Users fill out forms faster with unified text fields

Of course, then you have more parsing to do - often of messy data indeed - but it's good to note that there is, in fact, a tradeoff that deserves careful consideration. [article]

Android programming and levels of abstraction

Here (on G+) is a thoughtful little essay by an iOS dev who's bought an Android. His own tl;dr is this: "within a few days of iOS programming, I had a working app. Within a few days of Android programming I was just beginning to understand the abstractions."

And his overall prescription is that Android, while it lets you do a lot more, makes you work harder for it: "We need more abstractions to get us (app developers) up and running in less time, with 95% accuracy."

And I'll bet you see the solution I would have in mind if I had the time to devote to it, can't you?

VVVV: a visual programming language

Now ported to Javascript. Very nice. Original implementation at [vvvv.org].

Example application description

Here's a fantastically detailed application specification from Guru.com (738799):

Description

I am looking for a fairly simple piece of software (you can make it as complex as you want, see below). It will track auctions and all bids and bidders for the item. In other words, software that will temporarily log members' bids on auctions.  This is strictly for the penny auction website quibids.com. Check it out and familiarize yourself with the job.  I don't care how it works just that it preforms this simple task but it must produce organized and readable info/data that is sortable and updates live with the auction.  It must also either have the ability to open the program multiple times for multiple auctions OR (will pay more) the ability to track 2 or 3 auctions with a single process.     PLEASE MENTION IN YOUR BID WHICH OF THESE OPTIONAL FEATURES YOU PLAN TO INCLUDE. (if any)  (Optional) Expect more money if you have the expertise to add these features, it is not required, however.:  - Ability to track multiple auctions (hoping for up to 5) in one process  - Checkbox to keep program on "top"  - Feature that allows me to "hide" users on the tracking list for an auction that have X number of minumum bids placed. for instance 10 bid minimum or that bidder wont show up on the populated list.  - Create alerts that creates a sound and popup to tell me when bidders are reaching maximum value for an item. For example on a 100 bid pack auction when all bidders are either under 10% value (10 bids or less) or over 90% (90 bids or more). Or maybe if theres only just one bidder left who is between 10-90%.

This should be trivial. I should be able to simply translate that into pseudocode and have it 90% written. That's the point of semantic programming. After I have Depatenting working, I think maybe I'll cycle back around to GUI work like this.

Jumpchart

A website charting/planning app? Maybe worth analyzing.

Link dump

Eesh, my browser tabs are getting too full again. Here, in no particular order of importance:

• Guru.com, another jobs site. No feed that I can see.
• Yottaflow, an online workflow site. Dammit.
• A little overview of SQLAlchemy, apparently a Python ORM.
• Github site for Anorm, a new very transparent PHP ORM.
• Wolfram have introduced the (apparently open) Computable Document Format.
• h5ai, a drop-in Apache index that really looks nice and works well.
• I can haz some...? A browser capability testing framework.
• An overview of possible military manipulation of social networks.

UI pattern database

Food for thought.

Schema creator

A JS tool to create schema.org entities. Very neat!

25 great links for data journalists

What the title says.

Code katas for Web developers

A nice little list of possible beginner Web projects - intended to be weekend projects - to wit:

1. Simple blog with comments.

2. Pastebin with short URLs.

3. Todo list site (sans JS).

4. Add authentication to 1 and 2.

5. Site to send text messages with Twilio. (API use.)

6. Upload target site on E3.

7a. AJAXify #3.

7b. Add user accounts to #3.

8. Create a JSON/XML API for #3 or whichever.

9. Wrap said API in a package in your language of choice.

10. Expense tracker with pretty graphs and export to CSV or Freshbooks or whatever.

There are other simple project ideas along these lines that I'd like to start to catalog, but this is a great start. Normal people would use these for learning a new language. I'm using them to build one.

Target application: wordstash.com

This should be relatively easy to clone, actually. And it's a great vocab flash card site!

Metaprogramming in Python

Short article.

Data parsing

Well, I want to read a DVD again, so I'm back to the notion of data parsing [earlier], which is creating a description of a data structure, then reading it into a nodal format for ... whatever.

This is essentially what I was doing with PDFs for reading, too (except there it's going through an API); I just need to formalize it into a coherent domain.

Wiimote interaction

Now this is cool! A Javascript library cleaning up the mess that is Wii interaction. Maybe I could get the boy interested.

PDFkit

PDF generation for node.js. Hmm.

Scaling: HTTP caching

Some good advice. "Varnish".

Blow-by-blow comparison of AI in a couple of languages

Fun article on implementing a Connect 4 engine in functional and imperative languages and wrapping it in a framework to play it. Nicely written up!

Signup form best practices

You had me at "best practices". [article]

Infinity

There are just a whole heap of good site components nowadays: smoke.js.

Underthesite.com

Cool little technology-stack database, apparently derived automatically, that indexes by URL and by technology. A lot of knowledge there. Makes me think I should probably archive it or something.

Similar tools from the HNN peanut gallery: http://lineofthought.com/, https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler, https://github.com/mitsuhiko/probe, http://wappalyzer.com/, http://builtwith.com/.