An illustrated guide to how modern languages turn source code into machine code — Here’s a question that stumps plenty of smart people. Is JavaScript a compiled or interpreted language? Are you sure? Over the years, clever people have blurred the boundaries between the two ways programs are built. We’ll get to JavaScript in a moment. But first, here’s how things started. Compiled code: The OG When you…

How modern programming languages keep your memory clean — Long ago, almost programming languages made a crucial decision. They decided that memory management was too important to leave in the hands of programmers. There are a few exceptions (C++ programmers, please stand up). But in most modern programming environments, you don’t need to think about grabbing a block of…

How modern programming keeps your code safe — In the dark ages, when strange beasts roamed the land, computer programming was much different than it is now. Serious programmers were expected to be hands-on and manage the way their programs used memory. How did they do it? And why is life so different today? In this article you’ll…

The journey from web server to browser — Once, many years ago, when the internet was first created, web pages were like ordinary documents. You wrote one, you saved it, and then you copied it to a web server. And there it stayed, forever the same, unless some day you decided to make changes and upload a new…

Before you surrender your career and your passion, know that there is a path forward — In August of 2015, my hands stopped working. I could still control them, but every movement accumulated more pain, so every motion came with a cost — getting dressed in the morning, sending a text, lifting a glass. I was interning at Google that summer about to begin a PhD…

Equations are fun, but the real insights happen when kids explore math with code — Peter Farrell spent more than a decade teaching math and computer science. Somewhere along the way, he began using Python to create programming challenges to pair with his lessons. …

What’s coming next in the Young Coder publication — Young Coder is a publication about coding, science, and tech — usually with a twist. We love quirky science, creative coding, and all the places inspiration meets semicolons. If you’re a programming professional, you’ll love our deep reads on subjects like the history of JavaScript, or how coders survive when…

Can kids learn more writing interactive stories than playing learn-to-code games? — Kicks Condor is an elementary school computer teacher, a former computer expert (of the sort “discontinued in the 1990s”), and an IndieWeb blogger. When asked to run an after-school coding club, he realized there were two ways he could go. The first possibility was to use the popular code-themed games…

Could the Commodore make a comeback in education? — Gerald Friedland is Principal Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Like many, he taught himself to program as a child in the 1980s with the ancient — but refreshingly straightforward — Commodore 16. Here’s where things take an interesting turn. When…