fun with JavaScript
After adventures in Perl, then Java, then Ruby, I've been immersed in JavaScript, the language of web UI's. Writing command line apps is straightforward. For example if the user wants to analyze a specific ride, include the ride ID as a command line argument. Done. Now get on to the juicy data analysis. But with a user interface, things are much more complex. A bunch of my Strava app ideas begin the same: user specifies a ride, app maps the ride for user reference, various analyses are done and/or actions are taken. In the Strava API some methods require an authorization key from logging in, while others do not. Among those that do is the method which returns a reduced set of coordinates for a route to allow mapping without transferring the full set of data for the ride. This is important for maps, because it substantially reduces the bandwidth requirement, not only loading the data from Strava, but then subsequently uploading it to Google for map generation. And obv...