One of my favorite euphemisms of this political season is Low Information Voter. It describes a person who lacks a basic understanding of the issues, yet stills feels compelled to vote. I like the term so much that I felt compelled to apply it to my favorite group: developers. Here’s my list of things (in no particular order) that would make one a Low Information Developer.
For whatever reason, dark IDE themes are all the rage these days. Somewhat surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of great options available for IntelliJ IDEA. So, I decided to make one.
Sass is a language / framework which compiles down to CSS. The thing I like most about Sass is how it helps you apply the DRY principle to your style sheets. If you use it well, you can drastically cut down “copy-and-paste” code and actually get reasonably maintainable CSS to work with.
One of the more interesting (and useful) features in WordPress is custom post types. As the name suggests, WordPress allows you to define your own post types which are treated just like existing ones (i.e. Posts and Pages).
Though support for modern standards is limited in IE8, it’s not impossible. Here’s how to add support for HTML5 elements and web fonts.
Here’s how to configure a Mac to debug web sites in IE
Most devs are naturally inclined to start finding solutions as soon as we hear a problem stated. Yet no matter how satisfying it may be to immediately board the bus to Solution Land, it is always worth it to take a moment and ask ourselves a simple question: “Do I actually understand the problem?”.
I would guess that most CS students don’t know what they need to pay attention to. After all, there are millions of ideas competing for their attention and they all seem equally important. But they’re not.
Solutions of the “magical” variety go out of their way to hide (obfuscate?) the underlying implementation. They present the developer with a Faustian bargain: I’ll make it easy for you to get things done so long as you don’t question how I work.
I’ve known for some time that WordPress is an excellent blogging platform. It’s both easy to get started with and infinitely tweak-able. As it turns out, WordPress is also a great platform to develop themes for.
I met a student recently who was looking for a software engineering internship. As I often do in these situations, I asked him to describe a cool project he worked on. He trembled slightly, adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses, and began speaking in a barely audible, breaking voice.