Paul Randall » work

Language Agnostic Programming

Paul — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:42:42 +0000

Having coded in many languages, and recently when using MooTools instead of jQuery, i’ve come to realise that most actual programming is pretty language agnostic. What I mean is that most languages do the same thing, just very differently, but it is how you contruct your code that makes you a good programmer

Chances are, if you are good at jQuery you will be pretty good at MooTools (after learning the new declarations etc). The same goes for in a larger extent SQL/MySQL/Oracle or ASP/PHP/Ruby etc.

This stems from when I was at college and we would write psuedo-code, programming without any actually code. Something like this:

if number is greater than or equal to 10 then write "congratulations, you are a winner!"

Now this very basic bit of programming isn’t very complex, but when building up larger bits of code, the skill comes in how you construct your code, not what language you write it in.

note: I am still a huge fan of jQuery, but MooTools does look pretty awesome as well. Perhaps I’ll write my own little comparison once I’ve used it a bit more.

HigherSites Launch New Site

Paul — Fri, 28 May 2010 20:32:50 +0000

This is just a quick post to promote the new HigherSites website.

http://www.highersites.co.uk

We’re a web design company in Somerset, and although I have only recently joined the team in April, I have thoroughly enjoyed it so far – working on some great sites with an awesome team!

Procrastination

Paul — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:11:20 +0000

For a while now, my Twitter description has read like this:

A web designer and developer from the UK. I occasionally blog, frequently tweet and often procrastinate.

The last part couldn’t be more true. With RSS feeds, Twitter and other social media, lots of time can be spent keeping up-to-date and researching – but it really boils down to procrastinating (postpone doing what one should be doing).

With the immediacy of these social media, links can come in at any time, easily distracting you away from the current task in hand. Staying ‘in the zone’ can be hard with tweets popping up and other distractions such as IM, text messages and phone calls; chances are you are reading this when something more important needs to be done.

The Solution

Taking a dedicated hour out of your day to deal with these can help alleviate this. You’d be surprised how non-urgent reading your tweets are when you don’t do it for a few hours.

So turn off your Twitter client, IM and sign out of anything which could ‘pop-up’ during your day and give it a go, perhaps taking time out in the morning and afternoon to check-up and see what’s gone on in the real world and see if your productivity increases.