Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with Programming

programming

amsterdam63 — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:39:56 -0800

What data type can I use to write one byte of data to a file in C? On my system short int is 2 bytes. I know writing a character to a file will give me one byte, but I need some of them to have a msb of 1, not 0--which all ascii values do.

What should I code to learn a given language?

Deathalicious — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:49:39 -0800

Let's say I want to learn a few (more) programming languages. What application/solution would it be best to try to create in order to really "learn" a given language? I don't tend to respond well to standard tutorials, especially since with few exceptions most of them in the beginning look very similar (hello world, etc). I'm much more interested in jumping into the middle of things and figuring out how the language works by building something that actually does something.

With this in mind, what solutions should I build for a given language of choice.

To give an example: I'm fairly familiar with web programming, and I would guess the best app to use to learn a web programming language/framework (Ruby on Rails, PHP, ColdFusion, etc) would be to create a web-based messaging system. That would allow yourself to gain familiarity in database calls, file processing and management (maybe even image processing), interacting with mail servers, parsing text, and display.

I'm interest in any and all languages, although I'm leaning more towards languages that are strongly supported/used in the open source community, although I am also interested in languages normally employed in academic settings (ML comes to mind). Finally, I'd also be interested in knowing this answer for common programming technologies/formats (Ant/XML/XSLT) and miscellaneous (projects at Apache come to mind)

VB: Putting filenames in a message body.

bigmusic — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:25:05 -0800

VB Script Help: I would like to put the filenames of my attachments into the message body of my emails. How do I do that? I'm not a programmer - I'm just using a script that I ran across somewhere on the Internet. I'm using Outlook 2003 on XP. So far this script renames the subject, adds a quick line to the body and then sends the message. I would like it to add the file names of the attachments (plural) to the body after my "inspirational message." Bonus: Can I point my current olItem.Body at a text file?



Sub ChangeSubject()

Set oActiveExplorer = Application.ActiveExplorer

MsgBox TypeName(oActiveExplorer.Selection)

Set oSelection = oActiveExplorer.Selection

    For I = 1 To oSelection.Count

        Set olItem = oSelection.Item(I)

        olItem.Subject = "Your weekly inspirational message"

        olItem.Body = "Inspirational Message"

        olItem.Send

    Next

End Sub

A to B via Z

le morte de bea arthur — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 05:05:34 -0800

Can anyone direct me to some good sources of algorithms or tutorials that will help me to creater something somewhat more complex than a 2D particle system? I can already create a 2D particle system (balls colliding with and rebounding from each other and from enclosing walls). And there are plenty of examples and tutorials for that kind of thing, so that's not what I'm looking for.

What I am looking for are resources that will help me to develop something more complex, where the objects are 'simulated creatures'. I've created a couple of prototypes already, but they're really not up to scratch. Here's a list of the things the simulation needs to do:

1. Creatures normally move about at random within a set of boundaries. They mostly move in straight lines but sometimes pause for a while or change direction.

2. When creatures collide with other creatures (or boundaries), they turn and move off in a new, random direction (one that takes them 'away' from the collision.

3. (and this is where my problems start) Creatures can be directed to go to a particular point, and will find their way to that point, either directly or by going around obstacles (including other creatures).

Is basing my approach on a particle system the right way to go about this? Would it be better to switch to a tile-based system and try to use something like an A* pathfinding algorithm? I'm really looking for some resources that adopt a 'hand-holding' approach, as my games-programming skills are somewhat limited.

How can I load (and sort) a really huge text file in Perl?

kosmonaut — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:06:49 -0800

How do I load and then sort a really huge (94 MB) text file list of words? Perl runs out of memory trying to load all the lines-- before I have a chance to try to sort it. My text file contains a list of words, one per line. I'd like to sort this list into alphabetical order (and then ultimately traverse the sorted list to easily parse out all of the non-unique tokens). Here is what I was doing in Perl:



open LARGELIST, "large_source_file.txt" or die $!;

print "Loading file...\n";

@lines = [LARGELIST];

print "Done";

@sorted = sort(@lines);

(The brackets around LARGELIST are supposed to be the less-than and greater-than signs, but that would get stripped out in AskMeFi for looking like an HTML tag.)

After chugging for a while, perl runs out of memory while at the loading-file stage. I'm definitely not a Perl guru, so is there a more memory-efficient way I should do this (or is there some entirely different approach/language I should be trying)?

Please help a Struts / Hibernate noob fix what is likely a very simple bug!

utsutsu — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:41:04 -0800

Please help a Struts / Hibernate noob fix what is likely a very simple bug! Ok, so this web app is using the Struts framework and Hibernate for the database side of things.

It is an "inquiry tracking" application. The user searches for a client, selects the client and is then brought to a history page which lists all past inquiries for that client.

The problem is that if the Staff member who fielded a particular inquiry has been deleted, an exception gets thrown and the page doesnt load.

The exception is...

ApplicationDispatcher[/appName]: Servlet.service() for servlet debugjsp threw exception
org.apache.jasper.JasperException: No row with the given identifier exists: [package.appName.domain.model.Staff#STAFFIDINQUESTION ]

So, the Inquiry object holds a StaffId and presumably at some point it is searching through the staff list to translate the StaffId to StaffName which gets displayed. This error happens when the StaffId is not present in the list of Staff. This all makes sense to me.

My trouble is I have almost no experience with Struts and Hibernate and I can't seem to find where this is actually happening.What I would like it to do is use the StaffId where there is no Staff to match with to get the name.

My google fu and textbook fu has completely failed me on this one. I have been playing with this in the debugger in jbuilder for hours and pouring over XML files but I just can't seem to find where this stuff is actually happening. Many thanks for anyone who can shed some light or point me in the right direction.

programming

amsterdam63 — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:29:43 -0800

What is the best way to get a programming job without a computer science degree? I recently got a finance degree, but I am pretty decent at programming. How can I prove this to a company I want to work for? Get a certification? Write some programs as a kind of portfolio? Any suggestions/advice are appreciated.

Where can I find an honest, intelligent, organized community of folks looking for freelance .NET programmers?

Glendale — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:38:56 -0800

Where can I find an honest, intelligent, organized community of folks looking for freelance .NET programmers? I'm looking to supplement my day job with freelance C# programming. I have about 15 hours per week free, so I'm looking for smallish projects (perhaps 45-90 hours per project..) to fill in my spare time.

I'm a clean, efficient and thorough programmer, with excellent references looking to work for honest, intelligent, organized people. Can you point me in the direction of a quality freelance software development community?

Learning to program help?

btkuhn — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:24:08 -0800

Help me advance my computer education! I have been teaching myself computer programming over the past few months by working through this online Python textbook, and trying to complete the exercises on MIT's opencourseware Intro to Computer Science.

The tutorial does an excellent job of explaining the fundamentals and I'm now familiar with basic syntax and structures. However, I'm kind of at a stopping point. I've basically read through the tutorial (and one or two others) twice and finished the exercises in it, but I haven't completely submitted to knowledge everything in it. Just as importantly, the exercises provided in the tutorial cover only the basics and I doubt that if I was faced with a "unique", complex problem that I'd be able to write my own code to solve it.

So I have two questions:

First, based on my past experience in mathematics, the best way to learn new material is to go through a set of exercises/problems, try to do them on my own, and then look at the solutions. The MIT site has exactly what I'm looking for but doesn't have solutions or suggested code, and I've already finished going through that site. Surprisingly, I'm having a lot of trouble finding other sources for these type problems. Can anyone suggest a good place to get exercises with solutions that would help me to learn and practice my skills? Perhaps other college's intro to computer science class websites that make their homework available online (preferably in Python)? Or, alternatively, any suggestions for other ways to reinforce the material?

Second, where to next? After I master the basics that are covered in the "Python for non programmers" tutorial, I'd like to continue to get better and learn how to do more complex things. It doesn't seem like learning another language is a great idea at this point; better to master Python rather than gaining a cursory understanding of several languages. How do I get better? (A side note-programming does not come naturally to me at all, so the advice that I've received from my two computer-nerd friends, "Just start messing around, do cool stuff" has not been helpful at all. I do much better with structured stuff like you would get in a academic course).

Thanks!

How do I access the drupal admin panel.

BoldStepDesign — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:56:44 -0800

Three drupal questions 1. I disabled the log in form on the main page, now how do I get to the admin panel? (Please note, I have a local install of drupal, php, MySQL and Apache for Dev purposes.) 2. How can I create drop down menus? 3. Is there a way I can change the layout for a certain page? Such as I want the main page to be two columns while others to be one with tables or something to that effect for grid data. How can I do this?

arrays of strings in C/C++

phllip.phillip — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:56:58 -0800

I am currently a second semester programming student and I missed class because of jail; I was trespassing. my problem is, in my structured programming class we are using C/C++ and I need to know how to make an array of strings: multiple strings stored in an array. can someone help or guide me in the right direction.

Best Programming Language for an Engineer

warriorengineer — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:52:21 -0800

What would be the best programming language for me to learn for use as a Water Resources Engineer? I am a Water Resources Engineer, and I do a lot of modeling. In college, I took a class in which we used VB and a class in which we used Fortran. In grad school (masters) I used mostly matlab or just excel for problem solving. I am considering getting my PhD. and if I do, it is likely that I'll have to do a good bit of programming (Its very likely that I'll be writing some finite element method code). I am trying to determine which would be the best programming language for me to learn. I didn't really like VB or Fortran, and believe that they are both too limited. IF you have any question for me please ask. thanks.

Python and Data Mining

elationfoundation — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:01:31 -0800

Is Python a logical choice to learn if I want to create Data Mining programs. I have never programmed before but have interest in createing long term data management and mining programs for my research. I heard from many people that python is an easy enough programming language to learn: I dont want to learn the easy but useless language for my interest. I am looking to create a simple data interface for the users to imput data with a strong analitical back end. Think, teh computer screens that starbucks and mcDonalds use but with a few other bells and whistles. Is python capable of doing this (mostly concerned about the analytical part)

What're the essential web languages for a new developer?

GilloD — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:50:55 -0800

I'd like to learn some web languages to help me take advantage of APIs and generally be more useful. It's been a crazy month and a half. After letting programming lapse entirely, both as hobby and profession, I've found myself seated in the role again. As the only person with even the vaguest idea of how programming languages work, I've been appointed the job of "Web development guy" at the small company I work for.

This has turned out to be wonderful. I'm kept busy, I get wide creative latitude and I genuinely enjoy the act of creating. And, if I do say so myself, I'm not too bad at it. I dove right in reading up on modern CSS, digging through the archives of Alistapart, challenging myself to implement complex solutions and generally learning by doing. I read a ton on best practices and worked hard to make my web code pass the "drop-dead" test- If I died today, I'm certain someone with only minimal knowledge could pick up my code tommorrow.

So this is great! But now I'm looking to try and be even more useful. I'd love to start learning some web-friendly languages so that I can flex my programming muscle. There are things no manner of CSS wizardry can accomplish that I'd like to be doing. If there's an API that I think could be helpful, I'd love to be able to take advantage of it.

But, like I said, I'm still rusty. So I'm looking for two things

-What are the vital web languages that a budding development dude should be familiar with.
-Where should he learn them?

Books, videos, web tutorials- I'm open to all of them. I'm just looking to solicit advice from folks who are in the trenches. I'm not looking to be able to brew my own social network or create a mega database, but I'd like to know enough to generate some dynamic content or employ some Java tricks when most pedestrian methods fail.

Looking for a way automate making custom resumes

Pontifex — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:15:15 -0800

Where can I find a service / program that would enable me to dynamically create resumes and cover letters? I use a method for fabricating cover letters and resumes.

I tailor my documents to match the jobs I'm applying for.

My method involves annotating my work history with phrases describing my work, my personal projects, my school experience, etc. I've stored common annotations in a large spreadsheet in order to reuse some of my previous work.

Everything relevant to the job is represented. This is the most successful method I've tried and I'd prefer to keep using it.

This process takes quite a long time to produce viable documents.

I'd like to automate the process.

I'm in the process of doing my own research and developing a scripting solution as an alpha method for automating the process. I want to know if this has been done before; To save me some time and trouble.

Thanks for your input.

Advice on teaching programming to math genius 11 year old girls

puppy kuddles — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:38:49 -0800

Advice on teaching programming to math genius 11 year old girls? I've agreed to teach an informal programming class for some neighbor kids who all attend an advanced math+science school. I'll be using processing as the platform. I have a fair amount of successful experience teaching processing to adults and college students, so I'm looking for tips on how to adjust my teaching for talented preteens. I'm taking it for granted they'll be better than me at math.

How to estimate the quality of an employer's code base in an interview for a programming job?

lifeless — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 05:39:22 -0800

I have an upcoming interview for a programming job. I'd like to find out a bit about the quality of the code of the product I'd be assigned to develop, i.e. is it dailywtf material or decent enough. Any ideas how to get some information out of the interviewers, at least some of whom are assumed to be technical people? Some good indicators include things in the Joel Test: if the company fails on many of these counts, it's a safe bet that the coders aren't too "professional" and probably don't know what they're doing, and the code will most likely be similarly bad.

Asking "is your code any good" probably won't produce an useful answer, or make me look too good. It's probably a better idea to ask about things similar to the Joel Test, things that are closely connected to the code or the coding process, and then form a good enough picture from this data. Asking coders or other well informed technical people good questions is crucial, so what type of questions would you ask, and what other telltale signs would you look for?

High level website concept -does this functionality exist out of the box?

muchomas21 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:04:01 -0800

Is there a Joomla component or other out-of-the-box system that does this already? --Website concept Say I want to start a website that allows Ice Cream Parlor owners to post their daily featured ice cream lists to their Profile Page. Each Ice Cream Parlor can only update their own Profile Page, but they can see everybody else's Profile Pages.

Is there a Joomla component or other out-of-the-box system that does this already?

Ambitious? OH YES

Willie0248 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:13:23 -0800

Due to my nitpicks with Drupal, Joomla, etc, I want to learn to program a custom web content management system. I have very little programming experience, so where do I go from here? Oh man isn't it annoying when some newbie says "I WANT TO PROGRAM" and expects you to point him to some magical book that will tell him exactly what to do... Well yes it is and here I am asking exactly that!

So what do I do now? What language do I need to learn? What other stuff? I guess what I'm looking for is a complete guide from idea to implementation with my limited skill set (a little php and other traditional site building skills)

I realize that a ground-up coding project is probably a little ambitious for a novice, so maybe a good, simple open source project to modify?

I dunno, you folks are the experts. Let's hear them ideas, hive mind!

Where to find TBS promos from the 90s?

Botunda — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:37:56 -0800

Where can I find a TBS promo from the 90s? It wasn't specific to any programming but it had a lot of motion graphics. It was, if I remember correctly, in the form of a pinball machine and it followed a pinball around the board. The bumpers of the pinball machine were different parts of the overall TBS programs. I remember that John Wayne and Braves baseball were a couple of the things highlighted. It was really cool.

Any help appreciated!

Danke,
Botunda

Parcelling out a program

Rubbstone — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:56:53 -0800

I'm having an incredible amount of trouble parceling out my programming work. For those of you who are coders how do you successfully organize your projects?

How do I sell to norse companies?

MaxK — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:24:41 -0800

Norwegian Businessfilter: How would an american with almost no understanding of Bokmål go about getting contracts from Norwegian companies? What's the best way to go about selling computer programming services remotely to companies based in Norway? Is there an English-language business portal for the Norwegian tech industry? Really, this isn't entirely specific to Norway, but I'm trying to take advantage of lower taxes from foreign income while developing contracts with clients in countries I'd like to visit in the next 2 - 3 years.

Help me go from PHP to VB.net.

JPowers — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:58:46 -0800

Help me go from PHP to VB.net. I know PHP. I want to learn VB.net. Since I'm used to understanding basic concepts in one way, I'm having a hard time in VB.net rethinking things. Here are my specific questions:

- In PHP, if I want to call a method (I know, in PHP they're called functions, but go with me here), I use "Method_Name(Parameters_If_Any);". And that is always the syntax. But in VB.net, it seems to change. For example, "Console.WriteLine(strMyString)" is a method that prints something to the current console. But "myObject.GetType()" is also a method that gets the type of an object. In this second example, the function comes last, after an object, and there are no parameters. How do I know when to use which syntax? That doesn't make sense to me. What am I missing here?

- In VB.net, when I dimension a variable, I have to declare its type and its value. That makes sense to me. For example, "Dim strMyString as String = "This is a string"". But I don't understand how/why you would dimension a *variable* as an object. For example, "Dim variable As System.DBNull = System.DBNull.Value". What the heck does that mean? I'm dimensioning a variable as an object and initializing its value to another object?

- In VB.net, why do I sometimes dimension a variable as an object without creating a new instance (i.e., "Dim variable as Object") and sometimes I dimension a variable as an object by creating a new instance (i.e. "Dim variable as New Object").

Again, I'm brand spanking new to VB.net. I've got what seems to be a pretty good book, but these are just some stuff I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around that the book isn't specifically explaining. Sorry if I've used any incorrect syntax or terminology. Like I said, brand new, complete VB.net dummy. Go easy on me.

Any great newbie articles, blog posts, web series, books, videos, etc. that you might recommend? FYI: I'm much more interested in learning the actual code/syntax than I am in learning how to use an IDE to get around coding.

OSX: Future as a programmer dashed by failure to interpret Terminal error

metajc — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:49:53 -0800

Multiple sources credit this Hivelogic post as the definitive guide to getting MySQL up and running on a Mac OS X. But I can't get past the first few steps. I am not a programmer. But I wish I was; they earn more than me and have the best office in the building. I know HTML and CSS and basic PHP. I have been trying out a bunch of Ruby, Python, Django, and PHP tutorials lately but they're all kind of useless because they're not directly applicable to a hosted, "live site" environment that I'm used to ... So, I'm trying to install MySQL on my Intel Macs running 10.5.4 (powerbook and imac) to have a local testing environment but BANG I'm an idiot and I cannot get through this apparently simple tutorial. Of course, the comments are closed and my Googling yields no answer. I was about to give up when I remembered my good friends over here.

Here's what happens, I try to download and build MySQL as instructed:

curl -O http://mysql.he.net/Downloads/MySQL-5.0/mysql-5.0.45.tar.gz
tar xzvf mysql-5.0.45.tar.gz

But I get the following error:

gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

I've tried downloading newer versions of MySQL but I just don't know what I'm doing.

hello, world (of programming)

papayaninja — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:37:27 -0800

What should my first programming language be, if I just want to have fun? And what are good books or websites for learning said language? I am looking to learn how to program. I don't have any ideas as to what I want to program, I just want to learn something for the sake of having a new skill and having fun. I'm sure the ideas of what I could do with any language will come when I have some idea how they work. There are plenty of other questions about which language to learn first, but they all have some purpose in mind, whether a specific program that needs to be created or to become a better employee and so on.

If it matters: I dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows Vista. I have previously used OpenSUSE 9 and 10 and have installed just about every other major distro at least once. I have reasonable competence when it comes to the Linux terminal. I'm a rising senior in high school and I am planning on focusing a lot on academics this year, so something easyish and fun is preferred. I have very limited experience with Visual BASIC. I wrote a text and button based choose-your-own adventure story with it for a school project and also a Twister caller so I could play by myself or with a small group of people. My dad helped with that last one, but I understood it at least. My friends ask me for computer help.

Finally, now that I know which language to learn, how do I learn it? Books? Websites? Podcasts? I'd be willing to spend a maximum of 30 dollars on books, though ten bucks is much appealing...

Thanks.