John's Blog

Category: Beep

  • VS Code – invalid version: is

    Recently I noticed that some of my VS Code extensions weren’t working properly. Specifically, the ones that perform PHP linting and syntax checking. Opening up the VS Code developer tools showed this puzzling message: Activating extension failed: Invalid Version: is. I couldn’t find anything matching that online, and trying to debug it further didn’t reveal […]

  • Wrong is Yoda

    Like any profession, programming is full of things you should do, and things you shouldn’t. Some of these are passed-down experiences, and some are momentary fashions. One of the former is that you should write a conditional using Yoda notation. That is, instead of writing: if ( x == 1 ) You should write: if […]

  • Senua’s Saga

    I’ve had Senua’s Sacrifice for almost two year and just never gotten round to playing it. Part of the reason is that it’s quite an intense game. I don’t mean that it’s physically intense, or that it’s scary, just that it puts you in the role of someone with psychosis and it’s not really suited […]

  • Control a Sphero RVR with bluetooth joypad

    A while back I contributed to the Sphero RVR Kickstarter project. It arrived in time for Christmas allowing me to gift it to my daughter. Ostensibly this was a fun educational present for her, but it also doubled up as a present to myself. Everyone’s a winner. The RVR itself is an incredibly solid device […]

  • The need for whitespace

    I’m a big fan of vertical whitespace, and find it strange that more fuss is made of tabs vs spaces (which doesn’t really affect readability) than vertical spacing (which does). Here’s a simple code example, randomly picked: Compared to: That single extra line makes such a difference when scanning code. Imagine trying to read a […]

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