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clintjhillon DotCloud.js - Access Cloud Services from the Browser

I've thought about this too. For me it's a matter of what somebody really "gets" with those keys. If I'm compromised by someone whose taken my keys and programmed a script against my service are they stealing anything? Well if I've applied some form of ACL and provided some secondary authentication against data they shouldn't be able to query I should be Ok.

Likewise with user accounts. If they take my keys, and somehow get someones password they'd have the same access they would otherwise have through the GUI. If I put user passwords into the code, well yeah that's totally bad on me.

I don't know. I'm not a security expert, however I've not been able to catch a problem with this. I'd love to know better.

clintjhillon Parse launches JavaScript SDK: Parse for Websites

I'm of two minds about this. On one side I think it's a very smart service to use. It removes what otherwise might be a ton of work to duplicate. On the other side I think it's a very dumb thing to be bound to.

They certainly free you from their service by allowing an export of your data. But what about all the code written to the API? If at some point in the future you decide you don't want or can't afford Parse - it's nearly a re-write. Unless you abstract their API in an intelligent way. Even then there is some work.

clintjhillon Show HN: My 1-year project, iPad IDE with GitHub and Heroku integration

I know the future might be LightTable ... maybe. But for now I'm happy to see that it's becoming fashionable to have your IDE "small" and "thin". Not only in the hardware that you use it on, but also in the features and functionality. Even the idea of distributing the execution of scripts is appealing. Sometimes it does feel as though I want my laptop to just deal with the text (format, highlight, modify with ease) and have some other device take care of the execution and simply ping me when things are going well/bad.

Right now our world it text based. And efforts like this make that circumstance better IMO.

clintjhillon Content Based CSS

That's a very good thought. We struggled with that during the development of -hitch-has() and a few others. Ultimately we landed on the position of getting an implementation out there that was functionally equivalent.

CSS Selectors 4 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-selectors4-20110929/#subject) points out a syntax that is currently using "$". But that has also been suggested as "!" in the past. It's a tough thing to get nailed down, but we decided we'd rather not wait to have the functionality.

clintjhillon Content Based CSS

Yes in trivial cases you might put a class on the P element. But what about when you have dynamic updates to the DOM? If I have 15 P elements in a collection and not all have content (think of a discussion thread and comments) - how would I specify which P elements to style vs. those I don't want styled?

The ability to style based on content of the selector is powerful in this case.

clintjhillon Content Based CSS

Thanks for taking a look. We'll get on those links (thanks for that! ).

Hitch is quite a bit different than Sass/LESS. I wrote about this here: http://clint-hill.com/2012/05/06/changing-how-css-works-hitc...

Essentially Hitch looks to add behavior to CSS where Sass/LESS looks to make writing CSS easier. We love Sass/LESS and don't believe it's a competition with the libraries.

clintjhillon Content Based CSS

(one of the authors) We agree with you. Yes it is being discussed. But you can do it now with Hitch. Our goal with Hitch isn't necessarily to create a new standard, as much as it is to influence the standards to move more quickly. Likewise with browser vendors.

I read in that blog article you mentioned :local-link. Hitch also supports this but with even more ability: http://hitchjs.com/describe/bkardell.links/1

We'd love all the feedback we can get. Thanks for taking a look.

clintjhillon How To Train Your Robot

This reminds me of a lot of classes where we never touched a computer. Instead we drew our programs on paper and then tried to write the programs to make them on screen.

If it weren't for Logo, I don't know if I'd have ever grown to love programming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)

clintjhillon Show HN: Meteor, a realtime JavaScript framework

Another part about this kind of magic IMO is that it requires you to start from the ground up within this system. Otherwise the magic is either not doable or very hard. I know it's a tired argument but it's a reality - enterprise will have a hard time reaching for this kind of thing because it's so full-stack. Not easily separated without breaking all the magic. Maybe I've missed something about it, but it appears this way.

clintjhillon Everything's Made Up and The Points Don't Matter - raganwald's posterous

I don't intend to minimize your point, rather I want to point out that if you are saying "don't write unless it's real" you are really truly stepping over what value creative writing provides. Even to disclaimer is to say ignore what was written because it isn't real.

Creative writing for satire or parody are critical aspects of humanity. It is unfortunate when lives are at stake as a result. But there are so many writings in human history that do this - what is your proposition for those?

clintjhillon Khan Academy iPad app launched

I agree with the point of your question, but I do know that in some cases it's a matter of codebase count. Which is to ask would it be better to have 1 codebase that serves as your website and native views? Or is it better to have X number of codebases for your views based on the number of platforms you'd like to be on? Especially when in all cases the views should be the same regardless of platform/native.

Sometimes native is forgone to provide more centralization of views. It's not always good to custom build for every platform when you want consistency in your UX across all platforms.

It all depends.

EDIT: Grammar.

clintjhillon Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

I didn't know about this and it's quite interesting. But I wonder why it no longer exists this way? Is there a reason why a "for-profit" discontinued a service like this?

EDIT: Seems I found a clue ....

"In 1862 insurance companies told the government that they were unwilling to be responsible for London’s fire protection as the cost of compensation was becoming too high. The government decided that the Metropolitan Board of Works would take control."

clintjhillon Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

For things that are super good, super useful but not profitable nor predisposition for voluntary support how does a community get those things? Especially those within the community whom might not afford otherwise? And especially when the lack for them causes cascading affect to the whole of the community?

Seems to me an outbreak of disease by the poor surely effects the whole and that we all would do well to pay a "tax" to prevent that?

clintjhillon Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

Police, Emergency and Fire departments are all "good" and "provide value" however they are not profitable. Nor do people run out to voluntarily pay for them. And there are a few cases where counties/municipalities created subscription like fees for these to the effect of somebody losing a house to a fire while the fire fighters stood to watch.

This is the core of the problem with "no taxes" - principally it's good on paper. In reality it's more complicated than that.

clintjhillon How to be a faster writer

burst-pause-evaluate

It's interesting that sometimes you can mentally prep to get into a long multi-hour session of code writing. But in reality I never really do that. It's always burst-pause-evaluate. The tiny iterations stacked up on top of each other could be called "flow" or "in the zone".

clintjhillon Whatever it is you want to say, just say it.

This feels similar to the advice I give my kids. When they get into circumstances where fighting feels like an option, I remind them to "use their words". I try to emphasize that not everyone they meet will "use their words" and that the smarter person should.

The down vote seems similar to me. Instead of down voting, try using your words. And when you're down voted, use your words. A down vote is a lost opportunity to extend the argument. It's an absolute with no explanation in of itself. In my opinion - worthless.

clintjhillon I don't know how to IE6

I realize you're trying to help. However.

Necessary evil is an "enabling" statement. In my opinion this doesn't help circumstances but only prolongs it.

It's more evil than necessary and it's only necessary because we keep allowing it to be.

clintjhillon I don't know how to IE6

This debate is getting really thin. It seems we all live in a world where 5-6% of users are on IE 6. Yet we give this percentage huge leverage in our development efforts. Arguments that "clients are using it on sites/services they pay for" are misguided. What everyone should be doing is developing against forward looking APIs (HTML 5) and shimming to the non-compliant browsers. And for IE 6 in particular we should develop UX that let's the user know they are missing out, with instructions on how to update. It's not about ignoring them or leaving them in the dark - it's about educating them on what they are missing. Just the security aspects alone could prompt a user to update.

For the corporations who still image the desktops and/or make IE 6 standard: stop buying vendor products that require it. Easier said than done I know. But if serious IT groups were serious about saving money and/or standards they'd simply admit that IE 6 is costing them more than an update to their "standard browser".

clintjhillon Cdnjs - the missing cdn

The HTTPS support is required so that you don't get the mixed content warnings from some browsers.

It's a must have.

clintjhillon The Little Manual of API Design

I appreciate the small reference to "The Elements of Style" by Strunk. That book has helped me refine not only my writing but also my software design.

clintjhillon Don't Be Evil

How about for starters don't do this:

  <body onload="window.print();">

clintjhillon Firefox doesn’t hoist function declarations in blocks

Yes - that's not the point however. It's the "hoisting" that is different within those blocks.

Firefox isn't hoisting based indirectly on spec.

This can be circumvented by not using function declarations and instead using variable declarations (which I believe do get hoisted in all browsers).

clintjhillon A little bit on Javascript magic inside C# code

The question I have (almost always when reading things like this) is what are the real advantages to a language being both static and dynamic?

The only thing that I can think of is that you can have a type system, but then ignore that whenever you want. But even as I write that it feels like I've made a mistake.

clintjhillon TDD is horrible while learning a new language

This is a fair argument to make: "Remove unnecessary layers or complexity when learning new languages." And I also don't TDD when learning a new language - in the beginning.

However TDD (when done pragmatically) is actually a great way to dive into a language. The thought process of mocking the file system is actually _where_ you learn about the language/libraries/frameworks. You have to understand those APIs a little bit before you can properly mock them.

... like how do I run the tests? I run into this a lot when I code as well. But I have to remind myself that I don't need a runner from a framework in order to do TDD. Don't even need a framework.

There is nothing about TDD that says you have to use any unit testing library. It's a process. And if understood properly and used pragmatically can be an excellent way to learn a new language.

clintjhillon Google+ Technological Details

I would love to hear why GWT wasn't used more. It seems to me that GWT is not widely used even at Google.

clintjhillon Joyent and Cloud9 partner to self-provision their SmartMachines from Cloud9 IDE

This will be very interesting to watch. I remember when other IDE tried to setup this up (Visual Studio had a "hosting" feature for a while). Because the tech stack was so "config" heavy it was very difficult to get right in a lot of cases.

NodeJS doesn't suffer that problem. In fact it's one of it's major advantages in my opinion.

clintjhillon Nginx doesn't suck at SSL after all

I don't know that it required an apology or if he was even really wrong in the first post.

The result was his digging into it to figure out the default config included a computationally expensive setup.

That's a debatable thing. Not necessarily wrong.

clintjhillon Nginx doesn't suck at SSL after all

It's great to follow up. Especially with such a particular detail.

It's also good to have thick skin. HN can be aggressive. But for good reason. I'd be willing to bet this tiny sting will result in more rigor in the future. I know it has worked that way for me.

clintjhillon Schema Creator

I wouldn't characterize it as "semantic". It is definitely the Microdata spec from HTML5. But it's barely semantic.

clintjhillon Bored People Quit

I would apply the same methodologies to finding out if your problem solvers are "happy with the solution(s)". There are plenty of occasions where engineers are handed solutions they aren't totally keen on. The same trap can be landed in.

It's not always about being bored. Sometimes its about being satisfied with the solution. And in my opinion, both are equally problematic.