DEV Community: Andrew Wooldridge

The Benefits of JavaScript

Andrew Wooldridge — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 22:13:50 +0000

This is a test of ChatGPT writing a tech blog style article on the benefits of Javascript:

JavaScript is a popular programming language that is widely used on the web. It allows developers to create interactive and dynamic websites and applications. In this article, we will explore some of the key benefits of using JavaScript in web development.

One of the biggest advantages of JavaScript is its ability to create interactive and engaging user experiences. With JavaScript, you can create dynamic effects on your web pages, such as hover effects, slide shows, and interactive forms. This can help improve the user experience on your website and make it more engaging for visitors.

Another benefit of JavaScript is that it allows for the creation of web applications. With JavaScript, you can create complex applications that can run in the user's web browser, without the need for any additional software or plugins. This makes it easy for users to access and use your web applications, and it also makes it easier for you to distribute and maintain your applications.

In addition to its ability to create interactive and dynamic experiences, JavaScript is also known for its speed. JavaScript code is executed directly in the user's web browser, which means that it can run quickly and efficiently. This can be especially beneficial for applications that require real-time processing or complex calculations.

Another key advantage of JavaScript is its versatility. JavaScript can be used on a wide range of platforms, including desktop and mobile web browsers, servers, and even embedded devices. This makes it a great choice for developers who need to create applications that can run on multiple platforms.

Finally, JavaScript has a large and active community of developers. This means that there are many resources available for learning JavaScript, as well as a wealth of libraries and frameworks that can be used to accelerate development.

In conclusion, JavaScript is a powerful and versatile programming language that offers many benefits for web development. Its ability to create interactive and dynamic experiences, as well as its speed and versatility, make it a great choice for developers who want to create engaging and high-performing web applications.

I must blog

Andrew Wooldridge — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 05:25:18 +0000

I have been trying to start blogging since the year started, and I’ve had a kind of writer’s block while at the same time getting all kinds of ideas for writing posts, usually after I see someone else who posted something interesting.

But I’m not waiting any more. I’m going to try blogging every day no matter what, and will try to do it early in the mornings.

topics

I wish write.as had a markdown preview, but I suppose one can post anonymously then repost it later. I am going to try that out at some point.

Some topics I want to blog about * Godot Engine * Clockwork Apprentice * HTML stuff * Observable stuff * Storytelling * more!

This is being written on my new iPad Pro, and I have to say it’s a great device. Having a ginormous screen turns the iPad into a gaming and creation device as well as allowing me to jump from thing to thing quickly.

I’m also playing some games like Titan Quest on this device which is just pure fun.

This weekend I want to work more on some storytelling tools on Observable.

Hello, JS Image Zoom

Andrew Wooldridge — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 03:55:10 +0000

Observable: Discovering a New World

Andrew Wooldridge — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 00:14:44 +0000

When you look at technology today, you probably group things into categories such as “Relevant to me” or “Not something I’ll ever use”. However, there are things that you come across as “What is this?” or “What’s the big deal?” where you are unsure as to whether this new thing you are encountering will be a distraction or a possible new source of benefit to you. You hear about things like blockchain, AI, Augmented Reality, and new languages like Rust or GO and you struggle to find a way to make it relevant to your day to day work.

I had that same experience when I was coming across a site called Observable. I saw some interesting posts by folks - mostly dataviz folks creating interesting procedurally generated images - and I simply dismissed the site as a curiosity and moved on.

But then, there was a watershed post by Lionel Radisson called “Observable & Creative Coding”. The article was in Observable, yet it was self-referential in that it walked the reader through the process of discovery that he had been through with Observable himself. Many things resonated with me with that article - especially since I was a “creative coder” myself and it looked like you could do much more than make pretty procedurally generated images on the site. You could do actual work?

I was surprised and intrigued. I began my own “Observable Journey” from that day forward. I committed myself to get over whatever learning curve it took to figure out how to do some of the amazing things I saw from that post. At first I created some notebooks and just nothing worked. The JavaScript was strange and I couldn’t just create scripts with var and have them work. There was an underlying approach to developing on Observable that I was hitting my head against as a “traditional” web developer. I began to pore over tutorials from Anjana Vakil, as well as walking through Observable’s documentation.

Now, mind you, I was still thoroughly on the “frustrated at every turn” side of things. I would read about reactivity, functional programming, and things like generators and run into roadblocks on trying to include some JavaScript into my “Notebooks” as they are called. I was still not convinced that there was something there that was worth my time to invest, but there was a tantalizing taste of this when I would go and look at the “latest” Notebooks that folks were creating.

People were not writing whole complex applications. They were working on visualizing data in new ways that allowed the reader to explore the idea they were trying to convey in dynamic ways. Instead of having some static chart about COVID-19 cases, you could interact with the visualization and that process would allow you to more fully understand the information the author was trying to bring across. But, also, there was an air of “back of the napkin” kind of notebooks. Folks would “fork” other notebooks that kinda sorta did what they wanted, and adapt them to what they themselves needed. But they didn’t spend days trying to learn D3 or trying to shoehorn React into a notebook. Instead they were just “getting things done.”

I decided then to try to immerse myself into this playful idea and I created a notebook a day for 31 days - I called it ( unimaginatively ) 31 Days of Observable. Instead of trying to overthink things, I just had fun and tried to create something interesting and small that explored some aspect of Observable’s capabilities. During that time, I came across one of the learning notebooks entitled “Observable’s not Javascript” which felt, at first glance pretty pretentious since obviously it WAS JavaScript. I mean virtually every notebook you see on the site contains some block of script running. So, what did this mean?

It took me several re-reads and lots of dead ends in my own notebooks to finally get this. And it opened the door for me finally realizing the answer to that question I posed at the beginning of this article : “Is this something useful for me or just some novelty and distraction?” I realized that I had been fighting against the core ideas behind Observable notebooks - and just had been trying to use it as an awkward jsFiddle or CodePen replacement. It’s not like that at all.

In a way, Observable has more affinity to a spreadsheet than a JavaScript runner. Every cell runs independently of the others, can render all kinds of content, and communicates with other cells in a logical and interesting fashion. Every cell can essentially exist as a promise (a coding concept where you can treat the output of some pending action as already returned even though it hasn’t yet). You can leverage this to do things like:

Gather information from remote resources like .csv or .json data.
Pull in JavaScript libraries from the huge NPM ecosystem and run them in the browser.
Upload images, source files, and data into your notebook and share it.
Generate amazing visualizations of data and put reactive hooks into your view so that the user can manipulate ( “reactivity” ) aspects of the data and see changes in real time.
Fork existing notebooks and modify your own version to get to a solution quickly (or use a template built for this purpose). Import cells between notebooks and pull directly into a new notebook (“importing”). This feature alone is fantastically powerful - imagine if you came across some functionality in a notebook you viewed, but didn’t want to cut and paste the code? Just reference the cell in the other notebook!
Leverage Observable’s dataviz roots and natively create D3 or Vega-lite charts.
Create interactive tutorials that not only explain a concept, but give your students the tools to interact with the concepts “live”.
Display any notebook into its own stand alone site.
Embed any cell into another site and all the context is carried over as well!

Now that I understand this, I now think of Observable as an exciting NEW tool that I can leverage in my own projects. I am starting to use some notebooks for the work I do at eBay where I am visualizing the workload for my team and helping make our sprints more effective. You can even create private Notebooks that have more functionality like utilizing secrets for API calls, or shared notebooks that you can co-edit like a Google Doc.

I hope that I’ve given you some food for thought! Observable is a site that is a new kind of interactive concept on the web. Before now we had “sites” that featured mainly static information - best for reading and moving on, “apps” which are primarily interfaces to help us do some task like banking or buying a Playstation 4, and now “notebooks” which are a fusion of both, yet more than that because they allow in one location the learning, practice, and application of a concept. And its ecosystem of capabilities keeps growing every day! What will YOU build there? Let me know!

(Note: Disclaimer. My opinions stated here are my own. No endorsement is implied or explicit from my employer. It's just me gushing about this cool site! )

Getting Back to Writing

Andrew Wooldridge — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 02:06:56 +0000

Lately, I've been working on coding projects, but neglecting my writing. Recently Amazon announced something called Kindle Vella. This is intended to be short form, serial fiction which readers pay tokens to get to the next chapter. It really suits my way of writing, so I'm going to see how far I can go there.

I've also neglected my music listening – to my own detriment. I'm trying to correct all of these things with this blog post. I have so much cool stuff I could talk about, and yet I keep silent and see other's gaining readers through posts that are less complicated and involved than I could get to.

So.

Let's fix that! I need to post more often and share what's going on. And maybe there will be something that interests you, dear reader?

First off let's get to some music!
(sorry dev.to you won't see this )

I know write.as does a great job allowing embeds, so I'm testing this out. There are so many things I could be doing here. Now that I'm vaccinated, it's time to step up and step out.

Current activities:

Going through the Threejs tutorial over at Threejs-journey
Transferring my serial novel The Clockwork Apprentice to [Kindle Vella]
Having fun making cool things over on Observable

Goals:

Write ( every day! )
Create a simple JS web game — dungeon critters
Write more chapters for The Clockwork Apprentice

How to finish a thing

Andrew Wooldridge — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 03:45:05 +0000

Hi there doomscrollers! 📜😱

You know those half-done side projects you've done, those tutorial apps you made but then did nothing with. Those codepens, replits, jsfiddles. They have all served their purpose. You learned a thing. You spent some time coding. You can let them go.

Think of a jogger when they are about to go for a long trip. They do stretches, exercises, running in place. All those projects you've played with are just like that. They helped you get “warmed up” and that's cool. You don't see a jogger upset that they're running in place didn't get them anywhere do you? Even if you fully intended to create the next “Big Thing”. You even got a domain name. Yes, I have been there too. It's ok. These are more like swimming laps. You are figuring yourself out. Seeing what you want to do and you learned from them. Failure is not a bad thing in this respect. You did an experiment and got a result. You can then harvest that code, or those experiences and go farther then before. Or maybe you see you should start smaller. The point is stop thinking about that backlog of stuff you've done as “failures” or “waiting to get done” or “if only I had more time?”.

Stop that. 🛑

They are your trophies 🏆 of work done in the past. Put them down, free up your head. What new thing will you start TODAY? It will be better because of all your past stuff. The spirit of those past projects, tutorials, etc. will live on in your next thing. If you feel like you are just spinning your wheels 🚗, here's some tips:

1) Make something small, but complete. 🎆

You will feel better. Even if it's just a doodle or a index.html file.

2) Be purposeful. 💭

Every little project should point you toward something. It's a stepping stone. Let it be in some direction.

3) Play. 🕹

Some of my best ideas come from just playing around. I didn't know SVG could do half the amazing stuff it can do. This is the opposite of 2) and those two opposing forces is where real creativity comes.

4) Put everything in one place. 📦

Make a github repo of your random stuff. Put it in a gdrive. Have a shelf for your clay projects. The point is if they are all together you can see physically how much progress you are making.

5) Share. 🤝

Did you make a thing? Great! I want to see it! So would other folks! You might inspire someone else. They might (steal) borrow your code, music, or theme. Sharing brings that level of “I must do this” a little higher. And it helps you find like minded people or “fans”

6) When it's done, it's DONE. ✈

When you finish a thing, unless it's something you want to keep building on , then put it away.

You need to learn from it, then let it fly away free to give you head space.

7) Write about it. 📝

You did a thing. Whoo! What did you learn? How did it make you feel? What would you do differently next time? Writing about stuff helps imprint what you learned in your head, it helps to share, it helps you with your voice, and sometimes you might discover aspects of the thing you overlooked when you were so close to it. Writing is good. Write. A lot.

8) Guilt free. 😄

Maybe you weren't happy with that sketch, or you got busy and didn't finish it. It's NO BIG DEAL. It's in the past now. It's purpose fulfilled. Do not let it become baggage or an anchor. Use it to help drive insights into yourself. Why did you not finish it? Are you super busy? OK what can I do to work around that? Maybe I have issues with finishing things? Ok. Why would that be? Feeling like an imposter? Self sabotage? The point is even our “failures” or “half-dones” can be windows into how we work. If we let them give us insights into ourselves, then their value is beyond measure.

9) Do something different. 🎭

You like making React apps? Working with watercolors? Try doing something different. That “other” ness will spark your creative side and put you in a slightly uncomfortable place. That's a GOOD THING. Your brain loves novelty.

You will discover * what is different about this? * how is it the same? * can I make generalizations? * this is kinda cool? * this sucks, and now I know that...

Lastly,

10) Have FUN. 🎉

If you aren't having fun doing a thing. Stop doing that thing. Especially as side projects. You hate Java? Stop and try out... Python! Or you hate doing tutorials. Maybe write one! Or get a mentor and talk! The point is – having fun will energize you and help you finish those (side project) things. So above all, relax. Put away the guilt. And go make something fun!

(See what I did here? I made a thing! I had fun! I wrote about it! I did something different [added emojis]. I put it in the same place [write.as]. And finished it! )

Getting to Day 2

Andrew Wooldridge — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 03:53:34 +0000

I did it! I am doing several things today that are “day 2” of a process that's been challenging for me. During this pandemic, I've seen my attention span drop to that of a gnat on caffeine — flitting from games to novels to coding to whatever seemed interesting for 5 minutes. This due to a desire to stay distracted and not thinking about the times we are in.

But that's changing.

For me, writing is fundamental to who I am. If I'm not writing, then something is wrong. And I've not been writing or doing much for a while. So many times I will try out a thing like https://cables.gl and after a day or so move on. But I know that if I want to regain that lost sense of self, and to move forward as a person, I need to start writing more, and getting my “voice” back. So many goals and plans, I cannot build on them if I'm just doomscrolling all day.

So today is a big milestone for me. I set a challenge for myself to start writing every day. For whatever reason, and who knows what about. But still, I'm writing on day 2! A huge step forward for me.

I've tried off and on to blog for many years, and never really found a good “place” to do it. But with write.as I can write, embed code, apps, and more to create a place where perhaps folks will find something interesting to learn.

I worked on a “TinyIF” game today using Svelte. You can check it out here:

https://tinyif.netlify.app/

Writing about writing

Andrew Wooldridge — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 16:54:29 +0000

I've been off the writing horse for some time now, and while things are not great anywhere, I'm just trying to live every day one at a time and seek out answers as they present themselves. One thing that is bugging me is that I'm not writing. And when I'm not writing, I'm building up a creative “backlog” that makes everything worse.

So, with that in mind, I'm going to try writing “something” every day. And posting it to Twitter will help keep me honest and potentially I'll write something worth reading!

What am I doing right now? I'm working on a tiny interactive fiction experiment called Tiny IF. If I can get this working, I'll share my code and build on that to perhaps get back to the place I was when I was so ambitious about creating a game making tool.

I'm also working on several stories, and just trying to get all the randomness less random. I'm using GitHub as a personal goal keeping tool now, and I'll write about that at some point in the future. I'm also trying to find a game that I can play for more than one sitting. I'm so impatient now and my attention span is so low, I'm unable to even get to “day 2” on many games. But yet I want to play them!

Hoping things go well in the world in the next few weeks. We are on a negative path, and I hope that we can course correct in a huge way.

Anyway, have a good weekend everyone and I'll be back again here tomorrow – hopefully I can at least “day 2” my blogging.

ECSY is an Entity Component System for JavaScript

Andrew Wooldridge — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 06:57:36 +0000

Entity Component Systems are a way to compose complex systems in a way that is efficient, logical, and performant. ECSY is an example of one such ECS for JavaScript, and while it's still early in it's development, is already making some waves.

You can check it out here ECSY -- with some documentation, a few examples, and a discussion group. It even has bindings to Three.js , Two.js and BabylonJS.

This is perfect for games, simulations, and any other situation where you want to create a lot of instances of some entity and efficiently animate, or somehow transform them.

Another example of an ECS for JavaScript is A-Frame

Tracery + Ink

Andrew Wooldridge — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 02:49:45 +0000

https://videlais.com/2019/06/08/tracery-ink/

A discussion of creating a javascript based interactive fiction work using Tracery and Ink.

Visme is a Delight for Creatives

Andrew Wooldridge — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:05:20 +0000

Visme is a Delight for Creatives

When I began my journey to publish my novels I was at a loss to know how I would go about it. I had the artwork, but I didn't really have a good tool for adding formatted text and getting it all put together well. For the first few books I found a site called Canva that worked out really well for me at the time. After posting about my experience with Canva, I was messaged by another site called Visme. They were curious about my experiences and wondered if I'd like to try out their site as well.

I did some research of my own, and I read a lot of good things about Visme, so I decided to give it a try. I had another book I was working on called Sarah7. The Visme folks gave me a free trial subscription so I could kick the tires without the usual limitations. I am very pleased with the results.

As a complete newbie I clicked around and tried things out, then I watched a few of the great videos Visme has that teach you how to use their site. After a short amount of time I was able to create a simple book cover like this :

Here's what things looked like in the Visme interface :

You basically pick what kind of media you want to create and Visme tries to set things up for you quickly. I found the site to be very snappy, with no lag or odd download issues. I felt like I was always in control of what I was working on without a ton of features that I didn't really need. I'm no great designer yet, but I was able to put something together that wasn't terrible.

They have a lot of interesting integrations, and one of the things that really has drawn me to Visme vs other sites like this is that they allow for interactive content. Here's one of the sidebars with options to include Youtube videos.

As someone who wants to create content for booklets and cool tutorials in the future, I feel like I could build them here pretty easily and then potentially share / sell them on Gumroad

Last night while I was thinking about writing this post, I realized there were a lot of things I could use this site for, beyond just book covers and interactive slide decks. I realized I needed to update my Twitter profile pic. I was happy to poke around with their stock images and came up with something I liked in like 10 minutes. Here's my example:

I also liked that I could just jump back in to that file later and add things without having to dig around on my computer for the image.

I've only really scratched the surface of what I could do on Visme. The whole workflow around interactive content seems really fun and easy to do. I'm going to try out some graphics myself and play with things. Visme seems to encourage this playfulness in it's interface :

There are a lot of example templates to check out and get ideas from or just spin off and use for yourself.

Overall, I have had a really good time with Visme and I encourage you if you are a creative wanting to make like PDF content for selling like graphic novels, slide shows, or even just graphics for your own website, I would encourage you to check them out.

Having used both Canva and Visme, I think Visme edges out just because of all the interactive content options you have. I really wish, however that sites like Visme would allow for publishing directly to Gumroad and related sites. It would be so great if I could create some content on Visme and be able to wrap that in a Gumroad or Stripe store and be able to come back later and update things without having to go through all the download / upload process.

Feature requests aside, if you are doing any kind of creation for the web or social media, there's a lot of cool stuff to try out here on Visme.

Oh and one last thing – the Share options are amazing — instead of just downloading some image or creative work, you can host it on Visme and do things like get “leads” from content ( names, emails etc. ) or invite comments and feedback. For instance, here's a link to my Twitter Header that asks for a bit of information before you can view it — perfect for if you are sharing some free information and want to get information about the folks interested in your content:Twitter Header Link

They even have an affiliate program which I've only signed up for today but maybe I'll write more about Visme and share it here. It seems like a great place to start creating shareable digital stuff – so you'll probably hear me talking more about it in the future!

Written with StackEdit.

Godot Engine 3.2.2 out

Andrew Wooldridge — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 06:03:41 +0000

The amazing 2d and 3d open source game engine Godot has released a new version: 3.2.2. You can read more about the release here.

There are several new features and polish fixes.