PinkLetter - Learning Css, Php, and JavaScript in one week at university

Welcome to my PinkLetter. A short, weekly, technology-agnostic, and pink newsletter where we cultivate timeless skills in web development.

My Ramblings This Week

How do you keep your knowledge fresh?

Reading my emails gets you up there in the Olymp, but it’s not enough.

I still remember a guy at uni who learned Css, Php, and JavaScript in one week. When I asked how the hell was it possible, he told me he watched videos on Lynda at 2x non-stop.

There was only one problem: he thought he was Neo in Matrix, but when asked to write code on the spot he looked like Wile E. Coyote right after running off the cliff.

But he had one advantage: he knew (some of) what was possible to achieve with those technologies, he just needed to google the details.

Consuming a ton of content brings unknown unknowns into known unknowns. That’s a great first step, but sometimes you need to try something to understand and internalize.

Let me suggest a better strategy:

• Expose yourself to a ton of stuff; my PinkLetter should help.
• Note down the things that keep coming back (not the latest fad) and pique your interest.
• Every week save a few hours and check one item off the list by actually using it.

Elsewhere on the Web

SQL tricks and concepts you didn’t know about by Aleksandra Sikora

Did you know that some SQL variants are Turing complete and let you write any program in SQL? Of course, no one’s that crazy… But what are the limits of SQL? What are some crazy things we can do with it? I’m going to go over a few of them in this talk. It won’t be only fun stuff, though! I’m going to show some more practical but lesser-known concepts too. Let’s discover some hidden SQL traits together!

Riccardo: Aleksandra had me at Brainfuck interpreter using a recursive CTE.

Sound of Colleagues by STHLM & Red Pipe Studios

We missed the sound of our colleagues so much that we created this website as a substitute.

Riccardo: We should build a similar page where you choose the switches of the mechanical keyboard too. For real nerds.

10 modern layouts in 1 line of CSS by Una Kravets

In this dynamic talk, Una goes over the power of modern CSS layout techniques by highlighting a few key terms and how much detail can be described in a single line of code. Learn a few layout tricks you can implement in your codebase today, and be able to write entire swaths of layout with just a few lines of code.

Riccardo: Flex and grid nuggets.