Posts Tagged ‘Review’
|Book review: Learn to Program by Chris Pine
Tuesday, July 19th, 2011
I’m not a developer and I don’t want to be a developer, but I want to be able to build small apps when I need to, to understand better the code wrote by the people I’m working with, and to put together simple prototypes. That’s why I decided to give it another shot at learning a programming language, in this case Ruby. I chose Ruby because I love its syntax: simple, elegant, readable. Also, it happens to be the language behind the Ruby on Rails, a widely used web framework that I’m planning to learn next.
After some research, I decided to read Learn to Program by Chris Pine, and I’m glad I did so. The book is a pleasure to read, thanks to the colloquial style in which the book is written. Every concept is really well explained, with several example to support the explanations (and please, always re-write the examples with your editor, even just copying helps to impress those concepts in your memory). At the end of each chapter, the author also invites the reader to take on simple challenges (with possible solutions at the end of the book) to practice the concepts just learned. Beside a couple of challenges, I think they were all very well calibrated for each chapter, and I guarantee you, you’ll feel proud of those little programs you’ll write throughout the book.
After been done reading the book, I feel I have good handle on the basic Ruby syntax, and I’m able to write simple applications. Of course the hardest part is to get used to the logic required to write some programs, but I’m sure time and practice will improve that. Definitely Chris raised the bar for the next programming book I’ll read (yes, I’m looking at you Ruby on Rails Tutorial).
You can find Learn to Program at The Pragmatic Bookshelf
Tags: Book, Review
Posted in Developing | 2 Comments »
Tower, a new Mac client for Git
Monday, November 1st, 2010
I know, I know, enough with these Git clients, use that damn Terminal app! I see your point but for a lot of designers and non-terminal people, having a user-friendly client can be a great way to be introduced to Git. A few weeks ago I was asked to beta test Tower, a soon-to-be released Git client for OS X that is easy to use yet very powerful. The interface is a little more elaborated than other clients like Gity or Gitty, but it that doesn’t seem to affect the ease of use. At the same time, if you like minimal interfaces, you may like Gity’s simplicity better.
On top of the regular Git functions, some of the nice features offered by Tower are a repository manager to keep track of your repos, direct integration with Github, and a stash support.
Tower should be released in November, if you want to read more about it you can visit http://git-tower.com.
Tags: Applications, Git, Review
Posted in Developing | 2 Comments »
Things I use: my menu bar collection
Friday, May 28th, 2010
As you can see from the image above, I have a quite few application icons in the menu bar of my Mac, so I decided to write a post about them. I think those are really great application and I’m sure some of you could find them helpful too. From the left:
Notify: It’s a really minimal email client, that completely run from your menu bar, you can read and send email, perfect for quick emailing, and it also links you to your mail application. Perfect if you use Gmail or other web email services.
Dropbox: This is my main file sharing platform. I use this daily to share files with the rest of 39′s team so we always have the latest version of what we are working on. And you don’t have to do anything, just add it to your Dropbox folder and it just works.
Little Snitch: It’s a great application to make sure that anything can go in or out from your Mac without your permission, and also monitor your network usage.
CloudApp: This is another file sharing tool, just simply drag a file to the icon and it will be uploaded to a server and the link to it will be placed in your pasteboard. I mostly use the screenshot feature, so that every time I make a new screenshot, it automatically uploads it to the cloud and creates a link to it.
Snippets: I use this application to manage all my snippets of code or portion of test I need to use often. It has a great shortcuts support and it makes writing boring stuff (code included) much faster.
Alfred: This is a quicklaunch application (similar to Quicksilver), really fast, beautifully designed. I’m so used to it that I use it even to switch to already opened applications.
Air Display: This is the latest addition to my menu bar. This application lets me use my iPad as an external monitor over wifi. Really handy if you ask me.
I hope some of these apps could help you as well. Now the question is: what’s in your menu bar?
Tags: Applications, Review, Software, Things I use
Posted in Apple | No Comments »
Gity, a Git client for OS X
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010
Since we started working on Get Apps Done, I had to deal with Git. I never used Git before that, but Heroku, a great platform for hosting Ruby on Rails projects, forced me to. Using Git isn’t too complex, but when you start getting errors or merging problems, then a nice interface would be very helpful. The first client I tried was Git GUI, not really an eye candy but it was getting the job done, but still it didn’t offered me a nice and clear interface for Git. GitX, another Mac OS X Git client, was definitely a great UI improvement, but it was somehow incomplete for what I needed. Finally I recently discovered Gity, in my opinion, a very well done Mac OS X client. The interface is very Apple-ish, and it makes easier to solve problem even for a designer like me. While it had a $18 price tag until recently, now Gity is free and open source, and you can download it from Mac Endeavor’s site.
Tags: Applications, Git, Review, Tools
Posted in Developing | 6 Comments »
iPhone Application Sketch Book Review
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Links to the mentioned products:
iPhone Application Sketch Book
iPhone Stencil Kit
Tags: Book, iPhone application, Review
Posted in Apple | 4 Comments »
Two weeks of Magic Mouse
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
It has been about two weeks since I received the Magic Mouse I won thanks to Mobclix, so I thought I’d share with you my impressions.
First of all, the object is beautiful. It could sit on my coffee table in the living room, and my guest would never guess it’s a mouse. As far as functionality, I think we are facing an evolution jump as big as switching from a mouse with a track ball (do you remember them?) to a laser mouse. No more cursing when the page doesn’t scrool, no more experimenting with new ways of cleaning the scroll-ball, it just works… Beautifully and flawlessly. When you first start using the mouse, the shape could make it a bit uncomfortable; it’s significantly flatter than its predecessor, and the movement to scroll the pages could feel awkward, but after a few days you won’t notice it anymore, and you’ll soon wonder why no one thought of this earlier.
On the downside, Apple decided to remove two of the four buttons: the middle and the “squeeze” buttons. Honestly, if I didn’t win the mouse I wouldn’t buy it for that exact reason. Button 3 and 4 were my access to Exposè, and I just couldn’t live without it. As far as multi-touch control, Apple only gives you two buttons (left and right), the 360 degrees scroll and a double swipe left and right to control the browser history and other stuff, like iChat tabs or to scroll through your e-mail messages in Mail. I was actually surprised Apple didn’t take more advantage of some functions they already enabled for the Macbook’s touchpad, such as multiple-finger movements to trigger Expose and Spaces. But luckily, just a couple of days ago, I found an awesome software that lets me set up all sort of multi-touch gestures and now I fully control Expose and more simply by “caressing” my mouse. I’m sure Apple will release an official driver to do all these things soon, but for now I’m happy with how Magic Mouse and BetterTouchTool are working together.
Tags: Magic Mouse, Multi-touch, Review
Posted in Whatever | No Comments »
Clicky Web Analytics Review
Friday, November 28th, 2008
A couple of weeks ago I stumbled on Clicky, a analytic service and so I decided to give it a shot.
Click here to visit Clicky official site.
Tags: Analytics, Clicky, Review
Posted in Whatever | 1 Comment »
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