Learning New Tricks

Hello Readers,

Do you sometimes like to pick up some new programming tool, language or technique to keep yourself fresh and interested?  I certainly do.

I've got two great projects in the works, I'd like to share them with you.  Maybe you'll find an interest in these two, or maybe they'll spark an idea of some other type for you.

First, I've been taking my first online course through Coursera.  I've been a 'business' programmer for 23 years now (can't believe it!), but have never done any game programming since my Vic 20.  (Even then, I didn't really do much original work.)  But that's all changed now-- I'm taking 'Introduction to Interactive Programming with Python' via Rice University.  This class is a blast!  We're in week 6, we've already written 'Pong', 'Memory' and are about to handle 'BlackJack'.  The course final will be 'Asteroids'.  Coursera is free, and I have really enjoyed this class.  Maybe you can, too.

The other item currently in the hopper is a new title from Packt Publishing.  I've done web service programming (a fair bit), but have not done a lot of work with WebSockets.  Packt has a new title, "Developing RESTful Services with JAX-RS 2.0, WebSockets and JSON", as seen here.  I've got a copy and will be providing a review here in near future.  Sounds like exciting stuff, and the book looks to be mean and lean.  I'll report more after I've given it a read.

Happy (continual) study!