Viewing profile — gary_bernhardt

Yes, currently there's no way to jump to the middle of a course. That lets us keep the lessons shorter, without needing to recap earlier topics. We're planning to add a way to skip…

I'm Gary Bernhardt, founder of Execute Program, an interactive platform for learning programming languages and other programming tools. Our "Python for Programmers" course is in a …

This is a great excuse to repeat one of my favorite quips, from the late Jim Weirich (from memory, but this is at least very close): "half-assed is OK as long as it's the right hal…

That sentence's grammar is intentional. (I wrote the sentence.) English is not a programming language. I'm sure that we can both name revered authors who have used far "worse" gram…

Almost none of the e2e tests for https://www.executeprogram.com meet this description. They're all tests like: - Visit a lesson page with a code example that returns a string. - En…

I switched off of Dvorak because of vim, and because keyboard shortcuts in general were so awkward. Shortcuts are better in Norman, but vim is still awkward.

I second this. I switched to Dvorak on regular staggered keyboards and got to 80-90 WPM or so, but pretty much lost my ability to QWERTY. Then I switched back to QWERTY full time f…

I'm the founder of Execute Program ( https://www.executeprogram.com ), where we've done a similar thing (knowledge graph + SRS) for programming languages/tools since 2019. Interest…

Yeah, you can get lucky. But if you actually get denied entry and put on the next flight back, you'll wish you'd printed that flight receipt. All it takes is one officer having a b…

I second this advice, having done it. I flew one-way from Seattle to Dublin in 2010 with no plan beyond the first week. 25ish cities and 4.5 months later, I flew back. You'll figur…

I use `git clean` maybe once per year on average, so very low risk for me. And if that ever happens... that's why I have hourly backup snapshots! If I didn't trust my backups, I'd …

I've had my dotfiles under version control for over a decade (hg for a couple years, then git). I've never used or felt the need for any special tools, and I don't use any extra sy…

Seconded; it's a fantastic tool and ecosystem. We use sql.js in production ( https://www.executeprogram.com ). The SQL course's live code examples all run directly in the browser v…

All good feedback, thanks! An upcoming landing rework will get the first two, and I added "separate sign-up list for new courses" to my queue.

I appreciate it. We've struggled with communicating the non-binge aspect, and usually approach it from the other side: by talking about reviews, spaced repetition, remembering, etc…

I think your argument here could be made about pretty much any activity that humans do repeatedly. The critical difference is that both WaniKani and Execute Program quickly tell yo…

Here's an anecdote about what happens when you design a product in the opposite way. I own https://www.executeprogram.com , which has interactive in-browser courses on various soft…

Thanks, I updated the post. I've been using JS since the 90s so I'm not sure how I managed to forget that!

Only people using Safari We run the entirety of SQLite, compiled to wasm, in the browser, among other things. It depends on the course, but our version checks are site-wide because…

Yep. Originally I had a SQL example in there too, but it took a lot more setup to explain and would limit the post's audience.

They're the same Gary (I wrote this article).