Zack Grossbart Zack Grossbart is an engineer, designer, and author. He’s a founding member of the Spiffy UI project, the architect of the WordPress Editorial Calendar, and a Consulting Engineer with NetIQ. Zack began loading DOS from a floppy disk when he was five years old. He first worked professionally with computers when he was 15 and started his first software company when he was 16. Zack lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.
Let’s get a few things out of the way first. This isn’t your regular Smashing Magazine article. It’s not a “how to“; it won’t show you how to build a better menu or improve your project tomorrow. This article shows you how a core problem in computer science works and why we're all pretending we know something for certain when we really have no idea.
You’re looking at Smashing Magazine... Read More
Hardly any line of my code comes out perfect the first time I write it. Well, most of the time… Some of the time… Um, hardly ever. The truth is that I spend more time chasing down my own stupid programming errors than I’d like to admit. That’s why I use static analyzers in every JavaScript file I write.
Static analyzers look at code and find problems before you run it. They do simple... Read More
Static typing is great because it keeps you out of trouble. Dynamic typing is great because it gets out of your way and lets you get your work done faster. The debate between strongly and dynamically typed languages rages on, but understanding the issue starts with weak typing and languages such as C.
C treats everything like a number. A character like a or 7 or % is the number of the... Read More
