Hey friends!
This month is going WAY TOO FAST and I feel like we're just zooming over to 2025. Gosh. But, at least we can cool things along the way!
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Web links of the week
Pure CSS Halftone Effect in 3 Declarations
Publishing a simple client-side JavaScript package to npm with GitHub Actions
Math4Devs
Native HTML light and dark color scheme switching
Something that interested me this week
I kept up my blogging this week, again! In case you missed it, I have been writing a blog post for every day in December, and I'm lovingly calling it Blogvent.
Here's the posts I wrote this week:
- Actively learning languages
- Noticing the little things
- The developer relations pendulum swings again
- Choose kindness over pile-ons
- Updating my blog to use Astro Collections
- How to switch to Astro Content Collections
- How to make your RSS feed pretty
Will I keep it up for another week? We'll see.
Meanwhile... watch GitHub this week. We've got some launches this week we've been working hard on!
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Interview question of the week
Last week, I had you wrap some gifts! Awesome job Muhammad, David, Mac, Mazen, Rekha, Ten, Amine, Neha, Austin, Ricardo, and John!
This week's question:
Make a white elephant gift exchange class that simulates the game. It should generate a sequence of random but valid gift-opening and gift-stealing moves for n participants, tracks steal counts and frozen gifts, and ends the game when everyone has a gift.
Example playthrough:
const game = new WhiteElephantGame(4); // 4 players
console.log(game.nextMove()); // "Person 0 opened gift 0"
console.log(game.nextMove()); // "Person 1 opened gift 1"
console.log(game.nextMove()); // "Person 2 stole gift 0 from person 0"
console.log(game.nextMove()); // "Person 0 stole gift 1 from person 1"
console.log(game.nextMove()); // "Person 1 opened gift 2"
console.log(game.nextMove()); // "Person 3 opened gift 3"
console.log(game.nextMove()); // "Game Over! Final distribution: {'person 0':1, 'person 1':2, 'person 2':0, 'person 3':3}"
(you can submit your answers by replying to this email with a link to your solution, or share on Bluesky, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Mastodon)
Cool things from around the internet
Scenes of Reading on the Early Portrait Postcard
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian
Flatbrains PlaketXL with GMK Villanelle
Ultimate Bushcraft Basics: Learn Vital Wilderness Skills Now
Joke
Why do crabs never give to charity?
Because they're shellfish!
That's all for now, folks! Have a great week. Be safe, make good choices, and give someone a hug!
Special thanks to IceSloth, Ezell, Sebastián, Ben, Kinetic Labs, Faisal, and Marta for supporting my Patreon and this newsletter!
cassidoo
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