Functional principles come together in GraphQL at React Rally

Sometimes multiple pieces of the industry converge on an idea fromdifferent directions. This is a sign the idea is important. Yesterday I spoke at React Rally (video coming later) about theconfluence of React and Flux in the front end with functionalprogramming in the back end. Both embody principles of composition, declarativestyle, isolation, and unidirectional flow …

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An Opening Example of Elm: building HTML by parsing parameters

I never enjoyed front-end development, until I found Elm. JavaScript with its `undefined`, its untyped functions, its widely scoped mutable variables. It’s like Play-Doh, it’s so malleable. And when I try to make a sculpture, the arms fall off. It takes a lot of skill to make Play-Doh look good. Then Richard talked me into …

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Left to right, top to bottom

TL;DR – Clojure’s threading macro keeps code in a legible order, and it’s more extensible than methods. When we create methods in classes, we like that we’re grouping operations with related data. It’s a useful organizational scheme. There’s another reason to like methods: they put the code in an order that’s easy to read. In …

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starting to maybe get the point of node.js

Listening to Glenn Block talk about node.js at Technology and Friends, there’s something interesting about the philosophy behind node.js. Threads are hard. Threads include overhead, but more significantly, using them requires the developer to hold more stuff in his head. Node.js has a philosophy that leads to asynchronous processing without multiple threads. Glenn explains how …

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