I wrote a short article on AstroBetter called “Creating Online Apps for Outreach and Education” about some of the tools and resources I use for my online work.
Chrome developer tools + js2-mode and web-mode in Emacs
I’ll be blogging more about this topic in the short term, but here are a few things I’ve been looking at that people might find interesting:
- Languages that convert to JavaScript: I find the constant context switching between the different programming languages I use for my work very annoying. I’ve used Emscripten for converting my C code into JavaScript to minimize the amount of code rewriting. I’m actively looking at languages that compile to JavaScript — the most famous is probably CoffeeScript, but I’m keeping an eye out for Kotlin. Kotlin is a budding language that primarily runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), but can also be compiled to JS. Since I do use Java and the JVM ecosystem for a substantial amount of my code, it looks very promising. Now, if only there was a kotlin-mode for Emacs I’d be very happy 🙂
- Three-dimensional visualizations: three.js looks cool but daunting. I’ve been trying to think of a small project to do using the isometric engine Obelisk.js — I’m just enamoured with things that look retro.
Cogito.org, a magazine for young students interested in science, published a short interview with me about how I came to be an astronomer, and why I developed Super Planet Crash. Read it here!