I’ll admit, I don’t use switch statements very often when programming. When I do, it has always been in Javascript. So when I found myself wanting to use a Python switch statement recently, I discovered that the switch/case statement doesn’t exist in the language. The Python Switch in a Nutshell If you don’t want to …
ESRI’s developer edition of their Web App Builder (WAB) is a handy stand-alone tool for creating web mapping apps. While the WAB is a tool for building an app without needing to code anything, the developer edition allows users to create their own widgets and extend current functionality or themes. Even with this capability, however, …
Read more “Toggle Layer Visibility Using URL Parameters in Web App Builder Developer Edition”
If you use Git for anything you’ve probably had occasion to create a .gitignore file. The gitignore file simply tells Git to ignore specified files or directories that you don’t want managed by version control. But if you’re a Windows user it can appear difficult to create the file. That’s because the file explorer doesn’t …
I like looking at other people’s code. Said in the right voice, that could sound quite creepy. But I like to see what kind of projects they’re working on, how they implement solutions, what languages they chose to work with and how many other people are using their work. So I’ll keep looking at other …
Sometimes, when debugging an error that has just popped up in a program, the problem lies in some external parameter that has recently changed. Most of the time, however, the thing that has changed only serves to reveal how some static code had a dormant bug already. The code can work under one set of …
I spent some time today dealing with a layer of data that was added to an ESRI REST service. The service layers are zero base indexed which means you can reference them based on their position relative to each other. The first layer is identified at position zero while the second is 1, the third …
Is it possible to “future proof” a career in technology? An article yesterday by IDG Connect proposes that to future proof your technology career you should learn “cyber security, business intelligence, data science/big data, DevOps, JavaScript and UX/UI development and design”. Their suggestions are based on the fact that these domains are in high demand …
What is an Object? In Javascript an object is simply a container or store of properties that are related to what the object is modeling. These properties can be primitive data types, other objects or functions. Here’s an example of an empty object with no properties: const furBearingTrout = {}; I’ve used object literal notation …
Read more “Objective Reasoning – The Basic Javascript Object”
I was home sick from work the other day and had plenty of time to think. It occured to me that whenever I go in to the office I am very productive almost immediately. When I’m home, I tend to have little enthusiasm for programming. When I attempt to program at home I’m usually nowhere …
As a JavaScript developer I need tools that help me figure out what’s going on between my code and the browser. Thankfully, most major browsers today provide developer tools that do just that. With these tools you can see exactly how your code affects the browser. At runtime you can find errors in code you’ve …