from one angle, the rise of get-girls-to-code initiatives is progressive and feminist. Many people involved in the movement are certainly progressive feminists themselves, and many women have benefited from these initiatives. But there are other ways to look at it too. Women are generally cheaper, to other workers’ dismay. “Introducing women into a discipline can be seen as empowerment for women,” says Ensmenger. “But it is often seen by men as a reduction of their status. Because, historically speaking, the more women in a profession, the lower-paid it is.” Hicks, the computing historian, can’t stand it when people tout coding camps as a solution to technology’s gender problem. “I think these initiatives are well-meaning, but they totally misunderstand the problem. The pipeline is not the problem; the meritocracy is the problem. The idea that we’ll just stuff people into the pipeline assumes a meritocracy that does not exist.” Ironically, says Hicks, these coding initiatives are, consciously or not, betting on their graduates’ failure. If boot camp graduates succeed, they’ll flood the market, devaluing the entire profession. “If you can be the exception who becomes successful, then you can take advantage of all the gatekeeping mechanisms,” says Hicks. “But if you aren’t the exception, and the gatekeeping starts to fall away, then the profession becomes less prestigious.”

Create agents that monitor and act on your behalf. Your agents are standing by!

Discussing the CSS-Tricks article ‘The Great Divide’ (https://css-tricks.com/the-great-divide/) that discusses the difference between ‘full-stack’ and ‘front-end’ developers. I think my main problem with this article might be that its core premise is accurate -- the job market for frontend developers undervalues skills around markup, a11y, UX -- but it _reinforces_ the divide, rather than challenging it

Software engineering principles, from Robert C. Martin's book Clean Code, adapted for JavaScript. This is not a style guide. It's a guide to producing readable, reusable, and refactorable software in JavaScript. Not every principle herein has to be strictly followed, and even fewer will be universally agreed upon. These are guidelines and nothing more, but they are ones codified over many years of collective experience by the authors of Clean Code.

This is an attempt to categorise different APIs scoured from the web which make their resources available for consumption.

A neat way to create clean screenshots of code. Create and share beautiful images of your source code. Start typing or drop a file into the text area to get started.

Doing work that doesn’t exceed your ability has traditionally been the exception for software developers. We are so used to the feeling that we can do everything, anything, but unfortunately only relatively poorly and with low predictability, that it takes conscious effort to focus on doing what you know how to do. Especially if there isn’t a lot of continuity in the type of work that you do, it can be hard to recognize that even though you are fairly certain about a technical solution you’ve chosen, you don’t know enough about it for it to qualify as a Safe Bet. In fact, most of the work programmers do lives somewhere on the spectrum between those categories. If you want others to rely on you, it is better to underestimate your abilities and overestimate risks than to go in a direction that actually involves more uncertainty than you can justify.

Simulate the world. In emoji.

procedural salt flats, mountains, forests

This text is a transcript of a presentation I have given on October 9, 2015, at the CityCode conference in Chicago. … Why do we code?

What do you need to know about code to survive in a suspicious world?

Rushing doesn’t improve things, it might even slow you down. Focusing on a few things and doing them well is worthwhile. Sharing what you learn—even while you’re still figuring things out—is even better.

Modeling system is. Imagine what we could learn if we had the ability to break anything down, to reach inside it, and see what that little bit there does. The more ways we find to represent systems such that we retain that ability, the more power we will have to understand complex things.

Wikipedia has a declining population. Their own research identifies the editing process as a significant barrier to entry and as a reason for leaving. Their solution to this was a WYSIWYG editor, which failed for the basic reason that it denies the fact that Wikipedia is a program. I suggest a more conservative solution: as a program, Wikipedia needs an IDE that embraces and understands the Mediawiki language. That IDE should make rapid feedback its priority: realtime compilation, realtime diff viewing, and realtime correspondence between source and HTML.

Working in tech–and especially trying to advance within it–asks of us our support for the self-defined mythology about our industry and the people within it. You don’t go around telling people you only code for the money while you still need a coding job, that’s suicide. You have to say you code for the challenge at minimum, or the beauty of naked logic or the unlimited power to create, if you want to really sell it.

You’ll hit this wall no matter what “learn to code” program you follow, and the only way to get past it is to persevere. This means you keep trying new things, learning more information, and figuring out, piece by piece, how to build your project. You’re a lot more likely to find success in the end if you have a clear idea of why you’re learning to code in the first place.

Heartwarming though it may be, the practice of plucking individuals from a life of poverty does not scale. When Cinderella ascended to the throne, she did not bring the rest of the servants with her.

Matthew is a serious PHP expert who loves pushing code. Matthew is a Friday hacker who seems to work best in the morning.

Knowing how to program has been one of the most fulfilling skills I have acquired in my life, but I believe having the ability to ship something into the world for people to use is much more important.

Some good tips for getting started with Sublime Text 2 and using its many features.

My excursions make me better because it’s the only time I stop to really examine my process. I’m an adult with responsibilities, but fiddling will always be a priority.