I’ve been using the Microsoft stack at work for the past year and a half and my company has been an active practitioner of agile principles. I’ve learned a lot but there’s still tons more to be learned. This book comes recommended. Get the PDF here.
10 Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read
Some of them are quite dense and beyond my understanding but they’re worth a read.
Programming With Math Made Easy
I never found memorizing physics formulas to solve silly problems about cars driving up hills and slipping on ice particularly compelling. What is cool is adapting these formulas and using them in code to make physics simulations. I can’t recommend the book The Nature of Code enough for learning how to turn physics formulas into observable examples. I’ve been using the wonderful Codea app on my iPad to write all the simulations. The examples in the book are written in Processing and Codea uses Lua so a little conversion needs to be done.
Implementing a Job Queue with Node.js
Here’s a quick tutorial on implementing a messaging system for communication between discrete components within an application. Only downside is that it needs Redis.
Storing Map Tile Information Using Binary in JavaScript
For the MMO (“massively” being used very loosely here) I’m working on, the server and client communicate using TCP by sending plain English words to each other. I know this is inefficient but it makes the code more readable when you see a command of “MOVE” instead of “101”. I’ll switch over to binary eventually and use this article on representing map tile information in binary as a reference.
A Primer on Neural Networks
I stumbled upon this neural networks tutorial and it did a great job at explaining how neural networks work and showing how a basic implementation would look in C++. I looked around and found a free online book that goes more in-depth with the math.
Swift Resources
My Mac Mini is collecting dust. I’d love to learn Swift so I’ll add this to my mental to-do list.
Interview Programming Questions
LeetCode OJ is a platform for preparing technical coding interviews. Pick from an expanding library of more than 190 questions, code and submit your solution to see if you have solved it correctly.
Algorithms are definitely my weakest skill so this is going to be good practice for future interviews.
Precise Control over Numeric Springing
I found a really cool post on numeric springiness. While the author has the article listed under game math, adding spring to UI elements can make them feel more satisfying.
Setting Up Node.js, Express, Jade, and MongoDB
Get a full stack up and running from scratch in about an hour with this tutorial. This is an absolutely beautiful introduction to these technologies.