First Robotics Competition

Lessons in Programming Java Robots

Brad Mongar Community, Opinion 3 Comments

This year, I was a programming mentor in a robot building competition for high school students. Specifically, one of 11 mentors assisting 40 high-schoolers of the Park Hill Trobots team in the FIRST Robotics Competition.

In this blog, I discuss key lessons I learned as a programming mentor of high school students building a Java-based robot that could run, climb, balance, aim, and release projectiles.

More on Accessibility-First Programming

Todd Horn Development Technologies, Opinion, Programming Leave a Comment

A few months back, Aaron wrote about the high-level aspects of Accessibility-First Programming, its importance, and specific strategies and tools for applying it within your software development process. It included insights and suggestions for Color and Contrast, Focus Management, the use of ARIA tags and attributes, and testing strategies and tools – all of which are important things to consider. 

In this post, we’re going to dig in a little deeper on three of those topics that I used on my last project: ARIA, the WCAG and what is needed for compliance, and some design principles of accessible design. We’ll include insights and further reading on relevant topics to help you better understand how to implement accessibility-first programming in your own development.

React vs. Angular: A Comparison Between Two Great Options

Robert Rice Angular, Development Technologies, JavaScript, Opinion, React 1 Comment

Both React and Angular are very popular front end development frameworks. In this post, I will discuss the similarities and differences between the two, and consider when one should be used instead of the other.

React is an open-source JavaScript library introduced by Facebook to build dynamic user interfaces. It is based on JavaScript and JSX (a PHP extension) and is considered widely for developing reusable HTML elements for front-end development.

Angular is an open-source front-end development framework powered by Google. It is a part of the MEAN stack and is compatible with a large number of code editors and is considered for creating dynamic websites and web apps.

In this post, we will begin by going over the benefits of React and Angular, then break down the differences between the two frameworks using thirteen attributes. By comparing each framework side by side, it can help decide which is the best framework for your specific app project.

What’s On First: The Case For Accessibility-First Programming

Aaron Diffenderfer Development Technologies, Opinion, Programming Leave a Comment

When you think of common programming techniques and processes, what comes to mind first? Perhaps it’s test-driven development, writing an automated test to start your development cycle and putting testing at the forefront instead of the typical afterthought. Or maybe you thought of behavior driven development with stakeholders collaborating and defining the software behavior upfront thus mitigating the ambiguities from some requirements. But what if I told you that while testing and behavior are important, accessibility should be one of the first development considerations?

Maybe the whole concept of accessibility is nothing new to you, and you’re already accounting for it in all aspects of the development process. But, if you’re like most developers (myself occasionally included), accessibility along with unit testing are the two things you often save to the very, very, very end, or perhaps you save them for the newbies to worry about in a future sprint – neither of which is ideal. While it may not be quite as important in some industries as it is in others like government (where Section 508 is federal law regarding accessibility), addressing it should be in the forefront of your thought process, your code, and your testing.