Software, Fitness, and Gaming – Jesse Warden

Blog

  • Thoughts on Teaching Object Oriented Programming in JavaScript

    Thoughts on Teaching Object Oriented Programming in JavaScript

    I’ve been doing a series of JavaScript videos on YouTube as part of a larger effort teaching Software Development. I find that I create a video 2 to 4 times before actually recording the real one. When describing something, when I find I have to reference a basic concept, I instead stop, and record a video around that basic concept first. This has worked well, and similar to blogging/writing books, it forces you to plug all holes no matter how minute in your knowledge of a subject so you can succinctly describe it in a way that makes sense.

    From a programming perspective, teaching advanced JavaScript is quite challenging because it wasn’t designed for traditional OOP concepts and large application design. Many of the more popular languages today are either built on, or support and promote OOP usage. On the same token, once you know OOP you better appreciate Functional languages, parametric polymorphism, and other dynamic language features.

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  • Kanban Paper Airplane Factory

    Kanban Paper Airplane Factory

    I went to the local Capital Kanban meetup yesterday evening. It was a bunch of Project Managers discussing Kanban and waste in IT. Seemed completely out of my comfort zone and a way to meet new people in tech here in town so I attended. It turned out to be really cool and way more interesting than my expectations were. I wanted to mention some of those here, specifically some of the IT wastes that were mentioned I see all the time, the insights I got from the paper airplane factory game, and some after meeting talk that changed my perspective on what I perceive as problems in our industry with good software east of California (hah, trick question, there IS no good software done east of California…).

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  • 30 Minutes With Ember

    30 Minutes With Ember

    I looked at EmberJS yesterday again because 2 leads recently were requesting it. It had been over a year since I looked at it before… or like 3 months before Google started backing Angular. In my business, my tech choice(s) are dictated by my clients and/or hiring firm. From a 30,000ft view, it’s just like Backbone but with built-in integration with and embracement of Handlebars with more helper classes.

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  • Taking Corona SDK to the Next Level

    Taking Corona SDK to the Next Level

    tl;dr; There is a larger opportunity in cross platform mobile application development that Corona SDK is missing out on. To solve this, Corona needs to invest in a version 3, mobile OS specific mobile component/widget set, C# compiling down to Lua, and invest in a proper, official IDE.

    Introduction

    If I were given a few million dollars to mold Corona SDK into what I believe it needs to become, here’s what I’d do. In order of priority I’d focus specifically on building a component library, making a more stringent roadmap for the current API in Lua, and continually improving the existing workflow. All 3 will help increase Corona’s uptake by developers who specifically target “mobile first”, increase desire by those working in agencies who wish to have a quick way to target multiple device OS’, and most importantly broaden Corona’s ability to quickly iterate on mobile applications vs. the existing game focus.

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