Working Life

In my last post, I mentioned that I was interested in looking across the field of Computer Science to see if there my be other areas worth working in in the future, besides web-development. Primarily, I'm interested in a more powerful run-time environment. So Python or Clojure seem very enticing. A safe first step would be to learn about the architecture of server-side code, to deepen my understanding of Web-stacks, and also to satisfy my curiosity of what else is out there in terms of languages, VM's, and code paradigms. Another motivation to look outside of web-dev has come more recently, in the form of some sage advice from an interview with Elon Musk . In it he states that there is too much talent working in the internet space [  55:00 ]. So if web-dev is overcrowded, what would be a worthy Comp-Sci field to pursue? In the same interview, Musk also alludes to the seriousness of the approaching revolution taking place in the field of Artificial Intelligence. He desc...

JavaScript and Google Apps Script Over the last year and a half, I've been teaching myself JavaScript quite obsessively. I've used the knowledge to build a few applications for use at work --to log phone calls and orders, generate Bills of Materials, and analyze costs. All of this has been done through the Google Apps Script application programming interface (API), which allows one to write custom automation for Google's Apps such as Docs, Sheets, and G-mail. Scripts run in a JavaScript environment on Google's servers, but one can also build HTML user-interfaces (UIs) that plug into the apps, or stand-alone scripts with their own URLs. Thus I've been able to build my own apps, without needing to worry about registering with a hosting company. The code structure for an HTML UI requires one to segregate 'server-side' and 'client-side' JavaScript, and use a simplified AJAX-like API to send data between the client and server (I use single quotes beca...