Popularity of Strongly Typed Languages with Type Inference Will Grow

It’s hard to separate the signal from the noise in the tech industry. Shiny new toys show up every day promising silver bullets and one-size-fits-all solutions that are neither. Just look at the current state of JavaScript frameworks as an example. One trend that I think is here for the long haul, though, is the use of staticly-typed languages with type inference. I don’t mean to argue they’ll take over…no one language or ecosystem ever will…but I think that they will continue to gain developer mindshare by hitting a nice balance between the productivity and expressivity of scripting languages like Python or Ruby and the additional help that strong types and a compiler provides.

Tips to Make Computer Science Education More Practical

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. Donald Knuth

Learning To Code: Part Two

In Part One we went over some considerations and candidates for which programming language(s) makes a good first choice to learn. In talking to people who express that they want to learn how to program, a common theme is that they have no idea where to start. In this post, we’ll take a look at some places that could be good places to start.

Learning To Code: Part One

This is part one of a series of posts aimed at people who have made the decision to learn how to code. I’m not claiming to have all the answers, but as someone who recently transitioned from being an infantry officer to a final semester graduate student in computer science and software engineer at a startup, I believe I have some perspective to offer. I don’t envision the series being a step-by-step “How To” as much as it is a distillation of things I wish someone had told me at the beginning of my journey. Take it for what it’s worth, and like anything in life, your mileage may vary.

Just Ship It

In 2012, I put up a Wordpress blog and made a half-hearted effort at a few posts. I started grad school shortly afterwards and the blog fell by the wayside. I tried to resurrect it at one point, and got so frustrated with Wordpress that I shut it down, assuring myself that I’d write my own blog engine and get my site back up with a less bloated framework and more awesomeness. We all know how those things usually work out.