Tag: javascript

AngularJS Training

Over at work, we’re re-launching a line of business from some years ago: training. Specifically, an Angular “Boot Camp” course to help developers become productive in some powerful but daunting tool.

Why? Because we think AngularJS (and its competitors like Ember) are an important step forward in how complex “single-page” web applications are constructed. The AngularJS approach is not the only good way to build such applications (for example, over in the Clojure space, Pedestal is genius; elsewhere in JavaScript, Facebook React is very appealing). But AngularJS is popular, growing fast, and suitable for many application needs.

Our Interns Built a Mobile Web App, Here is Their Story

This summer, we hired three interns to build a mobile web application and learn a bunch in the process. Here is their story, in video form:

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If you don’t have Flash installed (and thus don’t see the video above), you can try this direct link to the video. It plays well on most platforms (including an iPad).

It is also available on YouTube.

Write your whole stack in JavaScript with Node.JS

Node is a combination of Google’s V8 JavaScript implementation, and various plumbing and libraries. The result is an unusual and clever server programming platform. Node is in a fairly early development phase, and already has a remarkably active community: ~9000 mailing list messages (as of June 2010) and many dozens of projects and libraries. I’ve spent some time digging through Node code and writing small bits of it, and was pleased with what I found.

Why is Node worthy of attention?

  • JavaScript is a Next Big Language, it is everywhere. It is probably the most widely used programming language ever.
  • I know a few things about asyncronous server programming, having done a lot of it in 1990s IVR software; it is very well suited to serving a large user population.
  • Node is accumulating libraries at an impressive rate, indicating momentum.
  • There are significant advantages in developing a whole application stack (server and client code) in a single language. For example, this makes code and business logic sharing works across tiers. Using Node, a JavaScript-HTML tool, a JavaScript-CSS tool, JSON, etc., it is possible to develop a complex web application using only JavaScript.

Node is not all unicorns and roses though.; my most serious misgiving about it is that it does not (yet) have a great strategy to make straightforward use of many-core servers. We’ll have to see how that develops over time.

Node Knockout

The team at Fortnight Labs is putting together Node Knockout, a 48-hour Node programming contest. I am a fan of such contests. I’ve offered to help out by being a judge, and I’ve also signed up Oasis Digital as a sponsor.

As a judge, I can’t be on a team; I’ve like to see a team or two form here in St. Louis, though.

Excellent JavaScript talk from Yahoo

Over at Yahoo Video you can watch an excellent talk by Doug Crockford on JavaScript (part 1). (part 2, part 3, part 4) This is likely the best introduction to JavaScript I have seen, and worthwhile even if you’ve been using JS for years.

Why does JavaScript matter?

1) It is ubiquitous now (in nearly every browser, in Flash as ActionScript, etc.)

2) It is likely to be the default choice for building scriptable Java applications, due to the Rhino JS interpreter “in the box” in Java 1.6

Update: These videos are more conveniently all on one page here.

Java Scripting Talk – Code, Notes, and Audio

Last night (9 Nov 2006) at the St. Louis Java User Group, I gave a talk on “Scripting Your Java Application”. As I mentioned, there were no slides, but rather a handout, the text of which is pasted below. You can download the handout (a tight, one page PDF), the code, audio of the talk (WMA), and audio of the talk (MP3, larger). The audio was recorded with my Olympus WS100 Digital Voice Recorder, so the quality is bearable but not great.

Update: As an experiment, I also had CastingWords prepare a transcript of the talk. It’s somewhat tedious to read (I didn’t edit it at all), but it is available as Google fodder rather than trapped only in audio.
Continue reading “Java Scripting Talk – Code, Notes, and Audio”

Java Scripting talk, Nov. 9 at the St. Louis Java User Group

This Thursday, I will give a talk at the St. Louis Java User Group on “Scripting your Java Application”, Thursday Nov. 9. Here is the blurb:

First, this talk will show how to plug in scripting capability to your application, using common scripting mechanisms, including those from the scripting related JSRs (223, 274, etc), and point out the tradeoffs in selecting a scripting mechanism and/or language. Then the bulk of the talk will focus on the questions of Why and Where: the motivations for scripting support, areas of an application that warrant such support, and placement of scripting plug-points across client/server application tiers. Lastly, it will address script/application API design and plugability, including the ideal of an end-to-end script plugin.

My current plan is to use no slides, only a 1-page handout and code on the screen. (Yes, I’ve been to an Edward Tufte class…)