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Tutorials, demos, and code walkthroughs for a wide variety of real-time web, mobile, and IoT projects.

BuildSep 15, 2016

Meow: A Programming Language Created in Just 180 Lines

In the three previous posts in this series, we learned how to use Ohm to parse numbers, build an expression tree, and process blocks of code with conditionals. In this final post on the Ohm series, we will finish up our complete programming language, Meow, with looping and real function calls. Thanks...
Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll
BuildSep 14, 2016

Add Code Blocks and Conditionals to Ohm

Welcome back! In our first Ohm post, we introduced Ohm and built our very own parser to handle numbers in various formats. In our second post, we turned our parser into a real arithmetic language with binary operations and symbols. Today we will give our language code blocks and conditionals.  ...
Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll
BuildSep 8, 2016

Build Your Own Symbol Calculator with Ohm

Last time I introduced Ohm, an open source meta language parser with an easy to use syntax, we built a parser for different number formats. Basically, I showed you how to easily build your own programming language with just a few lines of code. This week we will extend the parser to calculate arithmetic...
Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll
Real-time voting APP
BuildSep 6, 2016

Build a Real-Time Voting System for Presidential Elections

Voting online and seeing the results instantly on the web is a very convenient way to conduct quick surveys or pop polls. But you already know that because of the primary season. This real-time voting tutorial was made for the first technical workshop I led as an evangelist intern this summer, a at YouTube’s...
Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll
DIY Virtual Whiteboard Using Google and Firebase.jpg
BuildSep 1, 2016

DIY Virtual Whiteboard Using Google and Firebase

When it comes to productivity, real-time collaboration is a staple of modern communication. An obvious example of this is, say, Google Docs. In this tutorial, my app Brain Drain takes that idea a step further, creating a freeform virtual whiteboard allowing users to collaborate as if they are all in...
Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll
BuildAug 30, 2016

Ohm: JavaScript Parser Creates a Language in 200 Lines

Parsers are an incredibly useful software libraries. While conceptually simple, they can be challenging to implement and are often considered a dark art in computer science. In this blog series, I’ll show you why you don’t need to be Harry Potter to master parsers. But bring your wand just...
Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll
BuildAug 29, 2016

DIY Pokemon Go App with Android Push Notifications

This is an Android app that displays Pokemon around you on a map, and uses PubNub and Google Cloud Messaging to provide mobile push notifications. It runs on an Ngrok server.

Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll
BuildAug 23, 2016

Remote WiFi Setup with Arduino’s MKR1000

This tutorial walks you through how to turn Arduino’s new board, the MKR1000, into an access point, process your WiFi credentials from a web browser, and connect your MKR to a WiFi network from a laptop or mobile device. As an added bonus, you’ll also learn how to connect to PubNub and publish...
Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll
BuildAug 19, 2016

Implementing Three-Legged OAuth with Digital Streams

It’s quite common for cloud services (and webtail vendors) to integrate with a digital identity platform, such as Google+ or Facebook; the reasons for doing so are very well documented. The beaten path for this type of integration is to use three-legged OAuth. But when implementing a real-time...
Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll