Hard to believe the Ruby language is 26 years old now. It’s definitely a programming languge that I never get tired off. My only regret is I didn’t pick up this language sooner in my career.
Code and coffee combo this morning. Working on some changes to my bookmarking app to allow for a multi-account deploy. Almost there with it. Also there’s been another name change. Last one I promise!
I'll keep building for the web
When it comes to building ideas for applications, I will always choose the web first. It’s what I can I do best and it is where I can ship those ideas more efficiently. I can go from that first line of code to a shippable idea in hours. After that, I can just iterate on that idea when I want to.
There’s another benefit to building for the web though. You have access to a bigger market.
At a startup, engineering resources are scarce. It’s expensive to spread your engineering expertise across different platforms, so it’s better to focus on one in the beginning. Building for the web means that users on mobile, desktop, Chromebooks (which have become the most popular EDU hardware in the US), and any other internet-connected device can use your service, whereas a native app is specific to iOS or Android.
I’ve toyed with learning Apple’s programming language, Swift. My goal is to learn how to build iOS apps. It’s not that I have some Candy Crush busting idea that will net me millions, it’s just something I would like to learn.
Even if I had the knowledge to build a native app in the same time that it would take build a web app, I think I would still go with making a web app. Native apps serve their purpose, but I think we’re seeing more viable alternatives through web apps.
Cutscenes looking worse than the game itself? I don’t know about that. In fact, I can’t remember the last game I played that would fall into this category.
Superhero movies snubbed no more
I’m not one for paying particular attention to the Academy Awards, but even I had to do a double-take when it was announced that Black Panther earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Not that I think it doesn’t deserve it, it indeed does, and it is a fantastic film. It’s just that these types of movies never seem to make the final list of nominees.
No longer can superhero movies be classed merely as summer blockbusters and be relegated to specific award categories as they have been in the past.
That was the assumption, anyway. Between 2009 and this year, superhero movies still didn’t receive much attention from the academy in its biggest categories. That’s the entire lifespan of Marvel’s current Cinematic Universe — a total of 22 movies passed over. Genre films have largely been relegated to the science categories, including Visual Effects.
— Black Panther is the first superhero movie to earn an Oscars Best Picture nomination by The Verge
It’s taken a long time for these movies to be recognised and hopefully, we will continue to see a broader range of films being nominated for Best Picture in the future.
I had no idea about the “Firefall” that occurs at El Capitan at this time of year.
“Firefall” occurs when the setting sun reflects off of Horsetail Falls at a certain angle, making the waterfall emit a fiery orange glow. It is highly dependent on environmental factors: If the skies are cloudy, that orange light will not hit the east side of El Capitan—the vertical rock formation where the falls are located— and the phenomenon won’t occur.
— Viral photos show Yosemite’s “firefall” phenomenon glowing in California
The pictures of this are just amazing.
Just realised that my bookmarking web app Commonmarks shares the same name as CommonMark, the strongly defined Markdown format. Time for another name change me thinks. I’m open to suggestions. 😉
I dare you to find a better picture of the moon than this one. I also think I have found myself a new wallpaper for my iPhone’s home screen.
Kurt Harden’s hunt for the perfect album continues. I have to say, this is fast turning into a great playlist for Apple Music or Spotify. 🎵
Cup of coffee on my desk. Pen and paper ready. Text editor open.
My three essentials for weekend hacking on code.