David Acevedo's Blog

I really like Github's  Atom Text Editor . I really like that it's multi-platform allowing me to master one set of skills that is transferable to all platforms and all machines.  On thing that just burns me of the default set-up in Atom is the Autocomplete feature that seems to change my words as a type them. Because Ruby uses the end of line as a terminus for a statement you usually finish a word with pressing the return button and you get really annoying changes to your finished typed word a la MS Word. I find myself yelling "No that's not what I wrote!" at the screen in busy coffee shops. I disabled autocomplete for a while but it is a very useful function. Then I found out they changed the package that gave the autocomplete to a new one called "Autocomplete Plus" that gives you more options. All that I needed to change to make autocomplete sane again: 1. Open Atom's Preferences 2. Search the bundled packages for " Autocomplete Plus &

Programming is a craft. You are building something. The modern languages have given the programmer great ownership of the craft. Before it was more like an assembly and one programmer was responsible for one cog in a big machine and few programmers, the elite, saw the whole machine, understood the whole craft. But now with languages like Ruby and Python, the massive power at the hands of the programmer bring the whole thing back to a craft. It is something you do with your hands. It is creative, like writing and while not physical or tactile, it is built piece by piece. The connection is deep and actually obscured by the way programming is taught. Because programming originated from a mathematical discipline and math has mostly lost its craft origins and now is taught more as an intellectual pursuit, it is often forgotten that math is but a tool itself. Not an end goal. Math is used to do things with it. Calculous to measure trajectories of objects. Geometry is essential for architec

On a beach in Costa Rica, on Biscayne Bay in Miami, on Cassadaga in Central Florida and who knows where else my travels will take me. Feeding myself good reading: Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist. Feeding myself good food. And beginning to write. It is hard to leave behind the troubles and toils of Puerto Rico, but their fate is their own. There is shock, loneliness and sorrow I'll have to deal with. Embarking on new ventures of writing, long hard work ahead and I'm ready. Behind me the past and dried leaves rustling in the wind.

We are in the middle of a computer programming languages explosion. In the last few years, a slew of programming languages have come into their own, others have been revived with new expressions and a whole bunch of them have been born anew. Also a new modality has appeared of the polyglot programmer, that is a programmer that works in multiple languages. This last change is the most significant. Because for a long time programming was dominated by a very few select group of languages: C, C++, Java and C#. All of which are related. And dominated by a tool set like Visual Studio with C# and Visual Basic. Now that is no longer the case and things are for the better. Recently I taught myself how to program and want to highlight a few books that are good reads. Most books in programming fall into a trap, that is they don't teach programming at all, but instead teach only the programming language. That's like teaching someone the rules to America Football and expecting them to a

In Puerto Rico, I watch TV. I watch a lot of TV. More than I should. I used to watch very little while I was learning to code in California and was unemployed so had little time. Also I watch very little when I was dating here. Now I watch a lot. I find that mentally I'm too tired after work to do much of anything important. My theory: commuting in Puerto Rico causes massive mental anguish. Think about it. How much emotional energy do you waste on your drive home? Now my drive is not long. I used to live in LA for god's sake. But it is intense as most rush hour driving is in Puerto Rico. Now I even find myself amped even when it isn't intense. A Pavovlian response.... I arrive exhausted. Ready for a break.