At the start of 2018, I got the opportunity to be part of the first mini batch at the Recurse Center. Recurse Center is a self-directed, community-driven programming retreat in NYC aimed at attracting programmers who want to grow their programming chops in a rigorous yet, supportive environment. Students who attend Recurse generally come in with a dedicated project focus. This helps with setting a course and creating a clear purpose through the course of the term, which lasts anywhere between 1 week and six months. During my time at Recurse, which lasted one week (hence mini), I focused on ramping up on WebGL. While 1 week was far too short to get anywhere near mastery, it did give me the space and time to navigate the vastness of core WebGL concepts and chart a semblance of a path to eventual mastery. If you’re curious about this and my learnings from my rather short stint there, check out my musings over on Github as well as my experiments with WebGL/GLSL—the furthest I got was rotating a triangle. ...

A key step in the data visualization process is the conversion of data to the right format. When working with geospatial related information in particular, data needs to be in geoJSON to be accurately superimposed onto a map. In many instances, geospatial data available via Open Data Portals like data.gov is already in a proper format to be mapped. However, there are times when the available data needs to be cleaned and/or transformed into a more appropriate format to be useable. For example, physical address data needs to be converted to coordinates so they can be properly added to a map. In cases like these, data formatters specifically known as geocoders come in handy. ...

Redirect Rulez Browsers rely on URLs to access content on the web. One way to think about URLs is as a giant phone book for the web. When a browser wants access to a specific resource, it looks it up in the “phone book” and makes a request for it by visiting the address specified. However, like physical addresses, virtual addresses are not permanent and are subject to change. When a person moves irl, they often file a change of address at the local post office so that mail gets routed appropriately. Changing addresses on the web can be similarly achieved using redirect rules. ...

Some of the most cutting edge and effective web performance optimizations, like prefetch and preconnect, involve being proactive. We make predictions to determine where a user is likely to go next and load resources ahead of time so page load is as fast as possible. While there is somewhat of a science to making these predictions, thanks to analytics tracking and extensive user testing, they are still largely manual. Making an accurate prediction therefore becomes progressively more difficult as your site scales since there’s no sure way of knowing where a user will go next. This is where machine learning comes in handy. By training a machine learning model (maybe a markov chain?) with current analytics data, we can take the guess work our of our predictions and more accurately load resources ahead of time. There’s currently ongoing development to make techniques such as this more accessible to web developers. A project worth checking out is called GuessJS, which serves as a landing page for all libraries and tools that enable Machine Learning driven user-experiences on the web. The convergence of machine learning and web performance is still in its infancy. However, with the growing popularity of machine learning (especially among web developers), it’s only a matter of time when techniques like predictive prefetching will become more commonplace on the web.

If you’ve spent some time in frontend land, chances are you’ve heard someone say “it’s just javascript” when referencing a framework, library or snazzy new tool. While the phrase has an element of truth in it—a framework like React compiles down to JavaScript for instance—it often betrays the full picture. For one, a frontend framework like React or Ember often involves complex-ish tooling, templating systems, and high level architectural decisions around state management, and routing. Saying something is “just JavaScript” creates a culture of shaming and heightens the (already fairly high) barrier to entry for newer developers. It also paradoxically “cheapens” the work of practising JavaScript developers by making it seem like their work is trivial. Quite like the oft-misquoted phrase “A jack of all trades is a master of none”*, let’s stop popularizing the half truth that things are “Just JavaScript”. Instead, let’s do the frontend world some justice and express our work with a more nuanced approach that takes into account the chaotic albeit robust ecosystem that we’ve worked so hard to build. Maybe this way we can start having more meaningful, and productive conversations without delving into yet another pithy argument over who or what framework/tool/library is better. ...

Componentization is the central concept driving frontend development today. It enables us to encapsulate core logic of a user interface into smaller chunks thereby making them easier to reason about. While each of these components exist in isolation, they work in concert to build a unified interface. This relative isolation also means that components are reusable and can be easily mixed and matched to create a variety of patterns and styles. An example that best illustrates this is the screwdriver. Though there are many types of screwdrivers, like the phillips head, the flat head, the allen head and so on, these variations can be made by simply changing the head of the screw instead of having to buy multiple single use screwdrivers. By enabling a high level of isolation, components thereby promote ownership while also maintaining the right conditions to efficiently scale. ...

With 2018 drawing to a close, I’d like to take a moment to review some of my personal highlights from the past year. Attended Recurse Center 2018 was by far the first time that I hit the ground running at the start of the year. I successfully matriculated(?) at the Recurse Center in their first ever mini retreat and spent a full week in January learning and building alongside a bunch of incredibly smart, talented recursers. My project for the week was to ramp up on WebGL and gain (pseudo) proficiency in working with shaders. While I managed to somewhat accomplish this, I also spent a good chunk of time pairing on other recurser projects that ranged from building compilers to writing functional code in haskell. The week was wonderful, albeit a tad exhausting and I hope to return again sometime soon. ...

If you’ve been keeping up with the JavaScripts, chances are you’ve heard snatches of excitement about the latest and greatest in web technology, WebAssembly. WebAssembly is a binary executable for the web that promises near-native performance for web applications. This means that graphics heavy applications like Photoshop, and AutoCAD can now be run in the browser without the need for clunky third party plugins like Silverlight, Flash and Java Applets. Web Assembly effectively removes the notion that JavaScript is the de-facto assembly language of the Web and opens the door for other languages like C, and C++ to run on the web. ...

In the last few years, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), also known as cross reality or XR, have developed far beyond the niche realms of the gaming industry. There are now compelling use cases for using XR for building applications focused on education (Aurasma, Math Alive), home improvement (Wayfair, Ikea Place) and even beauty (Meitu) that are accessible to the masses. Despite its growth in popularity, many XR applications today often require the installation of a separate mobile application. Snapchat lenses, and Instagram face filters for instance require using these applications to get the full XR experience. The reason developers lean on mobile when building XR is largely because mobile gives them more fine tuned control of native input controls compared to the web. To address this current handicap and to better bridge the gap between the virtual world and the web, browser vendors have teamed up to work on a XR focused web API termed WebXR. ...

One of the most memorable cinematic portrayals of a voice recognition system is Hal 9000, the seemingly omniscient computer from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hal captured our collective imaginations and opened our eyes to the possible future of a voice based human-computer interaction. Since the movie’s release in 1966, the landscape of voice recognition systems have changed drastically. According a study done by Adobe Analytics over 32% of US consumers own a smart speaker and that number is expected to increase nearly twofold by the end of the year. The emergence of integrated digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Google Home has also meant that voice is now being used beyond just playing music and checking the weather forecast. With the increased reliance on voice as a medium of interacting with the web, designers and developers are now faced with a new challenge: designing interfaces optimized for voice-based interactions. ...