Author
I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien, I'm an Englishman in Portland. All of my professional life I've worked with computers online. I'm a polyglot programmer and like using the right tools for the job. In my spare time I enjoy spending time with my young family and when I get chance, sticking opponents in Halo 4. You can find me in most places @chalkers.
November 25, 2022 in Learn
Starting out in the professional development arena is pretty daunting. I am self-taught and I don’t have a degree. Broaching my first full-time position was pretty scary. What would the interviewer think? I thought I knew how to improve my…
May 20, 2022 in Learn
There may come a time where you want to download an image in the background instead of seeing it load like this… …have it load like this: Overview Whether you have an image gallery with high-res images, or you’re creating…
May 12, 2022 in Learn
Note: This post was edited on 10/8/20 to more accurately reflect Node.js’ possibilities! Thanks to Treehouse Instructor Reggie Williams for the updates. Node.js is a completely free, open source server platform. Not only is it used for making simple websites,…
May 12, 2022 in Learn
TypeScript is a programming language that is great for large-scale JavaScript projects. It’s essentially JavaScript with optional typing, and because it’s a compiled language, it’s not interpreted on run-time. The TypeScript compiler takes TypeScript files (.ts) and compiles them in to…
January 15, 2020 in Learn
JavaScript is used everywhere today. From its birthplace in the Netscape browser in the mid-nineties, it’s made its way into all modern web browsers, onto mobile phones, and into electronics to make full-fledged web applications on the server-side with Node.js….
April 5, 2017 in Treehouse News
Treehouse has teamed up with Amazon to teach developers and non-developers to build Alexa skills. The course, Build an Alexa Skill, has been released today! What is Alexa? Alexa is a voice service from Amazon that powers devices like the…
February 1, 2016 in Learn
Heroku is a cloud application platform that allows developers to deploy dynamic applications in Rails, PHP, Node.js and Python web applications. This platform can also help with managing and scaling apps, and is incredibly user-friendly. Before Using Heroku In order…
October 29, 2015 in Learn
To understand the nuances of what it means to be a developer or a designer let’s take a walk down memory lane and end with where we’re at today. A Little Bit of History When I started dabbling with HTML…
October 8, 2015 in Learn
Humans, with our big brains, are built for one thing: learning. Having a brain like ours allows us to survive and adapt to many environments, including hostile ones. We’ve been to the depths of the ocean and to the surface…
August 18, 2015 in Learn
I haven’t been so excited since the early days of jQuery. React is a JavaScript library initially developed by Instagram/Facebook for building user interfaces. Since it has received a lot of attention recently with companies like Netflix, Walmart, Tesco, Airbnb…
August 10, 2015 in Learn
A task is something you need to do. If you want to perform that task over and over again, as you do in development, you’ll save yourself a lot of time if you automate the process. Common web development tasks include…
July 20, 2015 in Learn
“So I’m allowed to cheat?” Shocked and confused, this is what my wife, Lauren, asked me late last year. Earlier that day she told me she’d like to code. I thought this would be an amazing opportunity for me as…