Matthew MacDonald

After thousands of traditionally published pages, I'm trying something new: a self-published book for kids & beginners learning to code. Meet "𝗔 𝗧𝗶𝗻𝘆 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗝𝗮𝘃𝗮𝗦𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁", released today in a free PDF gumroad.com/l/eARLn (Details in thread)

@chnasarre And that it had impeccable tech reviewing :)

How do you know that a book is good and useful? ... when you still reopen it 15 years after it was published. Thanks @prosetech for Pro WPF in C# ;^)

How not to handle #null. Like all good bugs, this site only does this every once in a while

@dustinmoris Do you put "don't ship broken software" under the heading "ship with more confidence"? Because QA is there to protect you from the bugs you miss, like when Apple reintroduced a fixed jailbreak vulnerability in iOS 12.4 (one eg of many). A regression test would've caught it.

@dvassallo I became a bit obsessed with teaching my three kids coding during the pandemic. I have a whole flowchart of options here medium.com/young-coder/a-… and a free book that uses JavaScript exercises that you can run online on CodePen prosetech.gumroad.com/l/eARLn Hope it helps someone!

My 9yr old wants to start learning how to make computer games. I was making small games in C at his age, but I’d rather spare him the trauma :) What’s the best tech nowadays for teaching kids to code a Tetris-like game while also learning some programming fundamentals?

@dvassallo @alemiralles For younger kids you can program Minecraft in Blockly (a visual programming language like Scratch). I tried it and wrote about it with my kids medium.com/young-coder/le…

@alemiralles Yes quite obsessed with Minecraft. What’s the relation to python?

Of course *you* know that a #ChatGPT response is a pattern of heuristically likely words that often contains factual mistakes. But do you know how deep the rabbit hole goes? medium.com/young-coder/ch…

Indian Reprint of JavaScript Cookbook, 3Ed by @adamdscott @prosetech & shelley powers shroffpublishers.com/books/97893910… @JavaScript @TCS @thoughtworks @Infosys @JavaScriptDaily @javascriptd #javascript #reactjs #vuejs #NodeJS #webprogramming #oreillymedia #shroffpublishers

@MikeCodesDotNET @jetbrains @icons_8 @github @SchneiderElec Valid points!

@prosetech Avalonia isn’t in “perpetual pre-release”. Have you actually used it or seen who is using it? It’s very much a stable, production ready platform. It’s used by @jetbrains, @icons_8, @github, @SchneiderElec and many many more

Talking about the gradual decline of #WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), the outsourcing controversy, and the strange fact that #WinForms is still here after two decades. medium.com/young-coder/wp… #dotnet

@ConsultOrlovsky I haven't read it but I'm always a fan of different & quirky formats. I was actually lined up to write a HF book years ago but I couldn't get excited about the topic (SharePoint).

If one of your technology resolutions includes #mastodon that's probably a good resolution

And if you don't remember why you were following, here's a quick recap. I chat about the .NET stack, web dev, future tech, and--occasionally--weird creative things like my coding-with-ninjas book for kids.

Well, I'm out! The Fauci conspiracy theories, ex-Twitter-employee abuse, and dishonest moderation policy made me reconsider my time in the bird circus. I'd love to meet all you fine folks again over at Mastodon! I'm @prosetech@hachyderm.io

Elon & Marjorie Taylor Greene are just friends of convenience. If you figure out whether it's worse to be an immoral opportunist or an insane true believer, let me know. 3/3

This has 1% to do with politics and 99% to do with a cynical troll who just believes capturing "conservative energy" will boost his platform, compensate for lost ad revenue, and eventually make him money. 2/3

This season of black mirror is not as good as the first

The #midjourney prompt everyone wants to write: /imagine x,y,z but please put the right number of fingers on each hand