Posted on 6/22/2010 12:08:43 AM by Justin Etheredge
Thanks to all of the functional goodness that was put into C# 3.0 we have a ton of power at our disposal. Unfortunately with a lot of this power also comes increased complexity. Programmers usually exacerbate the complexity problem, because unfortunately we often like to sound like we are smarter than we actually are.
We often like to use big words and lots of acronyms to scare away the neophytes. Oh crap, there I go again…
Anyways, one of these topics that is blindingly simple is closures. But I continue to see definitions that are as clear as mud to the average developer. Let’s go ahead and look at the Wikipedia definition of a closure:
“In computer science, a closure is a first-class function with free variables that are bound in the lexical environment.”
All clear, right? Well, if it is for you, then super… you can stop reading. But if not, and the next time this topic comes up you want to sound like Super Duper Computer Science Guy™ ... then keep reading.
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Posted on 5/26/2010 11:57:48 AM by Justin Etheredge
I’ve received more feedback via e-mail on SquishIt than on pretty much any other post or project I’ve ever worked on in the past. I appreciate it! Most all of the feedback has been extremely positive, with people thanking me for creating such a great tool. Well, I don’t know how great it is, but people seem to like it!
Anyways, the one complain that I keep hearing over and over again is that I need to create a better guide to using it. And I agree, even though SquishIt is a breeze to use, I still need to provide a better "getting started" document.
But before I start rambling, let’s get on with the tutorial….
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Posted on 5/17/2010 8:58:03 AM by Justin Etheredge
Richmond Code Camp 2010.1 is coming up this Saturday May 22nd from 7:30am to 5:00pm at J. Sargeant Reynolds Parham Road campus. If you haven’t already signed up, then what are you waiting for?!?! Get over there now! Don’t know what Code Camp is? Well, I’ll let the Code Camp site tell you:
Over 40 sessions concerning software development, methodology, programming languages, database development & administration, business intelligence, reporting, portals and more.
Free registration. Free breakfast. Free lunch. Awesome networking with your peers and dozens of expert speakers. Free WiFi. Incredibly modern classrooms and auditorium. Easy, free parking. Beautiful spring weather (ok, so that one's a guess). What else could you ask for? A foot rub, you say? Umm, no. That's a little weird. We're not touching your feet. But we hope to see you at the Code Camp anyhow.
Check out our website at http://richmondcodecamp.org and be sure to add RichmondCodeCamp@mail.vresp.com to your e-mail whitelist filter so our updates and reminders can get through. See you there!
If you are curious as to what those 40+ session are, then go check out the schedule pdf.
Richmond Code Camp is a blast, and is chock full of awesome talks by some absolutely great presenters. And you know what else? If you show up, you’ll get to meet me. :-) That is what you are really going for, isn’t it?
Posted on 5/12/2010 5:31:21 PM by Justin Etheredge
As I wrote in my last post, I had a little bit of a naming conflict with another project called Bundler. Well, I ran a contest and the results were neck and neck, but the name suggested by my good friend Harper won out. And that name is SquishIt.
Unfortunately, when you delete a repository on GitHub, it doesn’t setup any redirects or anything and it breaks everyone who has pulled down the repository until they repoint their local repositories at the new location. I apologize for this inconvenience, but it is better to get it out of the way now than to wait until the project has even more followers.
You can go find SquishIt at its new home. Please note that the code itself has not yet been updated, but this is going to occur soon to reflect the new name.
Thanks for everyone’s support!
Posted on 5/7/2010 9:20:24 AM by Justin Etheredge
When I created JavaScriptBundler I wanted to create a simple framework that would allow ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC developers to quickly and easily combine and minify JavaScript. Mainly because I wanted something to use…scratch your own itch, as they say.
Then later I added support for CSS, and when I did that, I renamed it to Bundler. Since it was now doing more than just bundling JavaScript. Unfortunately when I did this, I didn’t do my due diligence and search around for other similarly named projects. Because I didn’t do this, I never found out that Yehuda Katz created a project called Bundler (which now seems to be maintained by Carl Lerche).
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