Recent Posts

• October 06, 2015

  Ruby: Permissions when writing to files

  File PermissionsUnderstanding file permissions when you write to files is important, because if you use the wrong permission, you could have unintended consequences (overwriting an entire file when you only meant to add something to the existing c...

• September 24, 2015

  Don't Be Lazy: how to ask questions on the internet

  Almost every night, my wife asks me what the weather is going to be like tomorrow. She has an iphone and a laptop, knows how to turn on the television, and can read. But every night, she still asks me, like I'm the farmer's almanac personified. An...

• September 17, 2015

  Algorithms: Big-O Notation

  What’s an algorithm?An algorithm is a hard to pronounce word for something simple: a set of steps that can be used to solve a problem. A slightly longer definition is that an algorithm is a finite number of steps or rules that, if followed, give y...

• September 12, 2015

  JavaScript Objects Look Suspiciously Similar to Ruby Hashes

  Ruby vs. JavaScriptJavaScript Objects Look Suspiciously Similar to Ruby HashesCertain JavaScript objects, Javascript object literals (there are also JavaScript prototype objects, which are similar to Ruby classes, just not as inuitive. Because, Ja...

• September 06, 2015

  Ruby: blocks, procs and lambdas

  blocksFirst, the easy part: blocks! Two ways of representing the same block in Ruby are set out below. In the first case, the block is inside curly braces; in the second, the block is between the words "do" and "end". You would generally reserve u...