Software Development and Programming Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[Sane]

Trying to get into functional programming. Been messing with Clojure for a bit. The whole thing has me
Its been taking me hours to write functions.
Still enjoyable though

 

[semtex]

C# is extremely easy to learn if you already know Java

Yep might as well just call that shyt java 9.

 

[kevm3]

Worked through a book on Java, one on C#, and the majority of one on C++. I feel I understand Java and C# fairly well, but it'll take me a bit more time to really grasp some areas of C++.

Right now I'm back to focusing on Javascript, but more on doing functional things with it as opposed to learning the language, such as learning jQuery, playing around with meteor.js, etc.

One thing I really enjoy Javascript is how by simply knowing it, I can jump back and forth between server-side and client-side. I'm going to get back into C# ASP.NET MVC as well. Don't really want to become merely a "Javascript guy" and I'd prefer to keep my skills sharp in more than one language.

 

[kevm3]

What have yall been up to in the realms of programming?

I've been playing around with meteor.js. I love it so far. Seamlessly melds the front-end and the back-end. Way more intuitive compared to something like angular.js

 

[keepemup]

What have yall been up to in the realms of programming?

I've been playing around with meteor.js. I love it so far. Seamlessly melds the front-end and the back-end. Way more intuitive compared to something like angular.js

I haven't got into those plugins yet, and I'm comfortable with php and sql but I absolutely hate css. They say that object box model stuff is great, but there are many caveats that piss me off because things don't react as I expect them to.

For example, I was trying to make a simple navigation bar. I want to have three elements lined up horizontally. I want to float one to the left, have another in the middle and the last one floated to the right. I figured why don't I float the first one left, the middle one with no float and the last one floated right. Simple enough right? Not at all. I always ended up with the middle element below the element floated to the left and the right.

The first element can be floated to the left surely enough but the middle element must follow the element floated to the right. How can I possibly assume that's how it's supposed to work?

Maybe there's some fundamental piece of the model that I'm missing but I've yet to come upon a resource that will elucidate my understanding. Until then I will declare, CSS is a mess.

 

[kevm3]

I haven't got into those plugins yet, and I'm comfortable with php and sql but I absolutely hate css. They say that object box model stuff is great, but there are many caveats that piss me off because things don't react as I expect them to.

For example, I was trying to make a simple navigation bar. I want to have three elements lined up horizontally. I want to float one to the left, have another in the middle and the last one floated to the right. I figured why don't I float the first one left, the middle one with no float and the last one floated right. Simple enough right? Not at all. I always ended up with the middle element below the element floated to the left and the right.

The first element can be floated to the left surely enough but the middle element must follow the element floated to the right. How can I possibly assume that's how it's supposed to work?

Maybe there's some fundamental piece of the model that I'm missing but I've yet to come upon a resource that will elucidate my understanding. Until then I will declare, CSS is a mess.

Yeah CSS sucks. You have to do all kinds of hacks to get it working right. CSS is heralded because it was better than the old solution, which was styling directly to the HTML, but it's still awful. There's some kind of weird fix you have to do to get things aligned correctly. What I typically do is float all of them to the left and space them with margins. I'll have to go back and dig in those css books to see the 'best' solution.

What makes things even more painful is that some browsers don't support this or that functionality, so you have to worry about that as well. That's one of the reasons people end up using something like bootstrap.

If you feel like taking the easy way out;
http://cssmenumaker.com/

If you feel like taking the easy way out;
http://cssmenumaker.com/

 

[kevm3]

double post

 

[keepemup]

Yeah CSS sucks. You have to do all kinds of hacks to get it working right. CSS is heralded because it was better than the old solution, which was styling directly to the HTML, but it's still awful. There's some kind of weird fix you have to do to get things aligned correctly. What I typically do is float all of them to the left and space them with margins. I'll have to go back and dig in those css books to see the 'best' solution.

What makes things even more painful is that some browsers don't support this or that functionality, so you have to worry about that as well. That's one of the reasons people end up using something like bootstrap.

If you feel like taking the easy way out;
http://cssmenumaker.com/

If you feel like taking the easy way out;
http://cssmenumaker.com/

I've found a solution. Initially when I got into this stuff, I was determined to do everything on my own from scratch but I realize, humbly, that it's a complete waste of time. The end result is all that matters, especially since I can always peek in the code and figure out the details of a solution.

Strangely enough, I feel better just venting my frustration. Props good sir.

 

[kevm3]

I've found a solution. Initially when I got into this stuff, I was determined to do everything on my own from scratch but I realize, humbly, that it's a complete waste of time. The end result is all that matters, especially since I can always peek in the code and figure out the details of a solution.

Strangely enough, I feel better just venting my frustration. Props good sir.

I did the same thing. I wanted to do everything from scratch because it makes you feel hardcore, but ultimately, it's a huge waste of time, since you have a community who has spent countless hours developing and testing libraries that would be impossible or incredibly time consuming to create on your own. I think one should 'attempt to create from scratch' only is you are doing for learning purposes or the existing libraries out there don't have a suitable solution. Doing browser-side development is utterly painful without libraries like jQuery since code that may work in one browser may not work in another.

 

[kevm3]

Something pretty interesting I've just found is how you can use the tab key when you're in the command line and using the cd command in order to go through directories without having to type them out. For example,
cd (hit space, then hit tab to sort through directories)
You can also do
cd (hit space, hit 'd', then hit tab to sort through the entries starting with d)

This will save a ton of time if you are in the command line. and need to switch directories.

 

[IrateMastermind]

Anybody in here work in Cybersecurity? I found this Coursera.org Cybersecurity certificate program that looks interesting https://www.coursera.org/specialization/cybersecurity/7?utm_medium=listingPage. I have kind of dropped the ball on my programming studying, but wanted to get some input from people with experience. Would this program basically be Greek to someone who has just learned the basics of Javascript/CSS/HTML, etc from Treehouse and Code School? I know Javascript isn't one of the "managed" languages it recommends having knowledge in, but it still peaks my interest.

did you ever get an answer to this question? I can't seem to find it if you did. I was looking at the same course

 

[kevm3]

did you ever get an answer to this question? I can't seem to find it if you did. I was looking at the same course

From the looks of things that course is fairly advanced. It isn't for someone who just learned html/css and some javascript. It recommends C/C++ and a managed language such as C# or Java. Also, it talks about data structures and algorithms.

If you can take the course for free, there's no harm in checking it out, but that course seems like it's geared for people who have been around programming for a while now, especially since C and C++ aren't really considered beginning languages.

 

[kevm3]

One of the hardest things I'm finding is whittling down the exact technologies I want to focus on. Recently, I've been dabbling with a bit of everything and it has been informative, but I'm really gravitating towards the Javascript world. I'm going to focus my studies on Javascript as my primary language, C# as my secondary language and dabble with C++ so I can know about memory management. Learning SQL is a must, and I'll also dabble with MongoDB just to have experience with multiple database technologies.

On another note, I love meteor.js. I can see it becoming a fairly big thing. It combines front-end and back-end development together and allows you to use javascript to make applications quickly.

Who else in here is doing web development?

 

[Sane]

Javascript is cool, I like that you can use it with various frameworks to build phone apps. Something like React Native looks interesting https://facebook.github.io/react-native/
Thinking of using to develop something for Android and iOS

 

[kevm3]

Javascript is cool, I like that you can use it with various frameworks to build phone apps. Something like React Native looks interesting https://facebook.github.io/react-native/
Thinking of using to develop something for Android and iOS

How fast JS grew is amazing. It used to be considered a kind of 'toy' language, but you can now use it not only in the browser, but in a lot of different environments as well. The Famo.us framework looks pretty interesting as well.