Welcome back readers, last time I shared a side of my passion for nature and biodiversity — the out-side — but what about the inside?
For the past month and a bit, I have been redesigning the BIObus blog, and although I may not spend time outdoors while on the job, I still get a taste of the organic character of nature — through my code. Structurally, code ebbs and flows like a shoreline, and so do my ideas. A colour scheme keeps me organized and balanced, and I usually pick various shades and hues to distinguish between the components of the language, as one would observe in the various biological components of their specimen.
With any organism, what you see is not what you get. Body parts are defined by the biological code, the DNA, and the same goes for a website. I blindly build the appearance of the site and, until compiled, I have no idea what the “DNA” of the website will produce exactly. On the surface of any website it may seem simple, but there is always an element of complexity which underlies it, and another element of complexity which underlies that, and so on! Every detail is accounted for, every pixel defined… and of course there are mistakes!
Everybody makes mistakes, but trust me, web development has an uncanny amount mistakes, codenamed “bugs!” I regularly find myself opening up the debugger to find a multitude of errors. Like a trap, you never know what you’re going to get until you look inside. Generally, a good place to start is by inspecting what looks wrong, similar to putting it under the microscope, and with experience and a good eye you can pick out what’s throwing things out of balance. Other times, it takes a lot of patience and luck, because code in one location can influence code in other locations. Like a spider’s web, every element on the page is interconnected… maybe that’s why they call it the World Wide Web!
Signing off BIO buffs,
Reid
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