Tips, Expertise, Articles and Advice from the Pro's for Your Website or Blog to Succeed
At Treehouse, we strive to create a space where folx can be their authentic selves. This means they are able to bring their whole identity to the table. For us, that includes our invisible identities. What does this mean? These...
The post Invisible Identity: Anxiety appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
Election Day in the United States is right around the corner. November 3rd, to be exact. At Treehouse, we want to make sure you’ve taken all the steps you need to be registered and able to vote. Every vote is...
The post Register to Vote! Then, VOTE. appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
Jacqueline Salinas has a pretty cool job. As the director of ecosystem and community development for the Continuous Delivery Foundation, she's a prominent advocate for the open source community in which millions of software developers around the world freely collaborate and exchange software code.
At the CD Foundation, Jacqueline is in charge of expanding the community and ecosystem for many of the fastest-growing open source projects for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), including Jenkins, Jenkins X, Spinnaker and Tekton. The foundation fosters collaboration between the industry's top DevOps practitioners and creates training materials to help teams around the globe implement CI/CD best practices.
In my introductory blog post on Accessibility, I mentioned that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is broken up into four accessibility principles: Perceivable Operable Understandable Robust These four principles are then divided into thirteen accessibility guidelines. Each WCAG guideline...
The post Introducing the WCAG Principles appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
The standard set of DevOps skills changes year over year. If you spent all of 2019 and early 2020 looking for employees with particular skills, only to find that you need a new set for your company to survive and...
The post How to Stand Out from the IT Crowd by Overcoming the Evolving DevOps Skills Gap appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” ― Pablo Picasso Companies and organizations that prioritize and promote learning for their employees have higher employee engagement and retention. By...
The post Upskilling: A Two-Pronged Approach appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
Like so many events this year, GitHub's annual state of the union and feature announcement event went online. However, as I typically watch the keynotes from a satellite meetup in Berlin anyway, it wasn't that different for me this year. As this period of online-first events progresses, organizers and presenters are finding new ways to make the format work, and Satellite was no different. It kicked off with a live-coded DJ set from Sam Aaron, followed by a slightly awkward staged entrance from CEO Nat Friedman where he pretended to be eating his breakfast and to have forgotten about the keynote. Still, humor helps us through these dark times, and it wasn't too awkward.
Anyway, on to the announcements; there were a lot, and a handful were significant.
A Q&A session with guests:
Over the years, Java EE has included many powerful key open standards, and the Java EE Guardians were created to ensure that these standards move forward for the community and industry. Now that the transition of Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation is complete, and Jakarta EE is out in the wild, it’s important that the group re-brand as the Jakarta EE Ambassadors in order to make our intention clear: empowering efforts to ensure these standards continue to evolve and thrive.
The key to accomplishing this under the new Jakarta EE banner is community advocacy, facilitating participation and ensuring rank-and-file developers are heard. We invite you to learn about what we are doing and re-engage with us once more towards these ends now as Jakarta EE Ambassadors.
We are living in a world where technology information and resources are easily available, all thanks to the Internet. Today you can learn anything about web development, data science, UX design, and much more without spending a fortune. And yet,...
The post What is the Best Way to Become a JavaScript Developer? appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
The query execution engine plays an important role in database system performance. TiDB, an open-source MySQL-compatible Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) database, implemented the widely-used Volcano model to evaluate queries. Unfortunately, when querying a large dataset, the Volcano model caused high interpretation overhead and low CPU cache hit rates.
Inspired by the paper MonetDB/X100: Hyper-Pipelining Query Execution, we began to employ vectorized execution in TiDB to improve query performance. (Besides this article, we also suggest you take Andy Pavlo’s course on Query Execution, which details principles about execution models and expression evaluation.)
You’ve been working as a web developer for as long as you can remember, and you want to break the monotony by going freelance. Great! As a freelance developer, you can use your skills to contribute to meaningful work that...
The post How to Market Your Freelance Developer Skills appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
It feels like we don’t have a strong understanding of open source itself. Some scars have come from working with open source in an environment filled with proprietary software. When the words “open” and “source” were brought together, there was a visceral reaction. People were skeptical of it. Some even despised it.
There’s no one-size-fits-all way to bring open source into your ecosystem. But it does require a strong champion. That’s why Lee Calcote (@lcalcote) advocates for creating a specific office.
After a multi-year hiatus, Elliott Richmond has relaunched his WordPress advent calendar and is looking for volunteers. The WP Snippets ’til Christmas site will host 24 days of WordPress code snippets starting on December 1 and lasting until December 24. With each passing day, a new code snippet will be revealed.
Advent calendars are special types of calendars used to count down the days until Christmas. They are often a part of religious celebrations but can be used for other purposes such as family traditions and games. For Richmond’s advent calendar, it is a way to contribute something back to the WordPress community.
Richmond opened the site for developers to make contributions to the 24-day event. “I’ve been in touch with the original contributors in the hope that they’ll submit again and registration is also open to anyone else who wishes to contribute,” he said. “Otherwise, it will just be the Elliott Richmond show.”
He would rather have community submissions than attempting to write all 24 code snippets alone. Jeff Starr, Zac Gordon, and Tom McFarlin, all prominent developers in the WordPress community, have already signed on to submit code. Author’s note: I am also considering joining because it sounds like fun.
Anyone who wants to receive updates each day of the event can register for free on the WP Snippets ’til Christmas website. The same signup form is available for contributors.
There are no limitations on the types of code snippets that contributors can submit, only that they should be related to WordPress. Richmond says he has some ideas such as a WP-CLI script and a deployment tool for use on the command line. However, code snippets can be something as simple as sticking a basic function into a theme to more complex scripts.
“I come from a frontend world and I’m a self-taught PHP developer,” said Richmond. “I’m evolving constantly and always eager to learn new things. I think WordPress is similar, it’s always evolving and inspiring innovation. If you put any limitations on things they rapidly become stagnated.”
The code snippets are not aimed at any type of WordPress user in particular. “I think it’s really useful to see bite-size code snippets to help those in the community who are taking that next step into development,” said Richmond. “To those more seasoned developers, I think it’s always useful to see how other developers approach things.”
Each code snippet will have an open comments section similar to a traditional blog. This will allow others to say thanks for sharing or to jump-start a conversation.
Richmond has been a WordPress user and developer since the launch of the platform. He is the director of Square One Software, a software development company that specializes in WordPress development.
He last ran the advent calendar in 2013. After the success of the first year in 2012, he decided to put it together for a second round. He wanted to keep it going beyond the first two years, but work and other commitments took priority.
In the years since, Richmond met other local WordPress enthusiasts at WordCamp London. He now helps host the local meetup in Cheltenham, UK. With the help of the community, he organized four teams of local project managers, designers, developers, and content writers for a local do_action event. “I’m still an enthusiastic proponent of giving back to the community and actively encourage others in our local community to share their experience and knowledge,” said Richmond.
do_action events are charity hackathons that use WordPress to help provide local charity organizations an online presence.
“Every single team and team member did an amazing job on the day for four local non-profit charities, putting together a functional WordPress website for each charity while I personally gave a charity representative some hands-on training,” said Richmond. “Taking away some of the overhead of creating a website for the charities allows them to concentrate on what they do best, which is raising money for their own community.”
Richmond described needing to find something to do next while still riding the buzz from the event. That is when he decided to relaunch the WP Snippets ’til Christmas event.
Because it is the season, Richmond crowned “It’s a Wonderful Life” as the greatest Christmas movie.
“I love classics and this one is a true classic, pretty apt in the current move to make people aware of mental health,” said Richmond. “The movie starts with depression and pending suicide when a guardian angel is bestowed to the main character George Bailey. George is shown how many lives he’s impacted on in his own local community and how things would have been if he didn’t exist, a real heartwarming feel-good reflection on the things that we take for granted in our own existence.”
With this upcoming holiday season, considering taking the time to give back to both your local community and the WordPress community. One great way to do that is to contribute a code snippet to WP Snippets ’til Christmas.
Ever struggle with what to write? No worries, we've got you covered. Here's a list of cloud prompts and article ideas to help cure even the worst cases of writer's block. So, take a moment, check out the prompts below, pick one (or more!), and get to writing.
Also, please feel free to comment on this post to bounce around ideas, ask questions, or share which prompt(s) you're working on.
On September 27, we teamed up with famous Portland-raised rapper Aminé to visit local teens and unveil Project: Unlock The American Dream! Five kids from each school and Boys & Girls Club are receiving a year-long Techdegree scholarship funded by...
The post Aminé + Treehouse for Project: Unlock The American Dream appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
Wow, what a bumper month! Summer is well and truly over and we are Being Productive! This month's edition is absolutely huge and I didn't even do any particular research for the newsletter; there was just a lot of interesting stuff kicking around. Of course, we have Java 13, and I've added two new sections: career advice and testing. Not testing your career, although that would be really useful too. There are also a lot of Spring Boot tutorials because I've been leaning on Google a lot this month for my live coding demo for Spring One Platform in Austin next week. Set aside some serious time for this edition!
Java 13 came out in September. It’s another short-term release, but it does mean that if you were on Java 12 your JDK is no longer supported and you should upgrade to 13. If you’re on Java 11 or 8, watch my video (last link below) to understand some of the questions you should be asking in order to decide whether to upgrade,
Chef co-founder and former CTO Adam Jacob gave a short presentation at O’Reilly Open Source Software Conference (OSCON) 2019 titled “The War for the Soul of Open Source.” In his search for meaning in open source software today, Jacob confronts the notion of open source business models.
“We often talk about open source business models,” he said. “There isn’t an open source business model. That’s not a thing and the reason is open source is a channel. Open source is a way that you, in a business sense, get the software out to the people, the people use the software, and then they become a channel, which [companies] eventually try to turn into money.”
Companies often employ open source as a strategy to drive adoption, only to have mega corporations scoop up the software and corner the market. Jacob addressed the friction open source communities have with companies that use OSS to make billions of dollars per year running it as a service, citing Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a prime example.
Amid conflicts like these, it’s a challenge to find meaning in OSS via business. Jacob looked to organizations like the Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative but could not get on board with the methods and outcomes they pursue through their efforts.
He concluded that what is left is the people at the heart of OSS, who improbably come together with an overlapping sense of shared values and purpose.
“Each of us are a weird different shape, struggling to find our path and yet open source software gives us this ability to gather together around this resource that we turn from being scarce to being infinite,” he said.
“Look at your own desires, look at your own needs and the things you want in your own life. Then go out and find and build and steward communities with other people who share those values and who will embrace your purpose, and sustain each other. Because that is the true soul of open source.”
In December 2018, Jacob launched the Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities (SFOSC) project to advocate for these ideas. Instead of focusing on protecting revenue models of OSS companies, the project’s contributors work together to collaborate on writing core principles, social contracts, and business models as guidelines for healthy OSS communities.
“I believe we need to start talking about Open Source not in terms of licensing models, or business models (though those things matter): instead, we should be talking about wether or not we are building sustainable communities,” Jacob said in a post introducing the project. “What brings us together, as people, in this common effort around the software? What rights do we hold true for each other? What rights are we willing to trade in order to see more of the software in the world, through the investment of capital?”
Check out Jacob’s presentation below for a 13-minute condensed version of the inspiration behind the SFOSC project.