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!rant
Let's take a moment to appreciate interested and enthousiastic non-developers who really want to learn a programming language.
I am studying Medical IT at my college and most of my classmates aren't coming from an IT background.
We're currently working with Java, PHP, JavaScript and some require Node for their semester projects.
Some of my classmates approach me when they're stuck while coding and I try to teach them as much as possible so they understand what they are doing wrong and how to fix it.
I also show them how they can optimise their code step by step and they love it!
As a classmate told me yesterday:
"It's always so much fun working with you. I come up with a small problem, but I end up learning so much more about programming when solving a problem with you. I appreciate that."
It's a mindset I've learned when I was doing my developer apprenticeship back in the day. One of my colleagues told me: "if they want your help because they need a quick fix, tell them to kiss your ass. If you know they've already tried everything they could and ask you specifically because they want to understand what they are doing wrong, they are future developers with great potential, so go teach them."
May the force be with you, my enthousiastic little non-devs ❤️6 -
So I’m learning C for a systems programming course and I’m starting to appreciate every other language that I’ve worked with in the past for the level of abstraction they provide 🥲
Not you JavaScript. Not you5 -
Most kids just want to code. So they see "Computer Science" and think "How to be a hacker in 6 weeks". Then they face some super simple algebra and freak out, eventually flunking out with the excuse that "uni only presents overtly theoretical shit nobody ever uses in real life".
They could hardly be more wrong, of course. Ignore calculus and complexity theory and you will max out on efficiency soon enough. Skip operating systems, compilers and language theory and you can only ever aspire to be a script kiddie.
You can't become a "data scientist" without statistics. And you can never grow to be even a mediocre one without solid basic research and physics training.
Hack, I've optimized literal millions of dollars out of cloud expenses by choosing the best processors for my stack, and weeks later got myself schooled (on devRant, of all places!) over my ignorance of their inner workings. And I have a MSc degree. Learning never stops.
So, to improve CS experience in uni? Tear down students expectations, and boil out the "I just wanna code!" kiddies to boot camps. Some of them will be back to learn the science. The rest will peak at age 33.17 -
Music. Music teaches you numbers, creativity, patterns, structure, and basically primes your brain for math and creativity in that space. In addition, it teaches you how to think both within a structure and outside the box, as well as the importance of repetition, memorization, and learning a new language.
Music really was my second language, and the ability to read/write it fluently is a skill that takes a long time to master. I really believe that it increases your brain plasticity so much.4 -
I started learning Rust and now I know the answer to the question "What would a programming language look like if the engineers were tasked with designing a bad programming language on purpose"16
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Tools are made for various audiences. Git is the de-facto standard for version management, so it can be complicated because people will still learn it (they more or less have to). Editors aren't as standard and they are to be used from the minute you start learning, so they have to at least be usable without a course or a handbook. I prefer the first type of tool because to use something really good I don't mind reading a book. Programming languages can fall in either category; Python was meant to be used by laics and is therefore very simple, sacrificing a lot for the sake of simplicity. Rust isn't meant to be used by anyone who isn't trained, and it comes with a great book that explains all the most important gotchas. Haskell doesn't have an official book AFAIK, but it has the best wiki I've ever seen in a programming language.
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android development is shitty af, it will make you super zombie computer nerd that sit on his chair for fking several hours just to find the where the fk is null pointer exception is coming from not only this but for all kind of errors,logcat looks like someone just hacking nasa, you know what im the one who is shitty af i would have opt web dev instead of android dev , this retarded studio and emulator takes too much time to just load a simple fking thing & if i make some change in it i've to install that application again ,it's so pathetic and horse shit thing i've ever encountered , kotlin is fun it's actually great language most of the features are so helpful in it,but the google codelabs,it's all documentation , adding dependencies whole concepts are trash imo, why can't we install the dependencies using terminal what's problem in that ,but no they chose the hard way for no fuking reason, i've successfully wasted a year learning this shitty tech stack, hopefully this NY i will choose different stack , will work till ass off .gonna build some cool projects and will eventually try for internships and all. done with android dev, idk how senior dev's are alive in this field6
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!rant
For all of youse that ever wanted to try out Common Lisp and do not know where to start (but are interested in getting some knowledge of Common Lisp) I recommend two things:
As an introductory tutorial:
https://lisperati.com/casting.html/
And as your dev environment:
https://portacle.github.io/
Notice that the dev environment in question is Emacs, regardless of how you might feel about it as a text editor, i can recommend just going through the portacle help that gives you some basic starting points regarding editing. Learn about splitting buffers, evaluating the code you are typing in order for it to appear in the Common Lisp REPL (this one comes with an environment known as SLIME which is very popular in the Lisp world) as well as saving and editing your files.
Portacle is self contained inside of one single directory, so if you by any chance already have an Emacs environment then do not worry, Portacle will not touch any of that. I will admit that as far as I am concerned, Emacs will probably be the biggest hurdle for most people not used to it.
Can I use VS Code? Yes, yes you can, but I am not familiar with setting up a VSCode dev environment for Emacs, or any other environment hat comes close to the live environment that emacs provides for this?
Why the fuck should I try Common Lisp or any Lisp for that matter? You do not have to, I happen to like it a lot and have built applications at work with a different dialect of Lisp known as Clojure which runs in the JVM, do I recommend it? Yeah I do, I love functional programming, Clojure is pretty pure on that (not haskell level imo though, but I am not using Haskell for anything other than academic purposes) and with clojure you get the entire repertoire of Java libraries at your disposal. Moving to Clojure was cake coming from Common Lisp.
Why Common Lisp then if you used Clojure in prod? Mostly historical reasons, I want to just let people know that ANSI Common Lisp has a lot of good things going for it, I selected Clojure since I already knew what I needed from the JVM, and parallelism and concurrency are baked into Clojure, which was a priority. While I could have done the same thing in Common Lisp, I wanted to turn in a deliverable as quickly as possible rather than building the entire thing by myself which would have taken longer (had one week)
Am I getting something out of learning Common Lisp? Depends on you, I am not bringing about the whole "it opens your mind" deal with Lisp dialects as most other people do inside of the community, although I did experience new perspectives as to what programming and a programming language could do, and had fun doing it, maybe you will as well.
Does Lisp stands for Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses or Los in stupid parentheses? Yes, also for Lost of Insidious Silly Parentheses and Lisp is Perfect, use paredit (comes with Portacle) also, Lisp stands for Lisp Is Perfect. None of that List Processing bs, any other definition will do.
Are there any other books? Yes, the famous online text Practical Common Lisp can be easily read online for free, I would recommend the Lisperati tutorial first to get a feel for it since PCL demands more tedious study. There is also Common Lisp a gentle introduction. If you want to go the Clojure route try Clojure for the brave and true.
What about Scheme and the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs? Too academic for my taste, and if in Common Lisp you have to do a lot of things on your own, Scheme is a whole other beast. Simple and beautiful really, but I go for practical in terms of Lisp, thus I prefer Common Lisp.
how did you start with Lisp?
I was stupid and thought I should start with it after a failed attempt at learning C++, then Java, and then Javascript when I started programming years ago. I was overwhelmed, but I continued. Then I moved to other things. But always kept Common Lisp close to heart. I am also heavy into A.I, Lisp has a history there and it is used in a lot of new and sort of unknown projects dealing with Knowledge Reasoning and representation. It is also Alien tech that contains many things that just seem super interesting to me such as treating code as data and data as code (back-quoting, macros etc)
I need some inspiration man......show me something? Sure, look for a game called Kandria in youtube, the creator, Shimera (Nicolas Hafner) is an absolute genius in the world of Lisp and a true inspiration. He coded the game in Common Lisp, he is also the person behind portacle. If that were not enough, he might very well also be Shirakumo, another prominent member of the Common Lisp Community.
Ok, you got me, what is the first thing in common lisp that I should try after I install the portacle environment? go to the repl and evaluate this:
(+ 0.1 0.2)
Watch in awe at what you get.
In the truest and original sense of the phrase (MIT based) "happy hacking!"10 -
I've been learning c# for a while now and I must say.
A few syntax upgrades don't hide the fact that you are a cheap imitation of the superior Java language.25 -
Feels like every damn day I'm learning about another language feature that we CAN'T use... So much legacy code everywhere.
C# is more like C-blunt at this point.2 -
part of my workflow i want to improve?
in general, take more time to get to know better the technologies and tools i'm working with.
e.g. learn all the fancy hacks and features of my IDE or of a certain language or framework.
i tend to be in the mode "i don't have time for that, it already works the way i use it". if i spend "too much" time on learning stuff, i feel bad, since i could also spend that time working on my ever growing list of tasks. but i think, that's not a good habit... -
If you use a Windows system for work and have the permissions to, I highly recommend you learn Powershell if you haven't already.
I've only started learning it a few months, but it's already improved my workflow immensely since it's a decent bit more powerful than batch scripts, but not as 'heavy handed' for small tasks as a programming language like C# feels sometimes.
I kinda regret ignoring it for so long, I noticed it installed on my high school laptop and toyed with it a bit outside of class, but then gravitated more towards python which I can't use at my current job. really wish high school me had the attention span to learn both back then.8 -
I love Rust's error messages, but I think they were trying to be a little too smart with the error reporting here and ended up relying too much on properties of the medium.
How the fuck do I tell which is which?
My hypothesis is that because #3 can only be a lower bound based on the phrasing of the sentence, and because #2 is an upper bound, the correct order is 2;4;1;3. But why do I have to do intermediate level English grammar exercises to read my error message?
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I am overwhelmed in my mind right now and I kinda just need it out.
I'm incredibly divided. There's so much I want to do which is fine I can balance some of it kinda well but when it comes to the programming aspects of what I want to do is where my head gets tugged in multiple directions.
Parts of me really want to continue to dive into C# and learn it a lot more than I currently do so I can continue to write the tools I use for problems I come across.
And the other part of me just wants to go do lower level development with C because that's where most of my goals are being mostly embedded and OS development.
But so many people I know that are incredibly smart devs use C# and I see why it's an incredible language and I'm glad it's one of the languages I know but I feel like there's so much to learn about it and I there's so much shit I see that I'm just like I don't know when I would want to use this, or I can see X feature being very useful but I don't know where I'd use it in my projects. Hell even C#s version of structs I know are very useful but I'm not able to make good use of them
I'm just in that headspace where I'm not learning enough and I feel dumb when I look at someone else's project because there's a lot more complexity In their project that none of my projects have ever had and so many people make use of language features I've never used or thought about using (generics being a good example) and I'm constantly asking questions which I know is okay but too much is happening in life lately and it's just making it harder to handle.
Thanks to anyone that got through it hopefully I'm not alone in these feelings2 -
So I see posts about an interview question/challenge of inverting a binary tree. I don't use trees very often (mainly file related or parsing server nodes), but I thought I would learn how to do this.
I saw a page that started talking about different ways to invert enough to understand that one type of inversion is swapping left and right nodes. So I stopped before they showed how.
Then I created a test program that has a tree structure and also can display a tree before and after modification. This was kind of fun.
So then I wrote the inversion function. It was less than 10 lines of code. Wtf? I thought it would be harder than this.
Then I started wondering where trees were used. So today I have been learning how they are used and why I might need one to solve a problem. One use I intuited was parsing regex or a language. Apparently it is useful there.
What I am learning is that a lot of these interview questions are really test to see if you can comprehend instructions when stressed. Or you will ask questions to clarify the task. It doesn't necessarily test your ability to solve hard problems.
One thing that perplexes me. If inverting a tree is swapping nodes left<->right, then why not leave data in place and just swap roles in the functions. Maybe I completely misunderstood what inversion means or why it would be done. I guess if this is not inverting I have the structure to try other methods now.2 -
I don't understand why people are so preoccupied with new languages and scared to try them out. At least half of the language features are a rehash of the same ideas and the other half are 2-3 ideas. Seriously. I find it distasteful that people in my co are so scared of learning new shit. NEED To GTFO.3
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So, I am currently on Spring Break, and what do I do when I am on Spring Break: I take a moment to experiment with different languages. This time, I decided to check out Objective C since it mixes up two languages that I love dearly (but that I do not use outside of academic endeavors) which are C and Smalltalk.
Going around the net I found this https://github.com/Flying-Toast/...
Notice: I have nothing against Swift, I stopped developing apps for IOS back when Swift was in its infancy, so I was forced to use Objective C and tbh I never had an issue with it, I had learned it before through GNUStep, the language was obviously strange when I started learning it, but I did not hate it, I tried following Swift to see if I could use it at least in some portions, but at the time of its release it was still pretty much beta for me, so I passed. I feel it is much better now, but the issues with the language at this point in time I feel are more from the side of XCode which can either be just ok, good or an absolute piece of shit depending on the release. Either way, I found the link to be funny.2 -
Learning an algorithm and data structure for a month and forgetting about it after exploring a new language be like🤦
4 -
Finally got my first dev job. I am looking at the code base for my company. And it’s like I know how to code in this language. But I don’t know half of the advanced shit they’re doing. I understand they have more experience than me. But I’m just not sure how to catch up to them. Or be even on the same level as them? I guess just more out of office learning?
I can read what they’re putting in the code and understand how it works. But like how they came up with it I have no clue. I guess I’ll learn over time and have to put in some extra man hours.5 -
I'm learning Rust as a case study for my own programming language. It's funny how many approaches exist to the humble loop.
- In classic procedural languages, a loop's job is to repeat actions, and as such it provides a multitude of tools to control this repetition.
- In all languages with iterators, a for-in loop is a construct that does something with every element of a collection. In languages with both iterators and generator functions, this can even be used to define a sequence in terms of another.
- In Rust, a loop is an expression that obtains its value through repeated execution. It can also be used like a classic loop, of course, but this is the interesting part.
- My little language is a functional language, so "loop" is the Y combinator. To loop means to define the value of an expression in terms of itself. It's the only looping construct, gets special treatment from the type checker and it's also used in recursive type definitions. -
i guess im learning COBOL now..
didn't even know, this language still exists, and is alive until the Lead of the Department came around and asked me if i know that language, because they have a potential customer Project.
Others said, i shouldn't do it, but i'm also curious.
At the very least i will check it out 🦕5 -
Idk why but this morning I was thinking about this high school elective class where we learned Adobe flash. But specifically 2 instances where I ignored the teacher and did my own thing
1. We were using Sprite sheets and he had us use photoshop to cut out the Sprite to a different layer and manually save each Sprite one by one to disk to use in flash. Some sheets had 50 fucking sprites
So I found a script for Adobe (action script I think they called their Javascript derivative) that exported every layer for me without all the manual clicking. There is probably an even better way. But this worked for how lazy I was back then
2. Our final projects we could do anything but he suggested not doing anything too complicated cause of time constraints and he barely taught is the scrptinh language for Adobe flash so making flash games was almost out of the question.
Me being stupid really wanted to make a working pong game. So I spent too long watching a German (i dont know German) tutorial video I found, and troubleshooting outdated code from that video. And improving things where I could with my limited knowledge made worse cause I wasn't interested in programming and didn't start learning python until the following year
Yeah don't know why I was thinking about those. But I feel it's a good perspective on how far I've come. From hacking together a pong clone with no skills, to being hired to automate and optimize processes and legacy projects -
Currently learning go and I’m really enjoying it. It’s been a while since I learnt a new programming language and the experience is different to what I remember. I’m reading an o reilly book and when about how they implemented a common feature of programming I’m like oh no they didn’t. I think this is what normal feel when they read celebrity gossip. Hash tag goto.2
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>= rant
While its really hard to get code wrong in Rust, it is also really hard to get code right in Rust. It took me a considerably long time to write a code which returns the first word in the sentence
I felt the borrow checker introduces a steep learning curve into Rust which is otherwise a beautiful language according to me. C++, my current favorite language, also suffers the same problem with respect to certain language features.
3 -
everything is going as planned! :)
Learned Rust Lang. i loved it (that doesn't mean i am done learning na? No! never stop)
new language i could do game memory hacking in without worrying about C++ memory leaks or issues. it also compiles to assembly! another of my favorite languages!
(i use rust for game development and other stuff)
i am not leaving C / C++ though that would be harsh!,
i abandoned javascript for react and typescript.
to be honest the developer just made javascript and left us with a [object Object]
finished learning the android java api so im basically set anything i want to make i can just go on my pc, listen to music and write it out in a couple of days.
well phazor what are you going to do now?!
i will code till i am old.
i will leave my mark like a shid that made its skid in the bowl :)5 -
Some had teased me a bit on my previous meme so let me tell my anecdote...
I have to tell you a rather funny anecdote that happened to me during a job interview..
To put you in context, I am a front/back developer and the language where I perform best is JS. I started learning JS at an early age during an open source project to make animations on websites then I also quickly moved to the backend using NodeJS. I gained a lot of experience by going to small start-ups and this time if I wanted to try my luck on big companies in the field of video games.
So I wanted to present some projects to my interlocutor who seemed to be someone with an important position in the company, about 26 years old and we talked about the JS language. I showed him all my projects including those where I was doing free/open source and also in the field of video games such as volunteering like the back off https://mylolmmr.com And suddenly he called out to me and said "JS is not a real language".
I must confess that I was quite disturbed by his assertion and did not understand his condescension or his belittlement. This mind...
Especially since I find it extremely misleading to say that the JS language is not a real language when you know its advantages and disadvantages, but I did not dare to express myself on this subject and we continued the interviews, even though he saw that it bothered me.
The funny thing is that once the interview is over and I decide to go home and I receive a call from the company in question who wanted me to take a technical test telling me that the oral interview was successful...
I reassure you right away, I refused.. For a question of salary which was extremely low and obviously the bad experience with this famous director.
3 -
The world would be better if the TypeScript guys knew what they could create with less complexity in any other language. Of course, if they are interested in learning. There are SPA applications out there that have more lines than Doom 3.7
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How many keywords are appropriate to put in a "skills" section on a resume?
Technically I've played with a lot of tech and stacks, and done tiny one offs, tutorials and independent projects but nothing that wasnt more than a day on any one of them.
Basically im fast at picking up a language and api and just rolling with it and getting something done, even without tutorials or tons of googling. Though I find myself constantly relying on manuals and reading apis.
Is this normal or should entry level be familiar with the api of something from the get go?
I see a lot of people say to game the system just to get your foot in the front door past the automated keyword filters and on to an interviews where the real requirements are listed.
But I'd rather not list under the skill section something I only used for all of ten hours in one or two sittings.
Also is it acceptable to list a "learning", "would like to learn/know more of", or "planned skill additions" section?
Also what do I add for extras? "Achievements"? "Volunteer work"? "Hobby projects?", "past times?"
Is any of this seen as necessary or well rounded?
If it is really just about the numbers I'll just go scrape junior and entry level positions and take their keywords and automatically fill out template resumes to automate applying.
Could even use SQLite to store the results and track progress lol.
I've never worked as a professional programmer, but it's the only thing I ever enjoyed doing for 12 hours a day.16 -
How do you pick a new language to learn?
I am a C# developer and at work I work on desktop apps and legacy web services etc.
I fancy learning something else so I can have a bit of variety when working on personal projects etc.
I am doing a distance learning degree which has used Java and Python so far, with some PHP and JS etc to come later.
I’m drawn to Ruby as I already have experience there, but I was also thinking about looking at Node as that covers back end and front end all using JS which is definitely useful in general as I look at moving to a more web based role.10 -
I am very confused nowadays, exist a great number technologies but i don't decide what technology or language of programming i want specialize me.
I love it the hacking but i have very little experience in programming and have a basic knowdledge in networks and database.
I love it the assembly language but only can code a pair of syntax in this language and know very little about components, architecture and the rest.
I love it the data mining, big data, IA, machine learning but i don't control the statistic.
Of every topics i have a basic knowdlege.
Actually i try to discover my practicality. I am learning Perl and regular expressions.5 -
Hi guys I do have this problem while learning and I need an advice from y'all...take python it was created with c if I'm correct, and it has alot of applications very good language, but I do think y shd I learn python why not C ,, even using React I feel like Facebook developed it y can't I learn from the source directly?.jst confused 🤔16
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I've been feeling a lot of burnout these past few days/weeks... But like only in a specific programming language? Which is an issue cause I mainly work on python and I can't seem to bring myself to do that while learning and working with new languages/frameworks in classes are no problem.1
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What must make for learn and control a language of programming from scratch?
For example: I am learning Perl with the book of Beginning Perl - Curtis Ovid Poe.
I am in the Chapter 3: Variables.
How to mantain the route?
I never gain control the language completely.8 -
Feeling a little frustrated lately, just been a few months in this company and its all great, even my boss congratulated me the last week for deliver some well made features but i think i should be learning more and coding faster, im always giving the best i can but its never enough. (Sorry if i mispell something, english is not my native language)1
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