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🌱 Code, Crops, and Curiosities — This Week’s Tech Harvest

From AI-powered gardens to Minecraft-style coding projects, your Thursday upgrade is here.

Author

David Thurman
May 22, 2025

Morning folks! This is Beyond Code - the newsletter designed to help developers build their careers, one Thursday at a time.

Note: This newsletter is not sponsored. Any websites/tools/apps we recommend are purely because we enjoy them personally

Did You Know…

You Can Program in Shakespeare

Yes, there’s a Shakespeare Programming Language (SPL) where code looks like a play. Variables are characters, and operations are dramatic monologues.

Here’s an excerpt from a Hello World in SPL:
Act I: The setup.
Scene I: The beginning.
[Exeunt]

Handy Coding Tool

Code Anywhere, Anytime – Replit

Replit is an in-browser coding platform where you can write, run, and deploy code without any setup. Perfect for beginners, team projects, or experimenting with new languages.

Key Features:

  • In-browser coding with zero setup

  • Supports dozens of programming languages

  • Multiplayer collaboration mode

  • Deploy directly from the editor

Tech Highlights

Plants Are Getting a Tech Upgrade

Plantaform

Forget watering cans and sun dances—plants now have AI, drones, and fog machines helping them grow better than ever.

Plantaform Smart Indoor Garden: NASA Tech for Your Kitchen: Plantaform’s home garden uses fogponics—an ultra-fine mist inspired by NASA research—to grow plants 30–50% faster with half the water of traditional hydroponics. Fully automated, app-connected, and refillable every 2–3 weeks. (Plantaform)

LeafyPod: Meet Your Plant’s Personal AI: LeafyPod’s smart planter uses built-in sensors and AI to adapt watering, light, and humidity to each plant’s needs. It’s cordless, rechargeable, and sends you helpful nudges when your plants need attention. (LeafyPod)

Midbar AirFarm: Inflatable Indoor Farms Are a Thing: The Midbar AirFarm uses micro-mist aeroponics to grow crops indoors. It’s 123% lighter, uses 99% less water, and folds away when you’re done. Agriculture, meet bounce house. (Homecrux)

Plants used to need sunlight, water, and luck—now they just need Wi-Fi.

Programming Tip

Log Like a Pro (But Not Too Much)

Logs are essential for debugging, monitoring, and tracing weird bugs in production. But don’t flood your logs with useless noise.

Tips:

  • Use log levels (info, warn, error).

  • Avoid logging sensitive data.

  • Don’t log every loop iteration like a maniac.

Ask the Experts

“If you could go back to when you first started your career, what is one piece of advice you would give?”

Learn about algorithms, they actually matter. Don’t try to master them on day one, but don’t ignore them either.

Brian Morton, Owner @ Morton Software Insights

Open Source Highlight

Bring Minecraft Vibes to Open Source – VoxelLibre

VoxelLibre

VoxelLibre (formerly MineClone2) is a Minecraft-style voxel game built on the Minetest engine. It replicates the gameplay of Minecraft and is great for developers curious about voxel engines and game modding.

Why It’s Awesome:

  • Offers hands-on experience with game loops and voxel rendering.

  • Built on Lua, great for beginners.

  • Modular system makes it easy to contribute features or mods.

What’s Open Source?
“Open sourced projects” refer to projects that have their code open to the public. They allow anyone to contribute to the project and help maintain it. Not only are they a great way to get hands on experience early on in your career, they also provide you a way to add bigger projects to your resume!

Shameless Plug

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Pop Quiz

What’s the Output of This Logic?

x = true  
y = false  
Result = !(x && y)

A) true
B) false
C) null
D) Error

Find the answer at the bottom of the newsletter!

Rate this weeks newsletter:

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Pop Quiz Answer: A) true

You always do the logic inside parenthesis first: (x && y) → false

Then you add the “not”: !false → true