Month: September 2012

Weekly roundup 9/28/12

By Joel

Since I started at Lotic Factor I’ve been sharing a list of links with my coworkers we call “The Weekly Roundup”. There is no set schedule but typically I send out a list about once a week. The links mostly come from Twitter and various newsletters. The concept is nothing new, but it saves them from needing to spend as much time on twitter as I do! I’m sharing them in the hopes that some readers may find them interesting as well, and also as an archive of past links. DISCLAIMER: The only qualification for inclusion is that I found them interesting. In … Continue reading Weekly roundup 9/28/12

Know What the Heck You’re Doing (KWHYD)

By Joel

Developing for JavaScript has never been easier than it is today thanks to the plethora of freely available open source third party libraries. I’m sure I’ll be writing about many of these in the months to come, but today I want to introduce something that is crucial in JavaScript land. We’ll call it “KWHYD” (pronounced “Quid”) which stands for “Know What the Heck You’re Doing”. What can I say, I’m into naming things these days. Knockout I’m a big fan of KnockoutJS, Steve Sanderson’s now famous MVVM library for JavaScript. It may not be your cup of tea: I’ve talked to some pretty … Continue reading Know What the Heck You’re Doing (KWHYD)

Weekly roundup 09/21/12

By Joel

Since I started at Lotic Factor I’ve been sharing a list of links with my coworkers we call “The Weekly Roundup”. There is no set schedule but typically I send out a list about once a week. The links mostly come from Twitter and various newsletters. The concept is nothing new, but it saves them from needing to spend as much time on twitter as I do! I’m sharing them in the hopes that some readers may find them interesting as well, and also as an archive of past links. DISCLAIMER: The only qualification for inclusion is that I found them interesting. In … Continue reading Weekly roundup 09/21/12

Metro is dead, long live FIRST

By Joel

On a recent This Week inWindows broadcast, Leo and Mary Jo Foley discussed some of the issues introduced by Microsoft’s abandonment of the Metro brand.  The problem is a serious annoyance to developers and especially technical teachers, bloggers, presenters, and authors. It’s also the source of some not-always-so-good-natured ribbing from the technical community. I’m a big fan of using proper terminology, so when Microsoft declared that Metro was verboten I dutifully tried to expunge it from my vocabulary, but I find it increasingly difficult. Metro was used to refer to the new design language, but it also referred to the new Windows 8 … Continue reading Metro is dead, long live FIRST

Weekly roundup 9/14/12

By Joel

Since I started at Lotic Factor I’ve been sharing a list of links with my coworkers we call “The Weekly Roundup”. There is no set schedule but typically I send out a list about once a week. The links mostly come from Twitter and various newsletters. The concept is nothing new, but it saves them from needing to spend as much time on twitter as I do! I’m sharing them in the hopes that some readers may find them interesting as well, and also as an archive of past links. DISCLAIMER: The only qualification for inclusion is that I found them interesting. In … Continue reading Weekly roundup 9/14/12

Weekly roundup 9/7/12

By Joel

Since I started at Lotic Factor I’ve been sharing a list of links with my coworkers we call “The Weekly Roundup”. There is no set schedule but typically I send out a list about once a week. The links mostly come from Twitter and various newsletters. The concept is nothing new, but it saves them from needing to spend as much time on twitter as I do! I’m sharing them in the hopes that some readers may find them interesting as well, and also as an archive of past links. DISCLAIMER: The only qualification for inclusion is that I found them … Continue reading Weekly roundup 9/7/12

Let’s stop calling them self-executing functions

By Joel

Before we begin, please understand that I dislike the argument “that’s just semantics”. For the record, I’m also not fond of “it’s all relative”, but I’ll save that rant for another post. If semantics aren’t important then neither are spelling, grammar, punctuation, and pronunciation. I have had a long uphill battle trying to convince my children that words and phrases have meaning, and the terms “whatever” and “you know what I mean” are not Get Out of Jail Free cards for proper use of the English language. They are surely sick of hearing me say “words matter”. That said, I’ve noticed … Continue reading Let’s stop calling them self-executing functions

A fresh start

By Joel

I used to blog extensively at http://developingfor.net, primarily about .NET topics but occasionally others.  Strangely enough, I hardly ever blogged about Microsoft Expression Blend (the topic I’m best known for), mostly because I had other outlets for that information.  I essentially quit blogging when I began writing my book, Expression Blend in Action: a developer’s guide.  Anyone who’s written a book will tell you it eats up a significant portion of your free time, so I’m sure it is no surprise that I had precious little time for blogging. As the book neared completion, Microsoft threw us all for a … Continue reading A fresh start