Author Archives: Mark Eaton

In praise of single file components

One of the recommended ways to organize Vue code is to use Single File Components, and I have to say, they are wonderful. Instead of the traditional separation of concerns into HTML, CSS and JS, Single File Components allow you to separate your project into chunks that are intuitive to you. You get to decide […]

Posted in vue | Comments closed

Up to date

There is more than one way to simplify code. You could, for example, adopt new abstractions that make things that were previously difficult, easier to implement. Of course this requires learning new things, and it requires pushing yourself a bit to adapt. Or you could stay simple by not adapting. By using the same tools […]

Posted in libraries | Comments closed

May is library infrastructure month

In advance of a very busy summer, I have some free time right now to focus on the library website. So I decided that May is Library Infrastructure Month, and I have been going about on Mastodon pretending like this is actually a thing. It’s not entirely a joke. Academic libraries are very infrastructural projects. […]

Posted in infrastructure, libraries | Comments closed

I successfully did a javascript build!

For a long time, I’ve been intimidated by JavaScript builds. They have a reputation for being complicated, difficult to understand, and unforgiving. This tracks with my past experiences. I have been burned before, so my approach has been to avoid builds, and just use script tags like it is 2005. Yes, it is possible to […]

Posted in javascript | Comments closed

A tentative use case for machine learning in academic libraries

Being a subject selector in an academic library is pretty repetitive. I’m basically applying the same selection criteria to different materials over and over again. In my specific role, I’m almost always looking for books (and ebooks) that are for lower-division undergraduates/general readers; that are from reputable academic presses; and that fall within the subject […]

Posted in acquisitions, ai | Comments closed

Dawdling

I’m really taking my time writing some JavaScript for our library homepage. The current code (that I want to replace) is working fine, but that’s not the reason I’m dawdling. I’m going slowly because I want JavaScript to move more slowly. In my opinion, the whole language can just slow down. I know that’s an […]

Posted in javascript, open source | Comments closed

Bilingual

I’m currently reading a book by Kyran Dale called Data Visualization with Python and JavaScript, and it’s super interesting. In my experience, it’s very unusual to find a fully bilingual programming book. This is a great example. Most technical books, for better or worse, focus exclusively on one programming language. I’m still in the early […]

Posted in books, javascript, learning, python | Comments closed

Code4Lib 2023

Code4Lib 2023 wrapped up today. I attended in person this year, as it was nearby, in Princeton, New Jersey. As always, it was really great. One of my favorite things about this conference is that I always go home feeling a lot more optimistic about my profession. I was happy about the large number of […]

Posted in code4lib, conference, imposter syndrome | Comments closed

Modern javascript on campus

JavaScript has changed a lot over the years. Old browsers are not equipped to handle new syntax. ES6 (in 2015) was a major change. That was a long time ago. But unfortunately, on our campus, we still have browsers deployed in labs that predate ES6. Why is this? My guess is that old system images […]

Posted in javascript | Comments closed

Vue 3

I had been meaning to upgrade our library website to Vue 3 for a while now. We had been on Vue 2 for some time. But there was a hard deadline for switching over, because Vue 2 reaches end-of-life at the end of 2023. Out of prudence I didn’t want to push up too close […]

Posted in vue | Comments closed
  • Subscribe to this blog

css.php
Skip to toolbar