Javascript

For two days I have been migrating my blog from Hugo to Eleventy via the markdown pages, and the photos via Ghost Export for Wordpress. In the process I achieved a goal, and then AI broke things, so I achieved them again, and then AI broke them again.

The favourite thing for Ai, and Gemini, in particular to break was the logic that took the markdown titles, matched them to a json file, and then helped 11ty marry the photo with the correct post. When it worked it was brilliant, but when it broke I would spend half a day trying to fix it. By the third time this happened I decided to ask Gemini to help me write a script to hard code the image path straight into markdown pages.

Yesterday I asked MyAI by Swisscom, which is still in Beta, if it could help me write a JavaScript app to generate passwords and it did, with ease. It provided me with the javascript code I needed so I could cut and paste it, and then use node to run it straight from terminal.

People often think that AI will replace us, and if certain companies in the US have their way, then it will. On the flipside I believe that AI will replace Googling for snippets of code that help us reach our coding goals.

I have spent several days playing with Eleventy and trying to get it to behave as I would like to and over the last day or two I succeeded, to some degree. Eleventy, like Hugo, is a static website generator. Whereas Hugo is built on Go Eleventy is built on Javascript. In so far as I can tell they’re both working at around the same speed.

Appearance

This blog post is written, first for Hugo, then transferred to my wordpress blog and maybe, in third place it will be added to my eleventy blog experiment. One of the key differences that I see between eleventy and Hugo is how themes work. With Hugo you choose a theme and it is applied to the entire site. With Eleventy you can create a specific layout for each website section along with it’s own css and more, so it is more modular. Yesterday I was experimenting with CSS and eventually I got it to work, but following the instructions for a css file called “bundle” rather than “style” or similar theme name.

Today someone on twitter asked this question, and rather than be reply: 320 of 10,000, I chose to write a blog post about it. The TLDR answer is Vanilla JS because if you learn how it works without the help of a framework you understand the language. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have an interest in learning to take full advantage of frameworks.

As I listen to JavaScript Jabber one thing is clear. Whereas if we listen to courses and twitter discussions we are tricked into thinking that we should either use React or Angular we see, through JavaScript Jabber that frameworks are as diverse as they are flexible. One app will be excellent for one type of task and another will be awesome for something else. If you spend time learning Vanilla JavaScript, and then you learn about the diverse choice of frameworks then you can either write concise and effective code that does what you need with little to no bloat.

Over the last two evenings I have been attempting to read nested data. I have tried to parse the data and other methods but without success. I have browsed the web to try to find solutions but for now I am getting stuck. Learning is also about trial and error, and knowing where to find the right information. For now I am lost. At the end of this process I will be more self-sufficient.

Recently I have spent time focusing on JavaScript and EcmaScript to make sure that I understand it. By now it is over a year ago since I felt that I wanted to study Angular but felt that I didn’t have enough knowledge to resolve the challenges so I decided to return to basics. My return to basics involved a number of courses and books but it also led me to study this Linkedin Learning Pathway. It is easy to study, get a certiciate and move on, especially for extroverts or outgoing people who find interacting with people easy.

As I looked straight down from a bridge today I noticed that the river is so low that the river bed has become bone dry in places. In other places you see that the gress is turning yellow. When tractors tend to the fields you see that they are stirring up clouds of dust. It is so dry, so often, that it is only a matter of time before forest fires burn down local forests.

It’s easy to use Facebook or other CMS every day without thinking about how the code works. This summer I have coded two CMS using Linkedin Learning. One of these CMS was running with PHP and MySQL and the other was running with Ruby On Rails and MySQL.

The PHP CMS

In the process I learned how to install MySQL, how to get MySQL and PHP to talk to each other. How to organise files between private and public folders on a web server and more. Getting MySQL to talk with the web server was a challenge that took a few days to get right.

Grasshopper is a Google app to teach adults and children about Javascript. It provides people with short, easy to understand modules to get a grasshopper to do things.

The curriculum is divided into seven modules. These are:

• Fundamentals
• Fundamentals II
• Intro to Interviewing
• Array Methods
• Animations
• Animations II
• Using a Code Editor
• Intro To Webpages

So far I have only played with part of the fundamentals course. You don’t need to write much code. You can select which function and variable you want to use, rather than typing lines and lines of code.

For once I walked in the drizzle, rather than the rain but I could hear thunder as I got home. I have almost reading Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home during this walk. Poetically I was listening to her about walking with a storm on its way whilst a storm was thundering over the Jura.

The rain became heavy just as I got close to home so today I am not drenched to the bone, and in need of a change of clothes like yesterday. I started today’s walk by running for the first two and a half kilometres, using the Guardian’s running podcast week three, for the fourth time. I didn’t run last week and I prefer to give my legs time to acclimate to running before pushing too much.