[CookieDough]

You should clarify your knowlege (and more important where it is lacking) and also the languages you are familiar with. I don't want to tell you stuff you might already know. If I wanted to write a bot, I would split the task in severeal milestones:

1. Sending a HTTP GET request to some website and printing out the answer (HTML code)
2. Searching for the String "href=" to find links (Do you know about regular expressions?)
3. Automatically sending HTTP GET requests to the links you just found
4. Your logic
   

Feel free to send me a PM if you have any questions.

[BortimusPrime]

(02-08-2017 06:24 AM)AntiTrace Wrote:  

Another great way to hone your skills if you're a newbie is to apply a drill used by writers of short stories. First time you write your program just focus on getting it done. Then go back and attempt to make it 10 lines shooters. Then go back and do it again. So and so forth until you look at you're code and can't see a single line that could be removed or a single method that could be simplified without breaking the program.

Doing this helps you learn valuable tricks in your language or choice but it more importantly make you really think about what the code is doing and how it actually gets there.

Super simple example would be reducing a method that returns a Boolean based on a pramter being an odd number.
pass 1 you go with the basic if/else flow with the modulus operator.
Pass 2 maybe you realize that the else is pointless, and you go with "If X return True; return False". That's one less line!
Pass 3 maybe you go with ternary operator, now you're at one line.
Pass 4 maybe you get annoyed with ternary operators lack of readability and decide to bit shift on the input parameter, because obviously any odd integer will have a 1 in the first bit.
Pass 5 maybe you're at a loss of how to simplify the logic down below the bit shift. You can go crazy and remove as much white space as possible. Now you went from measuring the length of your program by lines to measuring by individual characters.

It's a great exercise when learning how to properly structure a class as well.

(x & 1)

[Rice Brah]

(02-26-2017 04:37 PM)Alpha Hunter Zero Wrote:  

Anyone here familiar with creating bots? I could use some pointers on how to start creating one or if you want to collaborate in making one that would be cool too. PM me and I can give you more details as to what I'm aiming for its purpose to be and where it would be hosted.

I recommend a book called Web Scraping with Python by Richard Lawson. You can buy it or find it as a PDF online if you want. It's truly excellent in that it walks you through the entire process, from the very basics of sending query requests, to advanced stuff like overcoming Captchas. It also teaches you how to parse through the unstructured data that your bot/scraper will return, for which Python is an excellent language as it contains the BeautifulSoup library which allows you to manipulate the data via JSON like objects.

[rafaeld]

(02-28-2017 04:30 AM)CookieDough Wrote:  

[*]Searching for the String "href=" to find links (Do you know about regular expressions?)

Better to parse the HTML into some sort of syntax tree and extract the anchor tags. Most programming languages have a highly efficient HTML parser available, e.g. for Ruby you would use Nokogiri.

[BortimusPrime]

Anyone else notice how hostile everyone is on stackexchange? There seems to be a similar line of comments after every question when I'm googling an answer to something:

"Is this a homework question? I'm not going to answer this for you, but I will bother to type this comment to tell you I'm not answering it."

"This question is so easy and has such a trivial answer that you could have googled it in a second, so I'm not going to answer it, although the answer takes less text than what I'm writing here. Also I'm going to ignore the fact that anyone who googles this in the future will come across this page first and get my dismissive non-answer."

"Here's a function that automatically does what you want in a different programming language for a different operating system, assuming you include this library that you might not have access to."

Finally every thread gets closed at some point, with the moderator claiming the topic is too vague. It doesn't matter how well defined the question is, or how elegant the answer is from the one programmer who bothered to answer the question instead of insulting the questioner, apparently every single question that could ever be asked is unworthy of stackexchange and must be moderated away.

It really is the best source of coding answers, but I swear every time I read it I want to hunt these pricks down and kick them in their assburgers.

[nomadbrah]

(03-11-2017 11:09 PM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  

Anyone else notice how hostile everyone is on stackexchange? There seems to be a similar line of comments after every question when I'm googling an answer to something:

"Is this a homework question? I'm not going to answer this for you, but I will bother to type this comment to tell you I'm not answering it."

"This question is so easy and has such a trivial answer that you could have googled it in a second, so I'm not going to answer it, although the answer takes less text than what I'm writing here. Also I'm going to ignore the fact that anyone who googles this in the future will come across this page first and get my dismissive non-answer."

"Here's a function that automatically does what you want in a different programming language for a different operating system, assuming you include this library that you might not have access to."

Finally every thread gets closed at some point, with the moderator claiming the topic is too vague. It doesn't matter how well defined the question is, or how elegant the answer is from the one programmer who bothered to answer the question instead of insulting the questioner, apparently every single question that could ever be asked is unworthy of stackexchange and must be moderated away.

It really is the best source of coding answers, but I swear every time I read it I want to hunt these pricks down and kick them in their assburgers.

Haha, yeah that's the thing with coders, that kind of pedantic attention to detail might be annoying to you, but if they run your operations, then you want exactly that.

They're hugely annoying often though, I agree, but there's that job position between coders and management open for you.

[username]

(03-11-2017 11:09 PM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  

Anyone else notice how hostile everyone is on stackexchange?

It is unfortunate. Another thing that bothers me is when I search Google for a code snippet or something and it brings up a stackexchange page but instead of that page having the answer it says "this question has been closed for being a duplicate" or something similar. Damn thanks for clogging up Google with your non-answers.

[Phoenix]

(03-11-2017 11:09 PM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  

Anyone else notice how hostile everyone is on stackexchange?

Yeah it's a weird, spergy place from a power structure point of view (usefulness is good in spite of this). I've seen so many good questions, with awesome answers and interesting discussion, closed by some sperg fuckwit for some arbitrary reason.

But "computer nerd" is a stereotype for a reason. I've never seen and heard spergy behavior that can beat that of the computer majors I saw back at university. I clearly recall them and their behaviour: I doubt more than 1 in 100 of those studying pure software engineering and computer science had gotten laid by the end of final year.

In stack-exchange it works exactly as you'd expect: productive discussion by actual go-getters hampered by weird computer spergs focused more on finding a reason why Question X should be closed; blind desires to "be right", appear authoritative, and see certain things you disagree with stopped; than just letting things be and looking at the big picture. Man I fucking hated when I had to work with those weirdos. If I ever have to hire those types out of necessity I'll have to carry a paddle at all types so I can smack them the moment they start to sperg out in their zero-ability-to-see-the-big-picture self-sheltered little world.

Hopefully the recent wave (like in places like this) of men who get the bigger picture, have more at stake in their lives than "being more right than you about detail X or esoteric objection Y", and are doing it for the money will dilute and sideline those types.

[Edmund Ironside]

(03-13-2017 06:30 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(03-11-2017 11:09 PM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  

Anyone else notice how hostile everyone is on stackexchange?

Yeah it's a weird, spergy place from a power structure point of view (usefulness is good in spite of this). I've seen so many good questions, with awesome answers and interesting discussion, closed by some sperg fuckwit for some arbitrary reason.

But "computer nerd" is a stereotype for a reason. I've never seen and heard spergy behavior that can beat that of the computer majors I saw back at university. I clearly recall them and their behaviour: I doubt more than 1 in 100 of those studying pure software engineering and computer science had gotten laid by the end of final year.

In stack-exchange it works exactly as you'd expect: productive discussion by actual go-getters hampered by weird computer spergs focused more on finding a reason why Question X should be closed; blind desires to "be right", appear authoritative, and see certain things you disagree with stopped; than just letting things be and looking at the big picture. Man I fucking hated when I had to work with those weirdos. If I ever have to hire those types out of necessity I'll have to carry a paddle at all types so I can smack them the moment they start to sperg out in their zero-ability-to-see-the-big-picture self-sheltered little world.

Hopefully the recent wave (like in places like this) of men who get the bigger picture, have more at stake in their lives than "being more right than you about detail X or esoteric objection Y", and are doing it for the money will dilute and sideline those types.

You aren't wrong. At the same time, you can go too far in either direction with the attitude toward details and esoteric design opinions. Deep nerds will nerd out with no grasp of reality and make things harder than they need to be. On the other hand, people with little grasp of design will make terrible long-term decisions in order to get exactly what they want and/or get it quicker/cheaper and/or just because they don't like the nerds. The best option is usually a compromise, which is why people who can truly grasp both sides and bridge the gap are worth their weight in gold, if anyone will listen to them. Most organizations though are politically dominated by one group or another and decisions are made based on the politics rather than best long term interests of the whole.

[philosophical_recovery]

Hit a brick wall when I was learning a framework, and then got distracted by everything else.

But, I blasted through it when I picked up learning again. Taught myself enough SQL to be able to navigate databases. Just recently, I overcame some screwup issues that were causing me big roadblocks learning the same framework.

More is falling in place. Now, it's just a fight for time and attention.

[FretDancer]

(03-16-2017 09:55 PM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:  

Hit a brick wall when I was learning a framework, and then got distracted by everything else.

But, I blasted through it when I picked up learning again. Taught myself enough SQL to be able to navigate databases. Just recently, I overcame some screwup issues that were causing me big roadblocks learning the same framework.

More is falling in place. Now, it's just a fight for time and attention.

Which framework are you learning?

[steak]

Inspired by raefold's post. I would agree with most of what he says.

There are different intentions people had when initially creating languages, and then many people contribute with their code and opinions from there. It is good to know a bit about languages to be able to properly choose one.

I would say JS is a bit a of a glue language. Any language you are moving around 1's and 0's, JS happens to be high level and capable of interfacing with most environments , if you're using node.js you essentially have a high level machine server which you can use to interface with your own system, including but not limited to the browser. You can from a high level with js and node control streams of data, which is like making a channel in which you recieve packets of information as fast as your server and serve them. This is pretty good low level control for a high level language/scaffolding. Never heard of that term used that way but I like it, I've always called it Ops (operations,) you usually have a side of the team which deals with development and maybe at least one person to handle the Operations.

Keep in mind when people say stick to one language, this is because programming you are learning two things at once, both the computer process/protocol and ALSO how to express that process/protocol within your chosen programming grammar. When you know a lot of the computer science processes you will be dealing with on a professional level you will be well off to relearn the processes you already knew within a new programming environment.

With an easier to learn language maybe like Python or R or Ruby which is more specialized, mature ect. Then you know one area of processes very well which you can translate to other languages idk.

[philosophical_recovery]

(03-19-2017 09:21 PM)FretDancer Wrote:  

(03-16-2017 09:55 PM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:  

Hit a brick wall when I was learning a framework, and then got distracted by everything else.

But, I blasted through it when I picked up learning again. Taught myself enough SQL to be able to navigate databases. Just recently, I overcame some screwup issues that were causing me big roadblocks learning the same framework.

More is falling in place. Now, it's just a fight for time and attention.

Which framework are you learning?

Phoenix.

Just got to supervisors using OTP today.

Very interesting stuff.

Quick edit:
I'm not sure I would recommend this yet. It's a curiosity with some potential to allow me to do something really cool, which is why I picked it up.

But playing around with programming on the side is something I've done over the past couple decades without any real results. The Phoenix book is one of the more difficult ones for me, and that was after learning some Erlang and Elixir. I had to teach myself some SQL just to progress, and already know some javascript/html/css. And I can get into trouble on linux, quickly.

Web development is not for the faint hearted.

[rafaeld]

(03-20-2017 10:27 PM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:  

Phoenix.

...

But playing around with programming on the side is something I've done over the past couple decades without any real results. The Phoenix book is one of the more difficult ones for me, and that was after learning some Erlang and Elixir. I had to teach myself some SQL just to progress, and already know some javascript/html/css. And I can get into trouble on linux, quickly.

Web development is not for the faint hearted.

Elixir/Phoenix is an absolutely terrible language for a beginner. It's bleeding edge and niche, meaning that getting the basics done is that much harder and there are less resources for learning it.

Go learn Python, JavaScript or Ruby. Then when you're competent and you can understand why Elixir exists, come back to Elixir again. You'll only spin your wheels and make it hard for yourself doing it starting with that.

[philosophical_recovery]

(03-21-2017 02:26 AM)rafaeld Wrote:  

(03-20-2017 10:27 PM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:  

Phoenix.

...

But playing around with programming on the side is something I've done over the past couple decades without any real results. The Phoenix book is one of the more difficult ones for me, and that was after learning some Erlang and Elixir. I had to teach myself some SQL just to progress, and already know some javascript/html/css. And I can get into trouble on linux, quickly.

Web development is not for the faint hearted.

Elixir/Phoenix is an absolutely terrible language for a beginner. It's bleeding edge and niche, meaning that getting the basics done is that much harder and there are less resources for learning it.

Go learn Python, JavaScript or Ruby. Then when you're competent and you can understand why Elixir exists, come back to Elixir again. You'll only spin your wheels and make it hard for yourself doing it starting with that.

This isn't my first rodeo.

I've built things in c++, python, and java before that got things done for my day job. This included dealing with proprietary APIs in order to model physics and geometry in 3d.

Elixir is probably somewhere around the 10th language I've touched.

It's just not my main profession.

[FretDancer]

physical_recovery congrats on tackling a newcomer and rather a bit difficult language such as Elixir. There seems to be a lot of hype and promise regarding Elixir and Phoenix. Would be interested to see if it's worth the switch from Ruby, but I haven't had time to experiment with it yet, I am not even familiar with Erlang at all...

[philosophical_recovery]

(03-21-2017 10:41 PM)FretDancer Wrote:  

physical_recovery congrats on tackling a newcomer and rather a bit difficult language such as Elixir. There seems to be a lot of hype and promise regarding Elixir and Phoenix. Would be interested to see if it's worth the switch from Ruby, but I haven't had time to experiment with it yet, I am not even familiar with Erlang at all...

I can't compare it to Ruby, but, here are some thoughts:

Making an app in Android with Java was extremely painful. My only other framework has been Python/Django, but it was quite a while ago. I've done raw javascript recently for a few small projects. At points, my python knowledge was pretty good, having built apps with GUIs, graphics, and animations linked to fundamental physics.

That said, I've yet to build something on my own in Phoenix but I've made a few simple modules in Elixir. It's not that intimidating. I'm not conversant enough in macros to do much other than abuse them, so I can't speak to that.

My plans are to do some things that are multiuser with a lot of interaction. The book has you add multiuser chat commentary on youtube videos that is timed to video itself. It also has you modify it to push the annotations to postgres/ecto and play them back in real time. The later exercises even have you integrate wolfram alpha via their api and the AI answers questions in the chat log as a separate user.

Pretty interesting stuff.

I've got no real database experience and know nothing about parallel programming other than as a user for heavy duty computations, but I did spend some time learning enough Erlang to recognize the concepts in Elixir and Phoenix. I would be a bit lost without having done so. It is not easy. Also, working through SICP (The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) with Scheme years ago helped.

But pattern matching concepts in both Erlang and Elixir are incredible. As is the ability to spawn, observe, and manage millions of simultaneous processes. Everything else I've seen about parallel programming looked much more complicated than Elixir/Erlang.

After I wrap up this book I'll start making my own small server project and see how much I really know. That's always the start of figuring out if you are going to go anywhere: actually building something.

[FretDancer]

@physical_recovery:

Great post! You mentioned that your programming is mostly "aside", if that is the case then my hat off to you. You seem to have grasp of various programming, computer, and web development concepts.

Web development indeed is not for the faint hearted. With how fast everything is evolving and how fast new stuff always keeps coming out, it is hard and daunting to keep up.

On a side note, do you do any Open Source? I am curious on how many RVFers here are into contributing to Open Source.

[philosophical_recovery]

(03-22-2017 12:49 AM)FretDancer Wrote:  

@physical_recovery:

Great post! You mentioned that your programming is mostly "aside", if that is the case then my hat off to you. You seem to have grasp of various programming, computer, and web development concepts.

Web development indeed is not for the faint hearted. With how fast everything is evolving and how fast new stuff always keeps coming out, it is hard and daunting to keep up.

On a side note, do you do any Open Source? I am curious on how many RVFers here are into contributing to Open Source.

Thanks!

Although, keep in mind that I think I first started coding around 25 years ago with QBasic. I had a very painful experience in college learning real programming (C++), pointers and all, and worked my ass off to understand it. Even then, I didn't get most concepts until SICP.

I've thought about doing Open Source, but right now my goals are more income oriented. I finally have enough other knowledge to make some useful tools for other people. Sorry I'm being vague, but I have reasons for it.

In the future I may think about doing Open Source. It would probably improve my programming skills. But, time is short.

Here's the thing with web programming:

Be careful with the hype train on javascript stuff if you have no clue about web programming. Learn the basics. Try to do things without the JQuery crutch and the latest hotness. What matters is design and fundamentals. Follow sites like this for hints and inspiration: https://tympanus.net/codrops/collective/

I want to make better UIs than what I've seen in my field, because they suck, but something working, simply and understandably, is better than something unfinished and using the coolest JS libraries/frameworks/backends.

I like Elixir/Phoenix because most of the parallel stuff is taken care of in a sane way. It's not as fast as other languages for single core calculations, especially when it comes to hard computation, but it seems that no matter what the language you can always convert certain processes to be as close to the metal as you need to be. And Elixir/Phoenix can manage those processes so that crashes result in the program automatically logging the error and restarting the process without taking down the whole ship.

Until I really get a userbase, Elixir and the web trio of JS/CSS/Html will get me 95% of the way there. Only then will I know what is useful and is a bottleneck that needs improvement. And, at that point, I will have winner's problems and outsource work to write modules in C/Python/PHP/Brainfuck or otherwise for the difficult portions. Or whatever technology is appropriate. But selecting a good technology at the get-go seemed to be an important step. As long as I don't go trying to optimize everything at the beginning.

[YMD]

Hi fellow programmers.
I have a question about career development.

I'm a 30 year old man who began to work as a web developer (mainly back end) 1.5 years ago.
Recently I think of taking an online master course in Computer Science.

1. Why I'm considering this
The main reason is that I'd like to know more about theories, such as mathematical algorithms, choosing the correct design patterns and how OS actually works.
Also, gaining mathematical or scientific knowledge might broaden career path, because some organisations apparently prefer CS degree to IT degree (I have a uni degree in IT, not CS). I haven't meticulously checked, but there seem to be more high paid jobs which require CS(or even math) degree than those which require IT degree. Depending on the final grade, I might be able to apply for PhD in the future (Sounds blue pill? I know. Still, trying PhD is interesting to me)
Finally, online courses are flexible, so I do not necessarily need to quit my job.

2.Why I can't to decide to do this
With that being said, I'm not sure whether trying another degree is the best strategy I can take for my career.
We programmers need to keep abreast of new technology. This involves not only learning new libraries/frameworks, but also gaining practical experiences through coding. In fact, I've been teaching myself a Javascript library for 2-3 months with my hobby project. I genuinely enjoy this hobby project, so I'm kind of reluctant to stop it by taking something new (i.e. online CS course)

Maybe you're thinking, "Follow your intuition. Do what you love and holds your interest!".
I don't have a very clear goal in my career. Getting involved in a scientific project in a huge corporation is interesting for me, but being a nomad/remote programmer who lives wherever he wants sounds fascinating too.
Anyways, I'd like to hear opinions from you guys.

[Edmund Ironside]

(03-22-2017 06:41 AM)YMD Wrote:  

2.Why I can't to decide to do this
With that being said, I'm not sure whether trying another degree is the best strategy I can take for my career.
We programmers need to keep abreast of new technology.

I can't speak specifically to web development or even app programming, but I can tell you this ... there is a big difference between having the knowledge needed for a job, and actually getting the job.

Some types of development are probably better than others in terms of being able to demonstrate your accomplishments. If you are building web sites or apps that the general public can actually see, or that you can show them, it would help tremendously. If you are like me, and all of your actual work is private, proprietary stuff that is behind the firewall of organizations where you worked before ... therefore you have nothing solid to show ... the degree is the first thing a lot of people will look for in a hiring decision. That's the challenge I have at this stage in my career ... I'm older than you are, and I have a degree that doesn't match my profession of the last 15-20 years. You'd be surprised how much it still matters despite all the years of very successful work. So ... that's all just detail to back the initial point ... there is knowledge and aptitude to do a job, then there is ability to get a job, and those are very different things and you need to consider them separately.

That said, I also can't tell you how much future financial value to put on a degree in a world where guest workers with foreign degrees are being imported in large numbers and their degrees are valued the same as ours. Our market value has been degrading for years. It might make more financial sense to learn plumbing or something.

[rafaeld]

(03-22-2017 07:47 AM)Edmund Ironside Wrote:  

I can't speak specifically to web development or even app programming, but I can tell you this ... there is a big difference between having the knowledge needed for a job, and actually getting the job.

Some types of development are probably better than others in terms of being able to demonstrate your accomplishments. If you are building web sites or apps that the general public can actually see, or that you can show them, it would help tremendously. If you are like me, and all of your actual work is private, proprietary stuff that is behind the firewall of organizations where you worked before ... therefore you have nothing solid to show ... the degree is the first thing a lot of people will look for in a hiring decision. That's the challenge I have at this stage in my career ... I'm older than you are, and I have a degree that doesn't match my profession of the last 15-20 years. You'd be surprised how much it still matters despite all the years of very successful work. So ... that's all just detail to back the initial point ... there is knowledge and aptitude to do a job, then there is ability to get a job, and those are very different things and you need to consider them separately.

This is really poignant to me where I am right now.

I am at a crossroads where I can decide to dive further into backend engineering and develop my skills there, or specialise more in short-term frontend heavy projects that are far more easy to show in a portfolio. Your comment makes me inclined to place more weight on the short term frontend projects, since these are more easily demonstrable and easier to get freelance clients with.

[Edmund Ironside]

(03-22-2017 10:12 AM)rafaeld Wrote:  

(03-22-2017 07:47 AM)Edmund Ironside Wrote:  

I can't speak specifically to web development or even app programming, but I can tell you this ... there is a big difference between having the knowledge needed for a job, and actually getting the job.

Some types of development are probably better than others in terms of being able to demonstrate your accomplishments. If you are building web sites or apps that the general public can actually see, or that you can show them, it would help tremendously. If you are like me, and all of your actual work is private, proprietary stuff that is behind the firewall of organizations where you worked before ... therefore you have nothing solid to show ... the degree is the first thing a lot of people will look for in a hiring decision. That's the challenge I have at this stage in my career ... I'm older than you are, and I have a degree that doesn't match my profession of the last 15-20 years. You'd be surprised how much it still matters despite all the years of very successful work. So ... that's all just detail to back the initial point ... there is knowledge and aptitude to do a job, then there is ability to get a job, and those are very different things and you need to consider them separately.

This is really poignant to me where I am right now.

I am at a crossroads where I can decide to dive further into backend engineering and develop my skills there, or specialise more in short-term frontend heavy projects that are far more easy to show in a portfolio. Your comment makes me inclined to place more weight on the short term frontend projects, since these are more easily demonstrable and easier to get freelance clients with.

Obviously there are a lot of other things to consider, but definitely keep that factor in mind if you want to have that kind of control over your own career. If all of your work is not shareable, then you are down to purely whether people like you, connections, etc and interviewing well (when you get interviews).

[YMD]

Thanks for your thoughts, Edmund .

(03-22-2017 07:47 AM)Edmund Ironside Wrote:  

... there is a big difference between having the knowledge needed for a job, and actually getting the job.

...If you are like me, and all of your actual work is private, proprietary stuff that is behind the firewall of organizations where you worked before ... therefore you have nothing solid to show ... the degree is the first thing a lot of people will look for in a hiring decision.

My situation is not exactly like that.
I've been doing a web development job, although I'm keen to switch to software development as long as there are lucrative opportunities.
Well, I still believe that I can appeal to recruiters by having my apps/websites published into the world.
(I'm planning to publish a language learning web app in this year. I believe that this is the best to way to demonstrate what I can do.)
My assumption is that recruiters who need to hire someone with back-end expertise will be definitely interested in the actual coding. If the implementation is public in Github, they'll have a look at it and be able to evaluate my expertise.

Let me know if this assumption sounds naive. I'll appreciate any critical thought.

(03-22-2017 07:47 AM)Edmund Ironside Wrote:  

I also can't tell you how much future financial value to put on a degree in a world where guest workers with foreign degrees are being imported in large numbers and their degrees are valued the same as ours. Our market value has been degrading for years.

I'm a guest worker too lol
(I'm Japanese living in Australia My degree is from an Australian uni and I might be able apply for the permanent residency though)

[roid]

anyone here has remote programming jobs experience?