jaustin

Micro:bit Educational Foundation | Lead Developer - website and services (fullstack) | Oxford, UK | ONSITE with flexibility, Full-time The Micro:bit Educational Foundation (http://microbit.org) is a not-for-profit with the global vision of helping every child to be an inventor. We are enabling children around the world to get creative with technology and learn to code in school, in clubs and at home. We do this primarily through educational programs based around the BBC micro:bit board, and building technology that just works for teachers and students in a school environment.

To do this we're looking for a committed, flexible and collaborative software engineer to lead the development, deployment and maintenance of our systems and web presence at microbit.org.

This site is the first port of call for millions of students and teachers around the world who are learning about coding and technology using the BBC micro:bit. The role will require you to work with a range of languages and tools; we need someone who can start with what we have and lead the creation of our next generation platform.

Alongside this you will start to develop our community portals, ecosystem and accessory listings, and work with upstream communities to enhance the micro:bit code editors (makecode.microbit.org is Typescript and python.microbit.org is Javascript+Python). Our current stack includes Ruby/Jekyll and CircleCI deployments to AWS.

More info https://micro-bit-educational-foundation.workable.com/j/E27C....

As well as building our own suite of sites and services, we also need to be confident contributing to and staying on top of other open-source tools that our partners are developing in conjunction with us. Most significantly, these are Typescript (makecode.microbit.org) and JS+Python-based (python.microbit.org)

It's awesome working for a creative not-for-profit that's all about broadening the range of people that get excited by computing. We're flexible about office hours, working style, and the team's built from people passionate about EdTech. This person will be hiring other team members as we grow.

We've only got the web tech lead job up right now, but all future jobs will go up here: https://micro-bit-educational-foundation.workable.com/

Working on the BBC micro:bit project - first in Arm and then in the Micro:bit Educational Foundation! (http://microbit.org/). The combination of nice hard technical problems, a really collaborative group of companies, universities and communities delivering it together, and the look of joy on kids faces when they first make something of their own with the micro:bit.

I think making sure that the broadest/most diverse range of people have the digital skills they're going to need to create the best future for us all is really essential, too, and micro:bit is really starting to contribute to that.

Additionally, since we launched the foundation, being able to focus on the needs of our audience and building a sustainable organisation rather than something that looks glitzy and investible (we're a UK-based not-for-profit) also contributes a huge amount to the sense of fulfilment.

(We're going to be hiring a number of people over the next few months, so if you like the sound of that - https://micro-bit-educational-foundation.workable.com/ )

Micro:bit Educational Foundation | Lead Developer - website and services (fullstack) | Oxford, UK | ONSITE with flexibility, Full-time

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation (http://microbit.org) is a not-for-profit with the global vision of helping every child to be an inventor. We are enabling children around the world to get creative with technology and learn to code in school, in clubs and at home. We do this primarily through educational programs based around the BBC micro:bit board, and building technology that just works for teachers and students in a school environment.

To do this we're looking for a committed, flexible and collaborative software engineer to lead the development, deployment and maintenance of our systems and web presence at microbit.org.

This site is the first port of call for millions of students and teachers around the world who are learning about coding and technology using the BBC micro:bit. The role will require you to work with a range of languages and tools; we need someone who can start with what we have and lead the creation of our next generation platform.

Alongside this you will start to develop our community portals, ecosystem and accessory listings, and work with upstream communities to enhance the micro:bit code editors (makecode.microbit.org is Typescript and python.microbit.org is Javascript+Python). Our current stack includes Ruby/Jekyll and CircleCI deployments to AWS.

More info https://micro-bit-educational-foundation.workable.com/j/E27C...

As well as building our own suite of sites and services, we also need to be confident contributing to and staying on top of other open-source tools that our partners are developing in conjunction with us. Most significantly, these are Typescript (makecode.microbit.org) and JS+Python-based (python.microbit.org)

It's awesome working for a creative not-for-profit that's all about broadening the range of people that get excited by computing. We're flexible about office hours, working style, and the team's built from people passionate about EdTech. This person will be hiring other team members as we grow.

We've only got the web tech lead job up right now, but all future jobs will go up here: https://micro-bit-educational-foundation.workable.com/

I work for the micro:bit Foundation, who have taken ownership of the project on from the BBC - great to see some love on HN for this! There's more at http://microbit.org but for the Hacker News audience you're probably interested in http://tech.microbit.org though ;). There's even a reference design to make your own microbit-derived designs.

We'll be hiring tech people again soon, so if you want to come and help us teach kids around the world to be inventors, keep your eye on https://micro-bit-educational-foundation.workable.com/

Finally, as the author hoped, the revision of the hardware now shipping is more resilient to ESD than the previous one :)

This is impressive stuff - I like the map demo a lot - I always find digital maps are useless as maps but great as search tools... Mixing the two is awesome.

Any reason you didn't choose QR codes?

Agreed, this is awesome.

I do find that I keep pressing 'up' in order to get to my recent commands and being disappointed. I guess implementing that goes along with implementing ctrl+r.

These are all excellent points. I really underestimated how much I would use the trackpad. I've got a slightly modified version of Middle Click (here's the original http://github.com/cl3m/MiddleClick) that lets me open links in new tabs with 3 finger tap and do per application expose with 4 finger tap.

Adding to the list: - Magsafe - has certainly saved my computer at least 3 times now (that's the magnetic power connector) - Apple Stores: If you live near one you can drop in and get your computer looked at/fixed. If you're in desperate need they can usually turn a machine around very quickly, too...

How does this relate to Google's funding of ogg/theora for mobile codecs? http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/interesting-ti...

Given that theora is based on On2's VP3, could there be enough similarity in the codecs that the theora DSP code is useful for quickly getting VP8 going?

I am confused as to why more people aren't asking this. If On2 were licensing any patents (for example, from one or more of the MPEGLA partners) in order to make VP8 possible, it's not important that Google has open sourced it unless they also somehow provide a free license to all the patents involved.

I don't know enough about the industry to be able to predict whether On2 could have a technology in VP8 that they, and only they, have patents on. In that case, the ball is in Google's court. Otherwise, whoever owns the patents that On2 was licensing (or infringing?) still as a right to get royalties, right? Experts?

I'm not an iPhone developer, but I am surprised how many of them here think they're being helped out by this.

I see it as a step to hinder them (this is modified from another comment I wrote a couple of days ago...):

1. Apple are increasing the barrier of entry for iPhone devs in to OTHER mobile development worlds - they're no longer able to develop a solution that is easily portable to Android, WinMo, BB, for example. They're forcing devs to bet their ability to write popular mobile apps on the fact that Apple will always provide the platform they need, and (more worryingly) that they will continue to keep the App in the App Store. If Apple chose to duplicate the functionality of any app themselves, the developer can't easily move to providing it for Android - so they're screwed. Given how Apple don't seem to care about doing this, I think it's bad for iPhone developers' job security.

2. There will be more ObjC devs now, so iPhone developers' hard earned ObjC skills will be less unique and useful in the long run.

If, however, the move results in a working ObjC-->Other platforms compiler, point 1 becomes less important.

I can't work out how 'official' that statement is, especially given that it conflicts with what Unity have apparently said (perhaps there are updates on that story that I've missed?) - http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/08/adobe-flash-apple-sdk/

There seems to be an 'official' response from Novell here: http://www.mono-project.com/newstouch/archive/2010/Apr-09.ht..., but the email linked here is doing the rounds on blogs/aggregators as an 'official statement' - is that guy one of Novell's lawyers?

Further to the link this post gives, this email form later in the thread is useful/gives more context: http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/monotouch/2010-April/00188...

I think he's looking at it from the wrong starting point, and getting confused about who is benefiting.

1. Apple are increasing the barrier of entry for him in to OTHER mobile development worlds - he's no longer able to develop a solution that is easily portable to Android, WinMo, BB, for example. He's betting his ability to write popular mobile apps on the fact that Apple will always provide him the platform he needs, and (more worryingly) that they will continue to keep his App in the App Store. If Apple chose to duplicate the functionality of his app themselves, he can't easily move to providing it for Android - so he's screwed. I contest that his job is less secure than ever.

2. His last point suggests he's made himself more valuable and unique by learning ObjC. That's nice for him, but it isn't a reason to be happy with the new ruling from Apple: if anything, the new T&Cs likely to result in MORE ObjC developers, so reducing how remarkable he is as a programmer.