panoptic.com/rking/tech

tech

This revision is from 2012/08/22 01:51. You can Restore it.

This is the stuff I'm interested in. The denominator is the number of LearnUnits I plan on spending on it, and the numerator is how many I have spent so far.

• Programming Practices
• Semantic Versioning 1/2 - http://semver.org/
• 12 Factor 0/12 - http://www.12factor.net/

• Ruby: 21/60
• Testing
• rspec: 3/7
• capybara: 1/4 - HTTP automator.
• Selenium: 0/3 - http://seleniumhq.org/download/ (browser automator)
• Gems:
• Decent Index 0.3/3 - https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/
• "Opinionated Gem" tool: 2/4 - https://github.com/technicalpickles/jeweler
• SlimGems: 0/2 - https://github.com/slimgems/slimgems (RubyGems drop-in replacement)
• Publish a couple: 1.5/3 (both are vaporware, though: pegex and pry-docmore).
• vim support: 5/8 - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2315942/tips-and-tricks-for-using-vim-with-ruby-ruby-on-rails
• Ruby Commander.
• More Advanced:
• Metaprogramming Ruby: 8/10 - http://pragprog.com/book/ppmetr/metaprogramming-ruby (Excellent book. Originally recommended by #ruby's LiquidInsect)
• Higher-performance:
• Concurrency talk by José Valim: http://youtu.be/ojU4O2CMeSc
• Elixir (Erlang + Ruby thing) - http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2011/03/why-rubyists-should-try-elixir/
• memprof: 0/2 - http://www.rubyinside.com/how-ruby-manages-memory-and-garbage-collection-3006.html
• bleak_house 0/2 - http://blog.evanweaver.com/2007/04/28/bleak_house/
• RubyInline: 2/7
• DTrace: 0/3 - http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+dtrace/dtracetoolkit (not Ruby-specific)
• Celluloid: 0/5 https://github.com/celluloid/celluloid-io/
• DCell: 0/5 - http://www.unlimitednovelty.com/2012/04/introducing-dcell-actor-based.html
• EventMachine: 0/4 http://rubyeventmachine.com/
• Internals: 1/15
• Ruby Hacker's Guide: 1/8 - http://rhg.rubyforge.org/
• FFI
• rbx

• Ruby+Web: 19/50
• Rails: 8/20
• Rails Guides: 6/10 http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ (Starting with: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html )
• Style guide: 1/2 - https://github.com/bbatsov/rails-style-guide
• Rails Engine Gems (enginex) - (Replaced with `rails plugin new`) http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/06/23/a-guide-to-starting-your-own-rails-engine-gem/
• Phusion Passenger: 2/6 - http://www.modrails.com/
• Spree: 0/6 - (Open-source e-commerce) http://spreecommerce.com/
• Substruct: 1/6 - (Open-source e-commerce) http://code.google.com/p/substruct/
• Rails Alternatives:
• Sinatra: 1/4
• Padrino: 0/4 - http://www.padrinorb.com/ (~in the spirit of Sinatra, but having some Rails features)
• Seaside: 1/15 - http://www.seaside.st/about/examples (Smalltalk web thing)

• Deployment/Stability: 20/45
• Supervisor: http://supervisord.org/
• "Config Management Systems": 2/10
• Ansible: 0/5 - http://ansible.github.com/ (Simpler)
• Chef: 0/5 - http://www.opscode.com/chef/
• Puppet: 0/4 - http://puppetlabs.com/ (Seems overly-packaged)
• SM framework: 0/3 - https://smf.sh/ (Might be cool, but innuendo is a real minus.)
• Capistrano: 3/6
• Smarter WWW
• Using mod_proxy to Deescalate: 3/6 (Actually, nginx upstream's are nicer)
• Monitoring
• Foreman and Upstart: http://michaelvanrooijen.com/articles/2011/06/08-managing-and-monitoring-your-ruby-application-with-foreman-and-upstart/
• Backups:
• rdiff-backup: 3/5 - More endikos recommendations.
• Sweet mobile sync idea: 2/4 - http://glycogen.net/2011/08/02/android-ubuntu-chroot-synchronization-with-linux-using-unison/
• Ruby + Gems
• rbenv: 3/4 - https://github.com/sharpsaw/ruby-dots/blob/master/bin/,rbenvi (Simpler than rvm, relies on Bundler for gemsets, ruby-build for compilation.)
• rvm: 3/5 - http://rvm.io (Kind of cool, but ends up being a huge pain. Maybe rvm2 will be better, for now I'm 100% rbenv)
• Bundler: 3/4 - http://gembundler.com/
• Config: 24/60
• See: Ultimate Config System

• Web: 27/40
• Reference:
• Opera Web Standards Curriculum - http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/1-introduction-to-the-web-standards-cur/#toc
• Google's HTML, CSS, and Javascript from the Ground Up - http://code.google.com/edu/submissions/html-css-javascript/
• SitePoint - http://reference.sitepoint.com/
• HTML element reference - http://www.w3.org/html/wiki/Elements
• The MDC (Mozilla's Doc Center) - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs
• CSS:
• Grid systems: 2/5
• Intro: http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple-steps-to-designing-grid-systems-part-1
• Penguin example (history): http://thebookdesignblog.com/history-marber-grid
• 5 steps: http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple-steps-to-designing-grid-systems-part-1
• More advice: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/26/grid-based-design-six-creative-column-techniques/
• http://960.gs/
• http://grids.heroku.com/ (Based on 960.gs, but parametric. Endikos's starting point, usually.)
• YUI:
• Reset (strips all browser defaults)
• Base (after Reset, adds back in resonable settings)
• Sass: 4/6 - http://sass-lang.com/
• Alternatives:
• Haml: 3/4
• Slim: 1/3 - Better than Haml?
• …uses Temple: 1/4 - Template→Ruby Compilation - http://dojo.rubyforge.org/temple/
• …and Tilt: .5/4 - Multi-template embedding - https://github.com/rtomayko/tilt (replace pandoc with a Tilt solution?)
• Shpaml: 3/4 - http://shpaml.webfactional.com/source_code (Steve Howell's alternative. Simple - only a preprocessor)
• TODO: html2shpaml
• Nokogiri/Xpath: 1/4 - https://github.com/tenderlove/nokogiri
• Aesthetics
• Just™ Creative design basics: http://justcreative.com/2008/06/13/how-to-design-learn-the-basics/
• Garr Reynolds design fundamentals: http://www.garrreynolds.com/Design/basics.html
• I kind of like this page's font: http://www.refining-linux.org/archives/14/7-Job-control-and-background-processes/
• Nice trick where the scrolling and TOC stay in sync: http://gkz.github.com/LiveScript/ ( http://gkz.github.com/LiveScript/bootstrap/js/bootstrap-scrollspy.js )
• SSL: 8/15
• http://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html - curl's hints.
• E.g.: openssl s_client -connect images.google.com:443
• https://www.startssl.com/ - Free certs (!)
• Open CA: 1/3 - http://www.cacert.org/index.php?id=51
• Slick gem for Encryption - https://github.com/mdp/gibberish
• Payments: https://stripe.com (!) Maybe: Google Wallet / Amazon Payments
• Media:
• Canvas
• Working video/audo tags: 0/2 - http://mediaelementjs.com/
• OpenAL
• Concepts:
• REST: 4/8 - …
• "Hype"rmedia APIs - http://designinghypermediaapis.com/

• Javascript: 12/18
• CoffeScript: 4/10 - http://coffeescript.org/ (Site has Annotated Source, among other things)
• Codeschool: http://coffeescript.codeschool.com/levels/1/challenges/1
• showell's line number workaround.
• Frameworks
• jQuery: 3/8 - http://jquery.com/ (+ jQueryUI, et al.)
• Zepto: 3/6 - http://zeptojs.com/ (Lighter jQuery, doesn't try to work with old browsers)
• jo: 0/6 - http://joapp.com/ (Mobile-focused competitor of jQuery)
• Chaplin - https://github.com/chaplinjs/chaplin (seems like a "convention over configuration" deal (Railsish))
• Brunch with Chaplin - https://github.com/paulmillr/brunch-with-chaplin
• Ember.js - "opinionated JS framework"
• libs
• _: 1/3 - http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/ (Utility methods)
• CommonJS: 0/3 - http://www.commonjs.org/ ("standard library" for JS)
• Backbone.js: 0/3 - http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/ (MVC for JS)
• Commander.js: 0/2 - http://tjholowaychuk.com/post/9103188408/commander-js-nodejs-command-line-interfaces-made-easy
• WebAL 1/4 - https://github.com/benvanik/WebAL @ http://panoptic.com/rking/tmp/WebAL/samples
• YUI
• Asynchronous Module Definition (AMD) - https://github.com/amdjs/amdjs-api/wiki/AMD
• RequireJS: 0/3 - http://requirejs.org/
• Almond: 0/2 - https://github.com/jrburke/almond (minimal runtime after using RequireJS's optimization)
• curl: 0/2 - https://github.com/cujojs/curl
• Tools:
• Performance testing http://jsperf.com/
• Kind of funny:
• Truth matrix: http://zero.milosz.ca/
• "Wat" talk: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

• DBs: 15/40
• PostgreSQL: 10/20
• sqlite: 5/10
• MongoDB: (JSON'ish thing)…
• CouchDB: (Another JSON'ish DB)…
• Redis: 0/4 - http://redis.io/ (Another key-value store thing. Check out: http://try.redis-db.com/ )
• ODBMS: 1/4
• HTSQL: 0/3 - http://htsql.org/ (cce recommended as another way to prototype DBs)

• 3D: 8/25
• Blender: 18/45 - http://blender.org
• Pipeline intro: 2/5 - http://goo.gl/1hepO
• Web+3D: 4/(10..75)
• Shadertoy 2/7: http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/
• P3D.in source (WebGL) 1/5: http://p3d.in

• Full-size OS: 34/75
• Gentoo: 9/25 - http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml
• Overlays: 1/2 - e.g. https://github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-manager/blob/master/doc/vim-addon-manager-additional-documentation.txt line 722
• Linux From Scratch: 0/8 - http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
• POSIX itself: 4/12 - http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/mindex.html
• nixos: http://nixos.org/nixos/
• OpenIndiana - http://openindiana.org/support/documentation/ ("OpenSolaris progeny")
• Philosophizing about scripting and stuff - http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1282
• tty stuff - http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/index.php

• Mobile: 10/25
• Android: 9/20
• Official docs: 3/8 - http://d.android.com/
• Android SDK: 4/10 - http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html - http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-4.0-highlights.htm
• "Notepad Tutorial" - http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/notepad/index.html
• Dev Tools: 2/5 - http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/index.html
• CLI Tools: 2/5 - http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/projects/projects-cmdline.html
• Allocation Tracker: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6807965/allocation-tracker-how-to-use-it-to-detect-memory-leaks
• Android Devs G+: 0/1 - https://plus.google.com/108967384991768947849/posts
• Google Play: 2/5 - http://play.google.com/about/
• SDK Choice: http://codenameandroid.org/category/developer-tutorials/
• ROM: Replicant: 0/3 - http://replicant.us/
• Android source: http://source.android.com/
• Ruboto: 2/5
• https://github.com/ruboto/ruboto/wiki/Tutorial%3A-Using-Bundler
• Cross-Platform: 2/10
• Rhomobile: 3.8/4 - http://www.rhomobile.com/ (kinda sucks, after all)
• http://phonegap.com/ - 2/10 (now Apache Cordova, exposes native APIs to JS)

• PaaS: 3/8
• Stackato: 15/25 - wget get.stackato.com/microcloud
• Heroku: 1/3 - http://www.heroku.com/
• hpcloud: 1/3 - https://www.hpcloud.com/
• Linode: 3/4 - http://linode.com
• prgmr.com: http://prgmr.com/xen/

• Dev System:
• The Git Community Boook: 1/8 - http://book.git-scm.com/
• Git for CS Majors: 1/4 - http://sitaramc.github.com/gcs/
• Git in the Trenches: 4/5 - http://cbx33.github.com/gitt/
• Redmine + https://github.com/schacon/ticgit ?
• Sausage-making: http://sethrobertson.github.com/GitPostProduction/gpp.html
• Ninja (alt. to make): http://www.neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2011/02/ninja.html

• Testing: 12/35
• Better RSpecness. 8/25
• Jenkins ("continuous integration") 1/5 - https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Meet+Jenkins
• Travis 2/5
• diffuser! (Big TODO: http://github.com/ryanjosephking/diffuser )

• i18n
• Test Page - http://web.archive.org/web/20101122142726/http://code2000.net/scriptlinks.htm
• urxvt 3/5 - http://linux.die.net/man/7/urxvt

• HCI: 21/60
• Design:
• StanfordUniversity, How to Build an iPhone App that Doesn't Suck, http://youtu.be/ENyzcXRPeeI
• HIG, good but low-level: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/Introduction/Introduction.html
• Step 1 = Know your users. Dogfood, or really study users. Better to build a great app for a tiny group (initially)
• Step 2 = Search the store. Similarity to other apps helps users.
• Step 3 = Explore possible solutions. Consider the constraints: small UI, difficult input, used for short bursts
• Step 4 = Sketch. "Create 10 designs." "Quality through quantity." Clay pots study (segment told they'd be graded on quantity did better than segment told to do so based on quality)
• Step 5 = Paper prototype. Users learning: Instruction (e.g. tooltips/popups) vs. Discovery
• Step 6 = "Fire up Omnigraffle" (OSX prototyping tool)
• Step 7 = "Do it all again" ("Nothing is precious.")
• Step 8 = Code. (Building the UI before the data can be effective)
• Step 9 = β test. Friends, MTurk. You only get to be on the "New Apps" feed once, so don't get bad reviews early from bugs. (Or maybe release a pre-version under a code name then the actual one?)

• Voice control: 1/5
• media-sound/cvoicecontrol: 0/3 - http://www.kiecza.net/daniel/linux/
• app-accessibility/perlbox-voice: 0/3 - http://perlbox.org/
• Foot-pedal: 2/5 - Figure out what to assign the buttons to.
• Awesome keyboard - http://youtu.be/9yg3s77nAMQ
• Leopold Tactile Touch Keyboard - http://www.elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=leopold,fullsize&pid=fc500rtab
• FAQ discusses different switches (Brown is my frontrunner): http://www.elitekeyboards.com/support.php?lang=en
• Das Keyboard - http://www.neowin.net/news/review-das-keyboard-professional-s
• Clicky, like Model-M (though Leopold offers a similar switch)

• Going Further
• TAoCP: 1/50
• HTDP: 1/10 - http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/ - How To Design
• FP:
• http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/08/you-could-have-invented-monads-and.html
• Learn You a Haskell - http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters
• LiveScript
• SICP: 1/10 - http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ - Scheme MIT course deal Programs, a Scheme book (this is the preview of 2nd ed.)
• Alt Langs:
• "Faster than C, safer than Java, Simpler than *sh" - http://code.google.com/p/anic/
• Verbs vs. Nouns in programming - http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.html

• Saw-sharpenings
• vim
• https://github.com/Shougo/neocomplcache (For cases like working with the `ebayapi` gem, where a simple `P` takes several seconds (though `XP` is local-buffer))

• Other to-reads:
• G.E.B - 2/6
• Prodgy type net guy - http://www.igvita.com/
• Ostio: http://ost.io/feed/ (Github-integrated mailing list killer(?))