Object-Oriented JavaScript – Part II (encapsulation)

Oct 6 2009

To carry on our tutorial on object oriented JavaScript, as our next step will be on encapsulation.

What is encapsulation? Gary Booch defined encapsulation as “the process of compartmentalizing the elements of an abstraction that constitute its structure and behavior; encapsulation serves to separate the contractual interface of an abstraction and its implementation.” Sounds smart eh?

So let’s dummy it down for this example. I’m sure you noticed, and I hope you asked yourself, in our previous examples, what if someone used a method that was being used with one object with another, well that methods scope would be over written by the new one. To ensure that each object can have it’s own method, we would have to write the method in the scope of the object. Did you “whuh?” there again? Maybe a code example will help. Read more »

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Stored Procedures in Postgres

Oct 2 2009

There are two schools of thought regarding stored procedures. On side for them, you’ll hear about the virtues of cross-language functionality (any language with a Postgres database wrapper can run the functions, saving re-writing in separate libraries), they’re fast (precompiled), they operate in transactions and you can specify varying amounts of permissions. On the side against them, you’ll hear about the difficulty debugging them due to caching issues, testing can be a pain in the butt and deployment isn’t all that fun when you’ve got clustered databases to worry about. I believe there is a use for stored procedures, and, when used correctly, can make for some modular goodness. Firstly, let’s take a look at a sample stored procedure.
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Weekly Link Roundup – 2009-10-02

Oct 1 2009

Ten IT Concepts That Non-IT People Don’t Get

Often IT workers get the same question over and over again. This is a somewhat humourous and serious look at the top ten concepts that non-IT people often get confused with. Read More…

Pros and Cons of Flash-based Sites

Some few years ago flash sites were the greatest thing since sliced bread, since then we’ve smartened up and found weaknesses with this next big thing, but the importance of Flash on websites still remains strong. this list looks at some pros and cons of flash based web sites. Read More…

9 Ways to Make Your Writing More Compelling

As a newer blog writer, I found this list compelling and helpful in regards to making me a better writer. Can you tell the improvement? Probably not. Read More…

10 code snippets to interact with Twitter

Twitter is an interesting and annoying tool. I have a different site set to automatically post a “tweet” when new content comes in, which I think is really cool as another avenue to promote my site. However I do find I get a lot of spammer accounts signing up to follow my account so, is it really worth it? Nonetheless, here are some cool snippets to help you interact with the Twitter API. Read More…

CSS techniques web developer should use

Web Developers should always be looking at improving their CSS skills, especially with the coming of CSS3. What doesn’t kill you makes you a stronger developer, right? Read more…

That’s it for the weekly link roundup this week!

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5 Questions To Ask Interviewers

Oct 1 2009

To keep this site relevant with its web address, I’d like to discuss some questions that we as developers should/could ask prospective employers during the interview process. While doing research on the company through means of Search Engines and the company website, one often can struggle to come up with questions for employers. A company website isn’t always a full indicator of the type of company you might work for and as a developer sometimes there are other things on our minds and we should consider asking them, to make sure the job is a fit for our comfort zone. Read more »

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Object-Oriented JavaScript – Part I (Objects)

Oct 1 2009

OOP is a style of programming that allows you to define or manipulate your data as objects with attributes and methods applied to those objects. These objects can include features such as polymorphism, inheritance, encapsulation, modularity and more. If you’ve never used object-oriented-programming(oop), this post does assume some knowledge of OOP methodologies, hopefully you can follow along.

Object-Oriented JavaScript is an interesting topic, since Javascript can be easily written and run in procedural form. OOP is intended to help maintain software quality and making use of reusable attributes and methods. JavaScript isn’t really an Object-Oriented language by default, but it is object based so we can utilize enough of the concepts to make our scripts work.
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Rounded Corners with CSS3

Sep 29 2009

To start off my first blog posting, I will keep it simple with a tutorial on rounded corners via CSS. A Google search brings up multiple ways of doing rounded corners, with images, javascript, css, HTML tables and more. For the sake of simplicity and adapting to the new CSS3 syntax we will look at how to do this with the new option for borders: border-radius.

CSS3 is currently in development, and we can keep an eye on the progress here: CSS3 progress report. Mozila/Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari 3 have adopted the border-radius function. An interesting note is that in mobile browsers there is support for border-radius in the iPhone and any other devices that run the Webkit engine. Where does that leave Internet Explorer? Interestingly enough, Internet Explorer 8 is compliant with the CSS2.1 specification and supports some features of CSS3. However border-radius is not one of them. Are we out of luck for IE, keep reading and you will find out.
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Welcome To Unemployed Developer

Sep 28 2009

I’d like to welcome any new and returning visitors to “Unemployed Developer“. The idea for this blog came about when taking part in many interviews with prospective employers. As an unemployed developer looking for work, I often found myself struggling with questions. For example,  I received questions about a topic that I could make work or I knew the basics, but could not describe in a cohesive manner that showed the interviewer that, yes I do have knowledge about said subject. I also I felt that, while I did not have projects to show an interviewer knowledge of some topics, I certainly could blog about some topics and gain first hand knowledge, thus making a much more hire able developer.
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