Patterns Schmatterns: But Don’t Forget the Fun

Courtesy of SeanMonstar, I now know to guard myself against Criminal Overengineering.

The most insidious cause of overengineering is over-generalizing. We will over-generalize anything given half a chance. Writing code to work with a list of students? Well, we might want to work with teachers and the general public someday, better add a base People class and subclass Student from that. Or Person and then EducationPerson and then Student. Yes, that’s better, right?
…
We have to stop championing each ridiculous feat of overengineering and call it what it is. It’s not ‘future-proof’, because we can’t see the future. It’s not robust, it’s hard to read. Applying a generic solution to a single case isn’t good programming, it’s criminal overengineering because like it or not somebody, somewhere will pay for it.

He mentions fear as a motivator; the worry that your code won’t stand up against the unforeseen use-case. He also describes the sense of productivity it engenders. In other words, “look at all this code I just cranked out”.

And while I agree with everything he says, I do have a small point of contention: He doesn’t account for the fun factor. This must be the exception to the rule. The one time it is okay to shoot way high.

I mean, isn’t it fun to create these beasts? To take a simple problem and abstract it out to this giant chain of inheritance and interfaces and abstractions? I’m serious here. I’m sure there exist the coders who enjoy nothing more than filling in a function stub with one return statement, mumbling “done” to themselves, and then moving on to the next task at hand. But aren’t most of us the kind who enjoy the creating and building of these…things?

So yeah, while absorbing the fluorescent rays of a cubicle sun, make sure not to “makes things harder than they are” (to quote my dad) too often. But try to find an excuse every now and again to exercise those creative muscles and think larger than the simple problem at hand. That’s what I say.

The ReadyAgain jQuery Plugin: Re-executing Ready

I’ve been wanting to become better acquainted with the Mecurial revision control system (see Hg Init for more info). There’s also been a jQuery related issue I’ve been wanting to investigate. So I made the jump and

1. Created a plugin
2. Created a repository for that plugin at BitBucket

ReadyAgain at BitBucket

The ReadyAgain jQuery Plugin

Prior to version 1.4, the array of functions saved by jQuery for execution when the DOM is ready (i.e. those functions added by $(document).ready(function...)) was an accessible property of jQuery. This meant that you could reference the array directly using something like $.readyList. Now, however, that array has been hidden within an anonymous, self-executing function (the deepest, darkest well of data hiding in javascript, here’s a bit of a primer). So re-executing all of the ready functions by grabbing a copy of that array becomes impossible.

The ReadyAgain plugin is my attempt to solve that issue. The specifics can be seen by looking at the code, but the basic concept is to override jQuery.ready to intercept each function as its added, and to save it within our own internal array.

Public Code

So the initial commit of the code is there and I’ve typed up a page on the Wiki with some examples. I hope that people use it and maybe even contribute to it. It would certainly be something fun for me to be a part of and from which to learn.

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Miter Box Slider

I submitted a jQuery plugin to CodeCanyon before this past weekend started, and this morning I received an “it’s been accepted” email. If you’re not already familiar with it, CodeCanyon is a marketplace for code. It allows anyone to submit a piece of code to sell. If accepted, they set the price and take a cut of any profits. It’s part of the larger Envato marketplace, which includes areas for selling things like site designs and audio clips.

Miter Box Slider is my submission. It’s a jQuery ’slider’ plugin (i.e. when there’s a slideshow display of images at websites). What’s awesome about it is that it provides the ability to create truly unique animation transitions. With other sliders you’ll see a set of predefined transition effects, but with Miter Box, you create the transitions. It’s actually very powerful. One of the largest issues I had developing it was that I would often end up just playing with it. It’s a fun tool for experimenting.

Regardless of whether other people decide to use it, I really am pretty proud of it. Remember that those who run the site review the code and set the price? Right now, mine is the highest priced (one of only two at that price) item in the javascript section of code. I don’t know everything that goes into that price point, but I will say that I think it’s an indication of the power my plugin offers.

If you’ve got a site, or create sites, and are looking for some way to spice up the way you display your images, check out the Miter Box demo.

Puter Piano and Outside Rain

The Virtual Piano is (judging by the notes that have been echoing out of a bedroom for the past hour) a big hit in our house. (courtesy of).

And while I’m here, Lifehacker recently pointed me to RainyMood.com. On a whim I pushed play and then, after about an hour of interneting, realized it was still on. Super job of drowning out ambient noise.

Four Dollars of Elvis

Amazon has a $3.99 deal on Elvis 75 happening today. I don’t actually have any Elvis around so this seemed like as good a time as any to grab some.

SWFObject, IE and Dynamic Content (a problem)

I’ve got a problem. The main players are my plugin, Internet Explorer (7, maybe 8, not 6) and SWFObject.

The original inkling of issues came via Anon’s comment, on my previous update post, that YouTube videos pulled down as part of the “more” section were broken. I tested this locally and saw that, with IE7, he/she was right. Of course, it’s not just YouTube. It would be any of the <object>/<embed> elements video sharing sites provide.

That really sucks.
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Overflowing List Elements

So I had a problem. A long, unordered list of links seems to want to overflow out of their containing <div>. The list items were set to display inline and were extending out past the width of that <div> instead of wrapping down to a new “row”. This list was being generated programmatically, i.e. (simplified):

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$values = get_values();
$display = "<ul>";
 
foreach($values as $value)
{
    $display .= "<li>$value</li>";
}
 
$display .= "</ul>";
 
echo $display;

Why was my list spilling out of its well defined boundaries? A staggering amount of time was spent fiddling with every possible CSS property for that element and those around it. Edit, save and reload. Edit save and reload. It was driving me insane.

Solution? Append a newline after each list element.

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$display .= "<li>$value</li>\n";

I have no idea why. If you do, please enlighten in the comments.

Dear Lord I hope this helps someone else out.