HELLO FRIENDS!

Hope your weekend was splendid. This is a little later than usual because, well... let's be real, I started playing and it consumed my entire weekend and I regret nothing.  Anyway.  Let's go.     Two major media things made my week amazing. The first was . I finally got to see the movie, and I admit I teared up multiple times. Not out of sadness, but out of this odd sense of... awe. For the first time in a LONG time, I was getting goosebumps and this feeling of, "I want to be a part of that." I felt like I was a kid watching what I wanted to be when I grew up. And that feeling was overwhelming, because girls today have such amazing movies (WW, Hidden Figures, even Moana) that they can relate to and be empowered by, and this will inspire a whole new generation of women in the future. And of course, the feeling isn't limited to women. It's just one of very few women-centric movies in the genre that did such an amazing job, and I loved the movie. Highly recommend it if you haven't seen it (whether you're a woman or not). The second thing was . So, going into it, I knew that Zelda games are amazing, and that this one is very "open world" (like Minecraft or something). I had no idea what was in store for me. This game has an element of polished freedom that I genuinely think . It's open, and doesn't have a very linear timeline, and yet you still have quests and objectives you can complete (or not). It's limiting in all the right ways, and freeing in the best ways possible. My giddiest moment was when a bunch of monsters were chasing me, and I realized that I was only chased because I was on the same path as them, so I just jumped off the cliff next to the road and climbed around the mountain. It's so flawlessly executed that you feel a total immersion as you explore the way you want to, not the way the game guides you. 10/10, would also recommend.   Note: Be sure that your Card class includes suits AND numbers!     I burned 2000 calories today. That's the last time I leave cookies in the oven while I nap.   Alright fam, it's been real. Be safe this week, make good choices, and eat some cookies.

Hola familia!

Hope you had a great week, and you're excited for this next one. And if you didn't, I hope the joke today helps. Until then, let's get tootin. 
 

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Web links of the week

A Unified Styling Language
Superhero.js
The largest Git repo on the planet
The Power of CSS
chromatism
Free JavaScript Game Dev Course
 

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Something that interested me this week

This week I started working on some Roku development, which has been quite the trip so far. Roku uses a language called BrightScript exclusively for its apps.  At first I wasn't a fan I admit (I kept looking up, "why is BrightScript a thing" frustratedly, and found a couple Quora answers that somewhat answered that), but once you get the hang of it, the language is pretty straightforward and is really built for Roku, so there aren't many workarounds you have to deal with to get a well-functioning app going.  If you have some content you want to show off on Roku, it's an interesting platform and I recommend checking it out purely because it's kind of weird (which makes it kind of cool).
 

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Interview question of the week

Write a function where given a pattern string like "ABCCA" and an input string like "redyellowbluebluered", return true if and only if there's a one to one mapping of letters in the pattern to substrings of the input.

> patternMatch('ABA', 'keyboardkey')
true
> patternMatch('AA', 'fishyfish')
false

 

Helllllloooooo!

Happy Memorial Day to those in the USA, and for everyone else: Happy Monday!  Let's get jiggy with it.
 

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Web links of the week

Data-driven Vue.js
oodo: Open source apps to grow your business
What's new in Create React App
npm 5.0 released
Introducing Twilio Functions
 

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Something that interested me this week

This week, as some of you might know, I spoke at Twilio SIGNAL!  I talked about how quick and easy Vue.js is and then live-coded up a NASA search engine Vue.js app.  The JSON parsing broke on stage (the joys of live-coding), but about a minute after going off I found the issue and pushed it online for ~the world~ to see.  Once done with my talk, the conference was really interesting and fun.  Twilio released a bunch of new products and really emphasized promoting diversity and inclusion in tech, and launched Hatch, an engineering apprenticeship program.  They had a big party at the end called $BASH that was full of games, puzzles, music, and lots of food.  After literally running to play and win games all night, I had enough points to win a Nintendo Switch, so I personally had a blast. ;)
 

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Interview question of the week

Given a list of menu items and their prices, and the amount in your wallet, return all combinations of items that you can buy.

Example:

menu = { 'taco' : 1, 'burger' : 2, 'shawarma' : 3 }
wallet = 3
> combo(menu, wallet)
['taco', 'taco', 'taco']
['taco', 'burger']
['shawarma']

 

It's time to chow down. On some knowledge. And humor.

Hey friends!

Welcome back. You made it through another week. Congratulations. Last time I got several complaints from a large number of you is that I didn't include a jokes section. So I'll have two this time to make up for it. Here we go.   I ate a lot of cereal this week and started to wonder about how we, as a society, got to eating breakfast cereal. So I looked up the , which was interesting. All of the articles and information on the subject mostly touch on how it was made, and who were the people making it. I'm curious about what consumers initially thought of it when it came out. Because it was designed to be "ready to eat", it reminded me of how something like Soylent is being marketed right now. Some of the first machines that made cereal were marketed as the "8th Wonder of the World" and said it was the "food of the future". Which, if you look up right now, you'll find dozens of articles saying just that. Today, people seem to either love or hate Soylent (and the people who drink it). I wonder if it was similar when breakfast cereal started to become popular. Did people oppose it saying something like, "kids these days don't appreciate a hot meal", or did they quickly embrace this new form of consumption? These are the things that haunt me. We may never know.   Last time we had some fun answers submitted online.  from Jordan Scales! This week's question: Example usage: if you don't know what postfix is!     This one is courtesy of a friendly Lyft driver: A lawyer is sitting next to a woman on a train and is bored.  He decides to make a wager with her to pass the time. The wager is that if he asks her a question and she doesn’t know the answer, she has to give him $5. But, if she asks him a question he doesn’t know he’ll give her $500. She reluctantly agrees to the wager. The lawyer’s first question to her is "what is the distance from the Earth to the Moon?" She doesn’t know, so she gives him $5. Her turn. She asks him a riddle: "What has four legs going uphill, three legs going downhill?" He gets on his phone and tries to look up the answer. Nothing. He calls his friends and they don’t know the answer either. He acquiesces and gives her $500, and stops playing the game. Later on during the trip, the lawyer begs her for the answer because its killing him. She gives him $5. And another one that I owe y'all for missing last week: Why can't you use "beef stew" as a password? Because it's not stroganoff.   And there ya go! Hope y'all have a lovely weekend. Be safe, and make good choices.

Hey friends!

First of all, before moving on to anything else, I just wanted to give you a quick thanks for signing up for this. You definitely didn't have to.  But I'm hoping that this thanks makes you feel emotionally obligated enough to not unsubscribe. Now, because this is my first note out to everyone, I'm going to try a format and if it's good, we'll stick with it. If you hate it, that's okay, you can feel free to reply back and let me know what you'd like to change. I'm here for YOU. Hope that makes you feel powerful.   This will normally be a list of development-related articles that I read each week. Some might be old. But usually not.   I asked on about text-based game engines. There were some neat resources that might be of interest to you:   Thought it might be good for you to get your brain moving each week. I'll post a random (not too hard!) interview question here for your practice! So, this week's question is:   Not everything on the internet is about tech. Shockingly. Here's some fun things I've found and seen that are fun and worth looking at!   And there you have it! Hope you enjoyed. Or at least tolerated it enough to stick with it. Or hated it enough to let me know that I should try a different idea. But not something crazy, like eating really hot peppers. Maybe you could suggest I try whittling wood blocks. Until next time, friends!