On Markdown And How Technology Should Behave

One of the primary functions of computers has been, or at least should have been, to simplify tasks. Whether it be computing large sums of numbers, communicating, organizing data, or writing, the job of the computer should be to simplify and streamline these tasks.

These machines are supposed to make our lives simplier not more complicated. Yet, often we allow them to make our lives even more complex working under the assumption that they are doing what they are supposed to be doing: making our lives simplier.1

It’s easy to feel like we are always benifiting from this new feature or that new technical widget but I would suppose, un-uniquely, that this is far from the case.

So it is refreshing that once in a while one stumbles accross a technological development that does indeed operate as it should: to make our lives simplier.

Markdown Syntax is one of those manifestations of technological development that moves the needle away from complication and towards simplicity.

Markdown is:

a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).2

Here’s what that means: you can write words to publish on the internet without having to worry about code. Markdown becomes part of your writing instead of breaking it up or abstracting it. Pretty powerful stuff.3

  1. Facebook and its privacy controls are a perfect example of this. ↩

  2. Daring Fireball: Markdown ↩

  3. This was all written in markdown using Byword.  ↩

An iOS Developer Takes on Android

nfarina:

Recently, we released the Android version of Meridian, our platform for building location-based apps.

We didn’t use one of these “Cross Platform!” tools like Titanium. We wrote it, from scratch, in Java, like you do in Android.

We decided it was important to keep the native stuff native, and to respect each platform’s conventions as much as possible. Some conventions are easy to follow, like putting our tabs on the top. Other conventions go deep into the Android Way, like handling Intents, closing old Activities, implementing Search Providers, and being strict about references to help the garbage collector.

Now, our platform leverages HTML5 (buzzword, sorry) in many places for branding and content display, so we got a fair amount of UI for free. But there was much platform code written in Objective-C that needed translation into Java, such as map navigation, directions, and location switching.

So, we rolled up our sleeves, downloaded the Android SDK, and got to work.

Read More

Computers are really fast; even in the ’80s they were really fast. What that means is there is almost no time between changing your program and seeing the results. That short feedback loop is mentally very powerful. Every few minutes you get a little payoff — perhaps a small hit of dopamine — as you hack and tweak, hack and tweak, and see that your program is a little bit better, a little bit closer to what you had in mind.
How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code - Technology - The Atlantic (via naveen)

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