Text Editors

In my years as a programmer, I have used many, many different text editors.

At first I used editors with the normal GUI interface with a lot of mouse interaction, a regular file menu, and normal key bindings. But then, I started playing with gvim and emacs. I was impressed by the power and customizability of both of these amazing editors, and really like the fact that there was no need to use the mouse at all. In the end I chose vim/gvim as my editor of choice. The learning curve was a little steep, and even steeper than for emacs. However, it has the convenience of not constantly having to press the ctrl key. (I have recently remapped my caps-lock as a ctrl key, which alleviates that somewhat, but I didn't know that was possible at the time). I also worked as a software developer for a year on a team that primarily used gvim, and so I got used to using vim there. I wouldn't say that vim is intrinsically better than emacs, but it is what I am used to now, and I really like it.

HTML By Hand

So, here is the HTML I wrote by hand for the Webcraft school. I have worked with html before, so It only took me one try.

Badges and Webcraft

So, Mozilla (and probably others) are making this new "Badges" system, where you can demonstrate your skills by earning online badges. The idea is that a college degree doesn't give employer's an accurate specific idea of what you do and do not know. The same degree from different universities may include entirely different sets of skills, and knowledge sets. Badges provide way to demonstrate more granular knowledge.

This badges system is very exciting to me, because over the years I have taught myself a lot informally. However demonstrating these skills to employers and/or universities/grad schools, is a challenge.

And so, while these badges are new and in development I am going to try and earn some, both to show off the skills I have already acquired, maybe pick up some new skills, and hopefully help progress this new method of education.

This post is actually part of Web 101 on the P2PU Webcraft school. I am already fairly proficient with HTML, but I have no formal training, and this give me an opportunity to get some form of exterior validation, and possibly pick up something new.