Barbarian Meets Coding
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WebDev, UX & a Pinch of Fantasy

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Dev Talk Monday: Nordic.js 2014 Amazing Visual JavaScript Experiments and FRP

Dev Talk Monday is the series that brings you awesome dev talks every Monday

Today I bring you a couple of JavaScript talks from the Nordic.js conference that was held in Stockholm a couple of weeks ago.

First, the completely unexpected (to me) yet super awesome and inspiring talk on Visual JavaScript Experiments by @hakimel. Makes you want to be as great as he is in building beautiful things with HTML, JS and CSS.

Secondly, a very gentle introduction to FRP (Functional Reactive Programming) by @sergimansilla in which he explains the limitations of asynchronous JavaScript with callbacks, then jumps briefly into promises to finally arrive to FRP and illustrate its usefulness through various interesting and eye-opening examples.

Hope you have a great week ahead of you!

talkpresentationvsvim

Level Up your Code-Fu with Chuck Norris

Last Thursday I did my second talk at SWENUG (Sweden .NET User Group) Linköping, this time on developer productivity in a session titled Level-Up your Code-Fu with Chuck Norris (and ReSharper, VsVim and NCrunch). It was a blast!!

Here are the slides for your enjoyment.

And a description:

Our minds possess an unlimited potential and are, without a doubt, the best tool we have in our software development arsenal. However, the interface between our minds and the computer - hands, keyboard, editors… - is imperfect and inefficient, and prevents us from expressing our thoughts in code freely.

But worry not! Chuck Norris is here to kick some ass and help you improve how well and how fast you express yourself in code. Master tools like ReSharper, VsVim and NCrunch and breach the gap between mind and matter.

And some mental notes as advice for the future:

  • Do NOT freestyle the live code demo
  • Throwing chocolates at the audience. Good!
  • Involving the audience. Good!
  • Giving a Chuck Norris T-Shirt away. Good!
  • Do NOT hide behind the screen of your laptop after the demo.
Chuck Norris T-Shirt

Thank you very much to Kvadrat for sponsoring, @xatazh - the evil mastermind behind SWENUG Linköping - for organizing and everyone that attended and made such an awesome, engaged and collaborative audience.

Finally, this also brings to an end all the commitments for talks and hackathons and… other stuff that I have had for a while and frees some time to go back to building stuff with my company. Wiii!!!

personalhackathoneastswedenhack

East Sweden Hack Was a Ton Of Fun!

If you follow my blog assiduously, you may have been wondering for a while… where the heck are you?! Well…Worry not! I will tell you. For the past few weeks I have been preparing with a bunch of friends for East Sweden Hack 2014 - yeah, that’s a hackathon - and thus the sudden disappearance and blog-gy silence. The hackathon took place last weekend, I took a week of resting, and now here I am, full of energy and burning to write some code, articles and kick some butt.

As a soft re-start, I thought it would be nice to write a short article about my experience this year at ESH 2014, that will hopefully inspire you, dear friend, to join the next hackathon you have the chance to be at. Imagine this prospect: two days of hacking whatever you desire, however you desire, with whichever language, tools, libraries, frameworks, whateeevaaaa that you want. Use at least one API of those offered to you by East Sweden county (I am going to go with county although I have no clue how you would translate it to English. Anyhow, it is Östergötland in Swedish)… so use at least one API of those offered to you, and build something that improves in some way the life of those living in East Sweden. Sounds good right? Wait, there’s more! Food and beverages for the whole weekend, a nice and comfy venue and a prize for the winners to go and visit the Mecca of all-things-tech: Silicon Valley. Cool eh? :) Change a couple of details here and there, and I bet you have a similar event happening near you. Why not give it a try?

East Sweden Hack 2014 Logo

So, last year it was just @KPalmvik and I, a pair of lonesome bit pushers, but this year we got us some reinforcements and came back with a more complete and diverse team. Behold Team Panda!

Photo of Team Panda! _From left to up to down-right to up: Erik Claesson (UX Panda), Kristofer Palmvik, Jenny Widén, Jaime González García (Kung-Fu Panda)_

And this is what we built during the hackathon: Pendel Panda an awesome app to encourage commuters (and people) to take the bus by making it as easy and pain-free as possible, and by providing a willing assistant to be with them every step along the way in the form a… grumpy panda bear. XD Yeah and there was some crazy shit that we never got to implement that would have changed the life of a commuter as we know it… XD But anyhow, even though we did not get as far and high as we would have liked, it was a blast.

Pendel Panda app screenshots
  • Cool Stuff
    • Coding the whole weekend! (note that we got time to sleep between Saturday and Sunday)
    • Having a very diverse team with different skill and strengths
    • Super fun to follow the event on the twitters
    • Building something that works in such a short time
    • The organization that did an awesome job! Thank you!!
    • All the teams that built something from nothingness, from flimsy idea to working prototype
    • Using a new framework that we hadn’t used before: Ionic FTW
  • Less Cool Stuff
    • No internets the first couple of hours
    • Using a new framework that we hand’t used before. It can bring a lot of pain sometimes xD

Oh! I forgot! We did not win. Gå 2.0 won (Gå is walk in Swedish, or… go but only when you mean… actually… on foot, or almost because… planes also… gå) . The app is meant to encourage people to walk more through the use of game mechanics and by making it more social, like, “come walk with me”… or “look I am walking!”. You should have seen their video presentation… that was something… Wait! You can actually see their presentation down there (see the dropbox link):

If you want to know more about how the hackathon went, there’s a ton of information, photos, videos on the East Sweden Hack 2014 website (beware because it is in Swedish).

Have an awesome week!!! And, if you ever have the chance to go to a hackathon, don’t hesitate, just go!

inspirationpodcast

Inspiration Corner: Hello World Podcast

The inspiration corner is the space where I share talks, speeches, videos, articles, posts, whatever that helps me keep my motivation, energy and passion fresh. I hope will serve you as well as it does me.

I like to see myself like a beam of positiveness, an inexhaustible source of energy and unbending willpower. Sometimes, however, I get tired… veeery tired. In those moments, I find it is great to recharge with inspiring tales and stories of others. Like this one, the story of… every single developer on how he/she got started in writing software at the Hello World Podcast!.

The Hello World Podcast Logo

Not just another technical podcast. Shawn Wildermuth brings you his “Hello World” podcast where we learn about how your favorite developers tell their story of how they got started writing software!

I was a little bit reticent against the idea of adding yet another podcast to my podcast list (I have to guard and protect my time, you know? ^ _ ^), so I held myself off from starting listening until about the podcast hit the 30th episode. Not my brightest moment that one, not at all, because this podcast is great! Go and check it out whenever you are in need of some inspiration.

Good job Shawn Wildermuth! Keep more episodes coming! :)

P.S. Everytime I hear Wildermuth it reminds of Neuromancer… Does that also happen to you? xD