Looks like I was a bit late in doing my links post this month. Like most of the country, my kids went back to school over the past week or so and I think the prep time ahead of that just made the month fly by. Last week was incredibly rough for me. I'm not going to get into why, and I'm very much aware of how privileged I am to be writing this in the comfort of my home with a job to go to tomorrow, but yeah, I'm kinda glad it's a new week. (Although I'll be even happier when our high temps dip below 100.)

Lost at SQL

I'm a big fan of online games as a way of learning technology. While I don't write nearly as much SQL as I used to (in fact, the query I wrote a week or so ago was probably my first query in years), but this looks like a very cool way to get up to speed with SQL, or Structured Query Language. (To be honest, I never hear people say that.)

Lost at SQL is a free online tool that walks you through writing queries to advance in the game. It's got a beautiful design (and a cool as hell intro video, don't skip it!) and a great story.

Screenshot from Lost at SQL

Component Party

Here's a fascinating tool. Component Party lets you preview multiple front-end frameworks and see how they do various things, like declaring state or handling lifecycle events. For example, the screenshot below shows how state is declared in React, Vue, and Alpine.

Screenshot from Component Party

I'll remind folks that while the Alpine example is valid and nice and simple, usually one would declare state in JavaScript so as to not overload the HTML with too much code. But I love that Alpine allows for it. As a reminder, if you want to learn Alpine, I've got a full online (and free!) video course you can watch.

Blast from the Past - "New" JavaScript Features

How about this - a blog post from 1996 covering new JavaScript features in Netscape Navigator 3. Fun stuff like the Array constructor, the Image object, and the src attribute for the script tag. Yes, before that everything was inline. Fun times, am I right?! My first experience with JavaScript was the initial release. I have fond (not) memories of locking up my machine with bad code mistakes and needing to reboot my Gateway PC to get back. Yep, good times.

And finally...

A few days ago my good buddy Brian Rinaldi shared a song from a band I've never heard of, Yard Act. The song is really darn good, but the video is excellent. It's a bit long, but trust me, watch it.