@jnjosh’s internet weblog.
I really like the idea of “asking a lot of dumb questions to learn fast” and while I don’t think this is a dumb question it’s kind of dumb in that it’s a controversial question on the internet. Maybe I can learn something at least? So here it goes.
Why are so many developers so smitten with monorepos?
Cross Platform development for most mobile apps is just simply not worth it. Sure, there are great open source options like React Native and just plain C++ but you end up spending the same time trying to be clever and “share code” when you could have just built your product with all the platform has to offer. There seems to be a lot of realizations this year with Dropbox dropping their C++ components and last year Airbnb sunsetting React Native components.
Debugging is hard. You have to remember what you or someone else was trying to do while understanding what’s actually going on. I don’t remember where I heard it, but there is a saying that goes something like “Don’t write code at the peak of your understanding because debugging it requires 2 times the understanding…”. Sometimes it’s not that it’s hard it’s that there is just too much going on. For these cases, I’ve been using sound.
Apparently I’m not the only one named “Josh Johnson” that has a problem with German numbers. Here is a web-based game by another Josh Johnson to help with your German number learning. It also uses React.js which is something I’ve been wanting to play with. You can see the code on Github.
Realm, which posts amazing videos regularly, has just posted a Guide to Functional Reactive Programming. They discuss the why, the what, the how, and the who all while linking to some great videos. Definitely a nice resource if you haven’t looked into this. I’ve read a lot about it but I don’t think I’ve fully internalized this yet. This will definitely help.
This weekend I spent some time at the Ticketmaster DevJam in Durham. They are working on a public API with events, venues, and more that they’d like to get developers using. For me, it was a day long event with food and building a weird app with some friends.
Interesting, and unsurprising, news today that Xamarin has been acquired by Microsoft. I’ve never used it directly to build apps but I did to some research into using their test cloud system (which is actually calabash-based, something I’ve worked a lot with and have written about before). I hear of a lot of people loving to be able to build iOS apps without learning Objective-C or Swift. This gives Microsoft an interesting position as a vendor of an iOS SDK.
I’ve often wanted to do a yearly roundup of the tools and utilities I use; if only as a log of things I use over time. I did this two years ago in 2012 and when I was thinking about getting back to blogging I wanted to update the list. The funny thing is not much has changed. I’m actually surprised that I don’t use that many tools. Hardware Retina MacBook Pro - Still working with my 2012 Retina MacBook Pro with 2.
Writing a programming language is not something I’d ever attempt to accomplish. However, the idea of getting a better understanding of LLVM is very interesting. This tutorial isn’t a complete lesson in the compiler, but I think it will at least help you learn a little more about it.. “This tutorial runs through the implementation of a simple language, showing how fun and easy it can be.” Sounds fun. I’m in.
I’ve often wanted to do a yearly roundup of the tools and utilities I use; if only as a log of things I use over time. I’ve seen this idea come up often on other blogs, so this is an idea borrowed from other developers on the internet. Anyway, the following is a list of hardware and software I use on a regular basis. Hardware Retina MacBook Pro - with a 2.