#adventures in javascript

For those of you who’ve been following my shenanigans over on my hub site, you’ll know I’ve been trying to get an app going so that all the lovely peeps can access all 3K+ of my flash fictions and counting. Anywhere, anytime, with customisable reading experience options.

The only thing missing at the moment is account creation. Tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I spend some spare hours of mine tagging fictions so they’re searchable. Yaaay.

I think I was up to 40. A drop in the bucket.

We’ve got the database builder. We’ve got the thing to add to the database. We've got the thing to find stuff in the database.

Tonight, all being well, we start on the User Interface. Not just for this nerd, but also for my dear readers out there.

Whilst we were finessing the database manipulation nonsense, we had some weird errors. To make sure the right bit of code was activating, we added a single line of code to show us what stuff it was playing with.

Code before we added the single line: Did the wrong thing.

Code after we added the single line: Did the right thing.

Let me be clear. This line was a “console.log()” it just displayed a segment of data onto the console so we knew what it was playing around with. It did JACK ALL to the rest of the code.

Except. Somehow. It made the thing work properly.

Wat.

We removed this one line and... (drumroll)... it still worked.

Dear readers, I think I may have uncovered the coding equivalent of turning it off and turning it back on again. Either that, or my Fickle Finger [aka bad luck with all things technological] has reared its ugly head and this time I have a WITNESS!

Me: I've learned numbers, sets, strings, and how to manipulate all of those!

Beloved: Good. You're ready.

Me: I also made this [hands over crayon drawing of the app I want to make with all the features holding hands]

Beloved: Great. Now all you need to do is farnarkle the grommets, actuate the splines, retriculate the manifold and you're halfway there.

Me: ...haha wat?

Beloved: Don't worry, I'll walk you through it.

[Most of the day and a lot of frustration later]

Me: I did not understand one iota of that.

I shouldn’t.

However I am all set up to start learning in the early morning when my brain can actually absorb knowledge and retain it for longer than 1.25 seconds.

what's the java program? i might be able to help...a bit...

oops i'm being dumb actually javascript

well basically, it has to guess what number the user is thinking of, but NOT randomly. it first guesses the median of a given range (Math.floor((upper + lower)/2) and then accepts feedback from the user whether the guess was correct, too high, or too low. And accordingly adjusts the possible range by ruling out all numbers above/below, and then it takes the median of THAT new range and guesses again