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Survival of a Language To have a thriving ecosystem, what does a programming language need? Short Answer: A Good Package Manager A package manager is a set of tools that help automate the installation, configuration, removal, and updating of libraries and programs. Package managers are key to an effective build system because they take the pain out of loading and organizing the correct versions of dependencies to create a consistent build. They can also be a gateway for module exploration. This discovery method can save developers loads of time they would have spent re-inventing the wheel. What Makes a Good One? A good program manager should have the following attributes: Cross-platform Free Easy Fast Deterministic Browse-able Promotes quick evaluation Examples C# Nuget JavaScript / Node NPM / Yarn Python PIP Anaconda PyPl Go go get Ruby RubyGems Rust Cargo Crates.IO Java Maven Gradle PHP PEAR PE...

Blender is an awesome tool for motion graphics . After watching some workflow videos by Midge Sinnaeve (a.k.a the Mantissa) I was totally blown away by some of the things that are possible using Blender's modifier stack. You can really create complex and interesting animations with a pretty simple setup. I decided to take a creative challenge by making an image using only a sphere. So here is my 2-hour project. Here is the modifier stack I used in Blender. The ability to animate a texture and affect the modifiers was made possible by using a VertexWeightEdit modifier as shown below. Modifier Stack Texture key-framed values The animated curves were part of another project where I experimented with creating curves from particle animations. Also something I learned from Midge.