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Learning JavaScript in 30 Days (Or Less!)

January 31, 2017 / Tom

When it comes to writing about learning JavaScript in 30 days or sharing a link to a resource that I know almost everyone else in the web development industry has likely heard of, it causes me to pause when writing a post about it.

Learning JavaScript in 30 Days

I mean, why bother, right? I’ve heard of it. You’ve heard of it. So what’s the point of reiterating something we’ve already heard?

Two reasons:

We’re one month into 2017 and, if you’re like me, you’ve adjusted some of the goals you’ve set for yourself.
The start of a month is always a good time to begin a, ahem, month-long journey.

And with that, I’m thinking that I’m going to be going through Wes Bos‘ #JavaScript30 course throughout the month of February. (A 30-day course in the shortest month of the year. 😁 I know, right?)

Why Keep Using WordPress If You’re Not a Fan?

January 30, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you work with any set of technologies for a long enough period, you’re going to develop a sense of what you love, what you like, what you dislike, and what you hate about it, right?

Honestly, I think this applies to just about anything we do, or we use regardless of if it’s related to our jobs or hobbies or what have you.

At this point, I’ve worked with WordPress long enough to develop a sense of all of that (and it’s not limited to the core application either).

And, to go ahead and be clear, this post is not about the problems that I see with WordPress or with anything tangentially related to it. Nor is it about the things that I think it does well.

Instead, it’s about asking why would anyone – you, me, or anyone else – keep using WordPress if they aren’t a fan of the platform for development?

You Should Come to WordCamp Atlanta 2017

January 27, 2017 / Tom

Last year, I had the opportunity to attend WordCamp San Diego, WordCamp Atlanta, WordCamp US, and several local meetup groups and enjoyed my time at all of them. This year, I’m trying to spend less time attending conferences and speaking for a number of reasons (all of which really have to do with wanting to focus on work-related stuff).

WordCamp Atlanta 2017

Since I live just outside the city, though, I’ll be at WordCamp Atlanta 2017. Further, I’m looking forward to speaking on the developer track.

Sharing Our Programming Problems (Is It Lipstick on a Pig?)

January 26, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

I was recently reading another programmer’s blog post on Coding skills you won’t learn in school in which he was specifically talking about Object Ownership. The topic of the blog post is good in and of itself, and if you’re into lower-level programming, such as C, and data structures, like trees, then it’s worth a read.

Programming Problems: Object Ownership

But just as I was closing the tab, I came across the following paragraph at the bottom of his post:

Broken software, bad job offers: I”m sharing my mistakes so you can avoid them.

In short, it’s an invitation to join his mailing list (which is fine), but what really caught my eye was his call to action:

I’m sharing my mistakes.

For anyone who writes on the web – myself included – I think a lot of us do share our mistakes, but I couldn’t help but think about the way we go about doing it.

And it now has me re-thinking the approach to some of the posts that I’ve written and that I’ve yet to write.

A Bit About Micro.blog (And Why I Backed It)

January 25, 2017 / Tom

In a deviation from the typical type of content I write, I want to share a bit about Micro.blog in case others have yet to hear of it, why I backed it, and what I hope it aims to do for the web.

About Micro.blog: The Kickstarter Page

In short, the whole purpose of Micro.blog is to provide an easy place for people to both write and own their short form content.

From the Kickstarter page shown above:

Today, most writing instead goes into a small number of centralized social networking sites, where you can’t move your content, advertisements and fake news are everywhere, and if one of these sites fails, your content disappears from the internet. Too many sites have gone away and taken our posts and photos with them.

And the service is targeting services Twitter, Facebook, and other similar sites. Don’t get me wrong: I like and use Twitter, but I also know that whatever it is I post there is up to the discretion of the service on if the content persists.

But there’s more to it than that. At the time of this writing, there’s a week to go in the Kickstarter, though it’s far surprised its goal, there are some things about the service I’m excited about and want to share.

Tom McFarlin

Learning JavaScript in 30 Days (Or Less!)

Why Keep Using WordPress If You’re Not a Fan?

You Should Come to WordCamp Atlanta 2017

Sharing Our Programming Problems (Is It Lipstick on a Pig?)

A Bit About Micro.blog (And Why I Backed It)