Programming By Stealth

In our last Programming By Stealth we learned about the concept of version control, and the evolution from client/server version control to peer-to-peer version control and the creation of Git. In this installment we start learning the fundamental concepts of Git. We learn about the database, the working copy, and the index and understanding the difference is critical to effectively using Git. We also dig into the Git database and begin to learn the terminology inside it, which oddly uses normal English words but those words might not mean what you think they mean. We gain an understanding of why Git uses SHA1 hashes but not for encryption. We start to get into the power of Git as we learn about commits, staging, stashes, and tags. We didn't get to play with Git yet but the challenge is to install Git and if you want the extra credit, choose and download one ore more Git GUI clients.

It's time to take on a new subject: version control. As Bart explains in this week's episode, version control allows you make changes in your code and roll the changes back. This gives us the freedom to experiment and if an idea doesn't pan out, get back to where we started. Bart explains some of the origins of version control, starting with client server systems and then tells us how peer-to-peer version control has become the standard from industry to open source. Bart explains how the version control system Git was created and how it proved itself worthy of becoming the standard. There's not a lot of heavy lifting in this episode but Bart promises that future episodes will be challenging as we get into how to actually use Git. If you like Bart's work, please support him by going to lets-talk.ie and becoming a Patron.

In this positively _delightful_ episode, Bart and I celebrate 100 episodes of Programming By Stealth. When we hit 99 instalments, Bart declared that for 100, there should be cake! So I got Bart's darling beloved to deliver him a piece of cake right as we started, and Steve delivered one to him. To say that Bart was surprised and delighted would be an understatement! This episode is entirely dedicated to us describing our solutions to the Time Sharing challenge from PBS 96, and to explaining what we learned while working on the assignment. You can view Bart's working solution at this-ti.me/ and you can view Allison's working solution at podfeet.com/time-shifting-clock

This week our guest is Dr. Helma van der Linden from the Netherlands here to talk about how she created the Taming the Terminal book using all Open Source software. On the NosillaCast I talked a lot about the book but I should probably give an explanation for the Chit Chat audience. Bart Busschots and I created the Taming the Terminal podcast and for this series on learning the macOS (and Linux) command line, Bart wrote a spectacular set of tutorial shownotes on his website at bartb.ie. I had a dream for many years to make Taming the Terminal into a book as a surprise for Bart, but my few attempts to do it failed spectacularly. Around Easter, I mentioned my dream to Helma and she said, “I bet I could do that!” I don’t expect anyone to learn from this discussion how to do what Helma did, but rather to learn what’s possible and how cool it was that Helma put these pieces together. Below are the rough shownotes we used for our discussion, included so that you would have the links to all of the tools s

Bart and I are taking a few weeks off from Programming By Stealth as we do every summer but we'd like to encourage you to check out the new Taming the Terminal episodes we'll be publishing instead.

This week Bart Busschots brings us the penultimate JavaScript installment of Programming By Stealth as he brings us part 2 of building with classes. This wraps up our third look at Object Oriented programming in JavaScript. We learn about the concept of inheritance, and how it allows us to build classes that inherit attributes and functions from parent classes. This allows us to eliminate code duplication which Bart explains is called a "bad smell". You can find Bart's tutorial shownotes at pbs.bartificer.net/pbs99.

In this episode of Programming By Stealth, Bart explains one single concept, that of "Has-A". This is part 1 of 2, where next time we'll learn "Is-A" which is about inheritance. These both sound like odd terms but they're part of what makes object oriented programming so powerful. Bart spends 90% of the time going through a worked example which not only explains how classes can have instances of other classes as properties, but also how classes can be more specific versions of other classes. Along the way, I think he achieved his goal of cementing the foundation of getters and setters and Class functions and Instance functions. We'll see if I can use them in anger on the homework though! You can find Bart's tutorial shownotes at [pbs.bartificer.net/...](https://pbs.bartificer.net/pbs98)h

I'm not going to lie to you guys, this episode of Programming By Stealth was pretty rough for me. It builds on the foundation Bart laid in PBS 95 where he introduced Getters and Setters and it was pretty clear that this previous lesson had not sunk in for me yet. I'll definitely have to go back and study PBS 95 a couple more times and get a chance to practice this Getter/Setter concept before the penny will drop. Hopefully you understood it better than I did the first time through! In any case, in PBS 97, we extend that knowledge to learning about class data attributes and functions. We'll learn the "static" nomenclature, which is used to mark attributes and functions as belonging to the class rather than the instances of a class. Bart spends most of the lesson on a worked example using emoji to create what he playfully calls a Nerdtouche, as a head nod to the cartouche used by Egyptian Pharoahs. And yes, he manages to work the poop emoji into this lesson. You can find Bart's shownotes at [pbs.bartifi

This installment of Programming By Stealth is a solutions show all about the clock assignment from PBS 92. Bart's been quite busy this week designing an entirely new distance final exam system for the university where he works so he asked if I'd take on half of the content by presenting my solution to the clock challenge. I have had an absolute blast on this assignment so I gladly accepted. I walk through my approach and some of the challenges I met along the way, and then Bart complements mine by talking about a few things he did quite differently. We both had a great time and I think Bart even learned something from me at one point. You can find Bart's fabulous tutorial shownotes at pbs.bartificer.net/pbs96.

This week Bart explains how to give our JavaScript classes better data attributes via a very powerful JavaScript feature: getters and setters. On my first read through the notes for the episode, my head was spinning a bit, but Bart explains this so well using concrete examples (like a circle with a radius) that I think he got it through to me. When I told him up front that I struggled a bit when reading the shownotes, he said that this is the "pointy end" which I think meant that it was a difficult concept so I felt a little better about it. In the end it made a lot of sense and I see the reason for the tools he explained. I highly recommend you read Bart's terrific tutorial shownotes at [pbs.bartificer.net/pbs95](https://pbs.bartificer.net/pbs95) as you listen along.

In the early days of Programming By Stealth, Bart tried to explain JavaScript classes, objects and instances. He talked about it in Installment 17 before ES6, and then took another run at it in installments 27-31. But it never felt to Bart like he had explained it in a way that made it clear. In installment 94, Bart finally nails it. I told him the shownotes for this installment might be the best he's ever done. Everything he explains is clear and concise, the examples are superb, and we get to say Hoonyaker a lot. Instead of being frustrated and confused, I was smiling through all of it because I finally get it. I also told him that I feel far less stupid than I did before because I always thought it was my failing that I didn't get it. I enjoyed this so much I drew Bart a picture of what he'd taught and he said I nailed it! You can find these legendary shownotes at [pbs.bartificer.net/pbs94](https://pbs.bartificer.net/pbs94).

In this episode of Programming By Stealth, Bart takes us through the last "hat" that JavaScript objects can wear: encapsulation. As Bart walks us through the problems encapsulation solves using a funny NosillaCast-specific example, he shows how the code becomes reusable and sharable with encapsulation, and even more readable. You can read the tutorial shownotes as you listen at [pbs.bartificer.net/...](https://pbs.bartificer.net/pbs93) allison@podfeet.com podfeet.com/patreon podfeet.com/slack podfeet.com/facebook podfeet.com/amazon podfeet.com/paypal

CCATP #630 for March 14, 2020, and I'm your host, Allison Sheridan. This week our guest is Bart Busschots with PBS 92 of X in which he walks us through his solution to the assignment from PBS 89 to create a grid of currency conversions. He doesn't go through his code line by line, but rather gives us the big picture of his process. Most of the time he spent on the solution was actually in refactoring his code because he decided to preload the data rather than fetching it repeatedly on-demand. I loved it when he referred to his original work as "Organically-grown Weasley-kind of code". He also explains how he used both coercion and assertion to do his error handling and why. Eventually he got to start working on the grid and he walks us through how he cracked that problem. It was great fun as always and we have a new, six-week challenge to build a world clock. You can find his full tutorial shownotes and download his solution at [pbs.bartificer.net/pbs92](https://pbs.bartificer.net/pbs92)

This week our guest is Bart Busschots with an installment of something he's calling Programming By Stealth-adjacent. It's not part of the regular series of Programming By Stealth, and yet it's not technically very "light" in terms of the chit chatting. Since neither podcast is the right place for it, I've decided to put it in both podcast feeds to be wrong twice. Bart walks us through how to create Quick Actions with Automator (also known as Services) to do some simple but very useful text manipulations using a smidge of JavaScript. Even if you don't want to write these Quick Actions yourself, you can download his services from his Github repo where he's put them up as open source: https://github.com/bbusschots/macos-quickaction-text. You can see how Bart created this in his blog post at [www.bartbusschots.ie/...](https://www.bartbusschots.ie/s/2020/03/06/macos-quick-actions-for-text/)

Bart takes us through the penultimate hat JavaScript wears and that's Regular Expressions. Luckily since we haven't talked about REs in ages, he reminds us of the syntax for Regular Expressions literals in JavaScript first and then he takes us through three common uses for Regular Expressions. We joked around during this episode at how many times I said, "That makes sense!" Bart said it was music to his ears, and I say this was a very intuitive lesson considering how arcane Regular Expressions are in their syntax. Bart's tutorial for this episode are available at [pbs.bartificer.net/...](https://pbs.bartificer.net/pbs91.html)

Hope you enjoyed getting the little extra Tidbits episode this week. In this installment Bart continues our on-going mini-series looking at each of the proverbial hats JavaScript objects wear. Bart explains the concept of JavaScript wrapper objects that allow you to access properties of otherwise property-less primitives. It's pretty magical and I only got lost for a little while as we brushed the cobwebs off my memories of prototypes and such. Bart's shownotes for this episode can be found at pbs.bartificer.net/pbs90

Bart explains how alert listener @lbutlr on Twitter found a mistake in Bart's math and he walks through how he figured out what was wrong and what we can all learn from it. Bart's explanation can be found here: bartbusschots.ie/...

In this week's installment of Programming By Stealth, Bart explains his new plan for both the content of PBS and the way the shownotes are created and presented to you. Bart has noticed that because we put a challenge solution and new content into the same show, the solution gets short changed. That's a shame because there is so much he can teach by explaining the "whys" behind his design of his solutions. The new plan is to have the challenge solutions be standalone shows, and then the new content will be standalone shows as well. We'll be having more time to do our challenges with this new plan as well. I'm excited about this new plan because I've enjoyed the extra time we've had with our currency converter challenge, allowing us to enhance our solutions and be more creative. Bart is also completely rearchitecting all of his web presence, including his Programming By Stealth show notes. His new online presence will be at his site, bartficier.net and PBS will now be at pbs.bartificer.net. That link i

Bart is nearing the end of his mini-series recapping al of the different hats JavaScript objects wear, doing a lot of redux to cement the concepts that have been spread over so many lessons. He takes a really interesting approach this week to his teaching. He explains a concept and then instead of having a contrived example, he shows us exactly how that concept works in action in his homework solution from PBS 85. His solution to the homework assignment is, of course, beautiful and elegant. Beautiful he gives credit to Bootstrap, elegant he would probably give credit to jQuery. I am really enjoying these redux segments because they cement things that were still wobbly, or perhaps even gone from my memory. Each time through I'm finding I understand how to even categorize the information in my brain. I explained to Bart that I think he's actually changing the way my brain is wired now.

I'm not going to lie, this episode of Programming By Stealth with Bart Busschots was a bit head bendy. Bart explains JavaScript Iterator Objects and Generator functions but without his excellent examples I'm certain I would never have been able to get the concepts to even slightly congeal in my brain. Iterator Objects and Generator functions are some of the joys of ES6 and have great value. That value is demonstrated in the succinctness of the code Bart writes for us to create a Fibonacci series in a beautiful web form. That work, by the way, is a bonus challenge if you're done with your homework from the previous episodes. As you listen along, if you hear us yelling "spoiler alert" and making alarming noises, that's when Bart's solution to the challenge is about to be described. It's a rare instance where I actually let you have one chapter mark in Programming By Stealth so you'll be able to jump back to the solution after you're done with your own solution.