July 24, 2017 in Learn
Goroutines Make Concurrency (Almost) Easy
A program that supports concurrency can carry out several operations at the same time. That’s especially important on today’s multi-core computer processors. A program that uses 4 cores at once could theoretically run almost 4 times as fast (well, for…
July 11, 2017 in Learn
Learn the Basics of Spreadsheets for Data Analysis with Treehouse
When I sat down to start scripting Spreadsheet Basics I was super excited to have the opportunity to teach a Treehouse course. I’ve learned so much from Treehouse teachers over the years that even though I’m a leader at Treehouse,…
June 28, 2017 in Learn
Why Go Interfaces are Awesome
In object-oriented programming, an “interface” is a description of the things an object can do. Usually, this takes the form of a list of methods an object is guaranteed to have. C# and Java both support interfaces, and so does…
June 5, 2017 in Learn
Contextual Action Bars: Removing Items from a RecyclerView
In this post, we’ll be looking at the Contextual Action Bar (CAB). CABs are a great way to let your users select multiple items and then take action on all of those items at once. One place you’ve probably seen…
May 24, 2017 in Learn
All About Android AsyncTasks
Let’s say you need to download a few images when you click a button. What would be the best way to do it? Well, since you wouldn’t want to interrupt the main/UI thread (and run the risk of showing your…
May 22, 2017 in Learn
Top 5 Tips for Learning
Learning is hard. It takes time and effort and is a never ending pursuit. So how do we make the most out of our time and effort? Here are my Top 5 Tips for Learning. 1. Spaced Learning If you’ve…
May 2, 2017 in Learn
Now is the Time to Learn Functional Programming
Functional Programming has been getting a lot of buzz lately. What makes that weird is that it’s been around for a long time. In order to understand why it’s so popular now, I think it is important to take a…
April 10, 2017 in Learn
Ruby on Rails: Configuration over Convention
What’s that you say? We have it backwards? Ruby on Rails is supposed to favor “convention over configuration”? Well, we’re going to break that rule today… When I was first learning Rails years ago, I thought that the model, view,…
March 22, 2017 in Learn
Scheduling Work with the JobScheduler
Android Lollipop was a huge milestone for Android. It introduced us to Android Wear, gave us a do-not-disturb feature, and unleashed material design upon the world. Not only that, it also gave us Project Volta, a set of changes aimed…
March 17, 2017 in Learn
An Introduction to React Native
React is a framework created by Facebook for data driven web interfaces. React provides a component driven architecture which uses a declarative syntax and is easily extensible. So what is the difference between React and React Native? React was originally…
March 2, 2017 in Learn
VR Performance Guidelines for New Unity Projects
VR performance is the bedrock of a great room-scale VR experience. Headsets like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift both run at a 90Hz refresh rate (in their current incarnations), meaning that the framerate of your Unity project needs to stay…
February 20, 2017 in Learn
Scheduling Time-Sensitive Tasks in Android with the AlarmManager
In Android, the AlarmManager lets us schedule work to happen at a specific time. If your app has work to do and you’d like it to do that work even when the app isn’t running, then the AlarmManager might be…