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grabastic

122 karma · joined January 22, 2011

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grabastic··on Rails is omakase
"what does it really mean?"

It means he's a node troll. They take a shot at the dominant frameworks any chance they can get. Node trolls have reached the level of obnoxious arrogance that early Rails developers were once mocked for. Don't feed the trolls.

grabastic··on Reminder: secret_token.rb is named so for a reason
I'm not sure if you're joking. Github is Git as a service... it's not in the business of software best practices.

Are you suggesting that Github starts tracking all major frameworks, all versions of said frameworks, and the files that should maybe not be version controlled within each of those frameworks/versions?

grabastic··on LESS animation library
I'd imagine it's because people who aren't satisfied with Less are using/contributing to Sass instead... and vice versa. ;)

There are also big differences in design philosophy. I love the if/else, while, and for options that Sass provides, but Less has chosen to forgo that for (imo) a clunkier syntax. Things like that are unlikely to change.

grabastic··on LESS animation library
A simple example...

    // Less
    .rounded-corners (@radius: 5px) {
        -webkit-border-radius: @radius;
        -moz-border-radius: @radius;
        -ms-border-radius: @radius;
        -o-border-radius: @radius;
        border-radius: @radius;
    }

    // Sass + Compass
    .rounded-corners {
        // All vendor prefixes are generated for you
        @include border-radius(5px); 
    }
I'm sure there are plugins for Less that can accomplish the same. I just grabbed this code from the Less homepage.

Another thing... Sass has much nicer control flow (if/else, while, for) that can create very powerful mixins.

grabastic··on LESS animation library
I think that Less has actually won the popularity race thanks to Bootstrap, a nicer website/docs, and front end devs not wanting to learn how to install Ruby. I think it's unfortunate because Sass is technically superior, imo.

http://cdn.css-tricks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Charts-...

(Could be skewed by the audience participating in the poll, of course.)

grabastic··on Use ack instead of grep to parse text files
Also, these aren't particularly good examples of ack vs grep... as others have pointed out.
grabastic··on Use ack instead of grep to parse text files
I'd say start with ack for its ease of use, but knowing grep is important. I prefer ack but most of the boxes i work on don't have ack installed (and won't).
grabastic··on Thinking the unthinkable
This is not just a sad kid and this is not just about pants. Did you ever grab a knife and threaten to kill your mom in front of your 7 and 9 year old siblings?
grabastic··on Thinking the unthinkable
What is not clear about "black or khaki pants only"?

I'm quite surprised that you've chosen to identify with the petulant, knife-wielding child in this article.

Sure feels like you're bringing some personal baggage to the equation... this article is too short on details to draw the conclusions that you have.

grabastic··on Facebook, Google, Zynga Ask Courts To Reject Patents On Abstract Ideas
Google has over 15,000 patents from their acquisition of Motorola mobile.
grabastic··on Why Do All the Great Node.js Developers Hate CoffeeScript?
I doubt that the CoffeeScript-haters would accept any compile-to-js language. Maybe it's language stockholm syndrome. ;)

But for me, JavaScript's shortcomings are far worse than CoffeeScript's.

grabastic··on Show HN: Telescope, an open-source social news app built with Meteor
I always prefer text as well. I can get the information quicker and if I'm looking for a particular piece of information I don't have to scrub through a whole screencast.
grabastic··on D3, Conceptually - Lesson 1
I don't see why the author needs to add a "what is D3" section to a tutorial. A visitor to a tutorial site for library_x is pretty likely to know what the purpose of library_x is.

I think he's targeting his audience well. I'd imagine most of his users arrive like this...

  1) I need a data visualization library.
  2) D3 seems to be a good one.
  3) Read the D3 docs at the project's homepage.
  4) I still need help learning D3.
  5) Google for tutorials.
  6) End up at this person's tutorial.
"What is D3" would make sense if users did this in reverse (like I'm sure some people clicking on this news item have done), but I don't think that's the normal use case and I don't blame the author for not addressing it.
grabastic··on D3, Conceptually - Lesson 1
(I might have missed it in your tutorial, but if not...) It might be worth noting for your readers that attr, style, property and similar methods can accept an object as the argument. Might save people a tiny bit of typing...

    root.selectAll('rect')
            .data(rects).enter()
        .attr({
            x: function (d) { return d.x; },
            y: function (d) { return d.y; },
            width: function (d) { d.w; }
        });
https://github.com/mbostock/d3/pull/277
grabastic··on Introducing the Rails API Project
thanks. i'll give it a try... it wasn't on my radar. :)
grabastic··on Introducing the Rails API Project
I'm very excited about this as well. Any hints about what's on the roadmap?

Would love to see easy versioning with custom mime types and link headers for pagination and associated resources. Maybe that doesn't belong in core... but it would still be pretty cool.

grabastic··on Everybody Hates Firefox Updates
Although... to my great frustration, Chrome has made pretty big changes to their preferences pages over time.
grabastic··on JQuery 2.0 Drops Support for IE6/7/8; API-Compatible with jQuery 1.9.
1.9 and 2.0 have the same api
grabastic··on State of the Backbone
Thanks! I'll click along as I listen.
grabastic··on State of the Backbone
Jeremy's a nice looking guy, but I wish we could see the presentation. Anyone have an alternate recording?
grabastic··on A UI experiment: show "just the content"
yep. on macbook pro side scrolling was great... although i imagine that might be a bit unpleasant on less advanced trackpads or desktops.
grabastic··on A UI experiment: show "just the content"
I love it. No friction.
grabastic··on Supporting IE Is Too Much Work
Or it's the truth and his ~450 projects have been of low to medium css/js complexity.

Or even high complexity and he got really, really, really lucky.

grabastic··on On RESTful API Standards – Just Be Cool: 11 Rules for Practical API Development
Great edit. I was starting to wonder what all the opposition to PATCH was about.
grabastic··on On RESTful API Standards – Just Be Cool: 11 Rules for Practical API Development
Many frameworks overload the POST operation and allow the desired verb to be specified in the data.

Rack::MethodOverride does this for Rack-based apps by using the value of the _method parameter as the http verb.

grabastic··on Show HN: My afternoon project - Pink Noise mp3.
Nice. I've been using http://simplynoise.com at work for a long time. (Brown noise) :)
grabastic··on A simple experiment suggests a way to encourage truthfulness
Thanks for the explanation... I didnt quite get the trick as it was described in the parent.
grabastic··on Don’t Be Evil: How Google Screwed a Startup
He's probably talking about the Apple that gives customers brand new iphones or upgraded macbook pros when they experience simple hardware issues with their original purchase.
grabastic··on Bootstrapped startup saves over $100K by dropping IE
You seem to be taking this rather personally.
grabastic··on Open-letter: Did hackernews become hateboard?
haternews. I couldn't agree more.
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