Jon Calhoun

Ahh, errors. A programmer's best friend or enemy or both? I may be a rookie, but I'll say this: - A few years ago I chose to learn Python "The Hard Way"[1] because I already had experience with scripting and a little bit of C++/Java/PHP/Js. While I fell in love with the flexibility of the language — how idiosyncratic it could be made, how quickly fluency came — error handling remained a mysterious dark space to me, a "TODO" for later. [which I didn't because I didn't program much after this first real training] - I later tried to become "Eloquent" in Javascript[2], and while I can never praise that book enough, the language's paradigm wasn't what made error handling 'click' for me. Now I see, but it took a trip far, far away. [Js isn't my problem space, and when it is I'd rather use TypeScript probably] - And finally Go. While I haven't finished once "The Go Programming Language"[3] yet — just followed a few great online books/courses so far (notably by Jon Calhoun[4], Xoogler), and only built a few basic things — I can say this: now I get it. I mean errors. I really do. I think these few points mattered: - Go has error checking 'in your face' indeed and makes it useful, because passing a value makes sense, and error type is no longer abstracted as in more OOP paradigms, it doesn't feel "otherworldly" to the present code, it's right there in the imperative flow. - Testing is well-integrated (`_test.go` files; I know, at a basic level, but that's what I expect from a…

Over the last 9 months or so I have slowly moved from never blogging, releasing videos, or doing anything like that to fairly consistently releasing educational articles related to Go at https://www.calhoun.io , writing a book (+ videos for a complete course) teaching web development with Go, and releasing a few screencasts teaching algorithms with Go. I say all that to tell you that I didn't just magically start writing every day. I started slowly. Some days I was too worn out to write, but I would try to push myself to spend 10m doing SOMETHING nearly every day. Maybe that was writing up some quick code to see if it would make an interesting article, or maybe I would take an article idea and turn it into a rough outline, or maybe I would turn a small section of the outline into sentences and paragraphs. It didn't matter as long as I tried to build that habit of doing something. At first it was hard but it got way easier. And 10m a day really isn't a big commitment. As you figure out your own process you will find there are many small pieces you can work on each day that slowly help you turn whatever you want to do into a habit. So my advice is to start with small goals that you can achieve and build on them. Maybe instead of one video a week you should try one every two weeks. If you get an extra video out, great, but if you don't you won't feel like you failed. And regardless of what you do, don't feel like you have to do something. There are several great blogs out…

What I describe in the post isn't a particular tool, just a coding convention to follow in writing tests using Go's built-in testing tools. It's hard to say how to test your app without more information, but here's a good primer on testing in Go: https://www.calhoun.io/how-to-test-with-go/

What is the slice of ints at the following URI about? https://www.calhoun.io/hire-me/

Is https://www.calhoun.io/creating-the-v-in-mvc/ close to what you had in mind? I need to do a follow-up to that with the type I use to wrap that logic, but I am curious if this is inline with what you are looking for in the examples.

Here are the ones I currently read (most) every issue: https://thehustle.co, https://zsa.io/the-ergo, https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com, https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/money-stuff, https://www.calhoun.io, https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com, https://inside.com (tech, streaming), https://www.thefp.com, https://ground.news

The correct link is http://www.calhoun.io/cost-of-living-adjusted-salaries-are-terrible-fo…