Hello again — What constitutes “clean data”?
They say better late than never, right? Do people still blog in 2017? Let’s hope so! The last time I updated was about two years ago, and my, how things have changed. I do more work on data analysis...
View ArticleLessons from an intermediate programmer-journalist (part 3 of 3)
Thanks to my recent awakening in embracing a programmer identity, I’ve learned a lot. Self perception is a lot more important than we might think in our day-to-day work, and my eyes have been opened....
View ArticleLessons from an intermediate programmer-journalist’s journey (part 2 of 3)
No programmer is an island. Back in grad school, I learned a journalistic tenet of avoiding specialized jargon, to make our writing more accessible for readers. But when it comes to working with...
View ArticleJS Design Patterns: Chapter 5 – Object Creation Patterns
Several months ago (sometime in the fall), I was logging some notes and thoughts on the JS Design Patterns book, as we work our way through selected portions in a small group at work. It’s been a...
View ArticleLessons from an intermediate journo-programmer’s journey (part 1 of 3)
I’ve had some opportunities to think back on my journey over the past five years — from student to teacher in the same classroom, from writing my first lede to building highly technical projects and...
View ArticleOn best practices: Re-examining the philosophy of how I code
What does it mean to “grow up” to the next level of how we work? How do we take hacking to find a solution, any solution, and turn it into a purposeful, logical craft? It’s a question I’ve been trying...
View ArticleFunctions – Chapter 4, JavaScript Patterns
In this week’s selection, the JavaScript Patterns book continues into its interesting deep dive on the intracacies of how the language works, looking at functions, or the blocks of code that can...
View ArticleJavaScript Patterns — Chapter 3
In this reading, we focus on literals and constructors. Again, this continues the exploration into the fundamentals of how JavaScript works — with the goal of being able to grok design patterns — ways...
View ArticleLearning…how to think ahead about big-picture coding problems
In past posts on this blog, and conversations with mentors, colleagues and friends — we have lamented the difficulty of the learning path for the intermediate coder. The posts I’ve been writing about...
View ArticleJavaScript Patterns – Chapters 1 and 2
I certainly love stretching my mind and learning new things, but after weeks of reading Ruby and more strictly-typed languages, I breathe a sigh of relief every time I step back into JavaScript world....
View ArticleAn introduction to design patterns — trying again
This week, we leave Fowler’s Refactoring behind in favor of embarking on a journey exploring design patterns. As I understand it, when writing code, there are certain ways of structuring a program or...
View ArticleThoughts on Refactoring – Chap. 5, 6, 13, Selected refactorings
Continuing our journey through Fowler’s refactoring book for this week, we covered a lot of ground which mostly concentrates on the role of testing (Chapter 5) and selected refactoring that seemed most...
View ArticleThoughts on “Refactoring”– Chapters 1-3
I wanted to remember to blog about what I’m learning by reading Martin Fowler’s “Refactoring”, but I fell behind. No apologies, just moving forward from here. I’ll conflate what I’ve covered so far...
View ArticleTeaching at Medill!
I’ve been in very much a learning space at work, even moreso than usual (writing my first test-driven and object-oriented Ruby code these days), and I am thankful to be in a place where I can learn and...
View ArticleEmbarking on a study of refactoring — what I’m learning and why
I finally no longer feel strange when someone calls me a programmer — I have learned to own it. It’s taken me the better part of five years to feel that way, but here we are. At the end of 2011, I...
View ArticleSharing knowledge with knowledge-lovers
Hello again, dear reader! It’s been a long time again. Where does the time go? I’ve been trying an experiment for well, months now. If I engage with the community a bit less, and care for my own...
View ArticleA letter to my 15-year-old self, celebrating life’s lessons
“What would you write if you would write a letter to your fifteen-year-old self?” asks the latest prompt from j-carn, a blog carnival I like to participate in occasionally here. When I was fifteen, I...
View ArticleWrapping up ONA13: Learning to own who I am
Last week, I didn’t sleep much. I mean, that’s every week, but I slept *less* then. After several near all-nighters preparing for epic workshops for the Online News Association’s annual conference in...
View ArticleLearning about…pushing the envelope when paying it forward
Me: “I think I talked too much on my panel yesterday.” Colleague: “Maybe that’s WHY you keep getting invited to panels.” Me: “Oh.” I talk about The Mission (of data journalism) and paying it forward...
View ArticleSPJ JournCamp presentation wrapup: “Drilling into Data”
Hello, everyone. Greetings from a quick stopover in a busy day in the AP DC bureau, which I’m using for its nice air conditioning, plus a quick update. I just gave a session at the Society for...
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