MattRooney

Plasma Torch Recycling

What is plasma?
  - the fourth state of matter (others being solid, liquid and gas)
  - an ionized gas w free-roaming electrons that carries a current and generates a magnetic field (ie. lightning)

So, what's a plasma torch?
  - aka a plasma arc, plasma gun or plasma cutter
  - a device for generating the flow of plasma
  - torch temperatures ranges from 4,000 to 25,000 °F (2,200 to 13,900 °C)

MattRooney

Elm

Learn How to Build Reactive Web Apps Using Elm

There are plenty of JavaScript-based frameworks for building single-page web apps. But the common problem with all of them is… JavaScript. We need a better solution: not just a band-aid over JavaScript's ugly parts, but instead a whole new, fresh approach to browser programming. We need Elm.

Elm apps run in the browser, but you don't write them in JavaScript. Elm embraces the good parts of functional programming, but lets you ignore the theoretical underpinnings. Indeed, Elm makes functional, reactive programming not only possible, but practical and even fun!

In this course, you'll learn Elm from the ground up as we incrementally create a single-page, reactive web app. By building a real project with real code from scratch, you'll see how everything fits together. Along the way you'll discover how Elm helps you write reliable code that stays well-factored and easy to maintain even as you scale feature-rich apps.

MattRooney

Array Prototype Methods

I understand that functions in JavaScript can take any number of arguments.

Yes

I can describe the similarity between blocks in Ruby and anonymous functions in JavaScript.

Yes

MattRooney

JavaScript Functions

I can explain the difference between function declarations and function expressions.

Yes

I can explain what the value of this is in a normal function.

Yes

MattRooney

When you start working with WebPack for GameTime, you'll notice that you can't just define a variable in one file and find it in another as easily as you can in Rails.

Read Node.js, Require and Exports and Organize Your Code with RequireJS

Fork this gist and answer the following questions:

• In the context of Node, what is a module?

MattRooney

**Step One**: Watch [Sorting Algorithms in JavaScript](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRyqlhjXYQI)

**Step Two**: Fork this gist.

**Step Three**: Respond to this question in your fork: "What are some of the balances and trade offs between different sorting algoritms?"

- Runtime (Big O) - Insertion and Bubble are slow, O(n^2). Merge is fast, O(n log n).
- Stability - stable sorts maintain the relative order of items with equal "values" (ex. Alex, before Adam when sorted on A). Insertion and Merge sort are stable, bubble sort is not.
- Implementation - none of them are that hard to implement. 

MattRooney

Step One: Watch Writing Testable JavaScript - Rebecca Murphey from Full Frontal 2012 (award for worst conference name ever?)

Step Two: Fork this gist.

Step Three: Consider the four responsibilities that Rebecca lists for client side code (hint: they're color coded).

• Did any of the responsibilities that she lists surprise you?

1. presentation & interaction
2. data/server communication

MattRooney

Step One: Watch Mary Rose Cook Live Codes Space Invaders from Front-Trends. (The second worst conference name ever?)

Step Two: Fork this gist.

Step Three: Respond to this question in your fork: What is one approach you can take from this Mary's code and implement in your project?

The tick( ) function is something we could certainly use in building snake. That might help us sort out some of the functionality that's within our index.js. I also really liked her Keyboarder function. We could use that to hopefully clean up key event listeners to be a little dynamic and maintable when changing and adding different modes that require different keys.

Step Four: Totally Optional: take a look at some of the other forks and comment if the spirit moves you.

MattRooney

Leap

My Code

• vinibar nested their if's which makes their implementation a bit hard to read.
• herminiotorres made his nice and short, and though it's easy to read, for someone new to JS it's a little confusing to make sense of whats happening.
• MarcosX used

MattRooney

My personal best READMEs:

• Snake
• Koncert

##PROTIP: README Love

READMEs are AWESOME. They are one of the best things you can add to a repo, (other than quality code), to make it look professional.

####Things that make a README great: