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  • Do You Really Know Your Programming Languages?

    - by Kristopher Johnson
    I am often amazed at how little some of my colleagues know or care about their craft. Something that constantly frustrates me is that people don't want to learn any more than they need to about the programming languages they use every day. Many programmers seem content to learn some pidgin sub-dialect, and stick with that. If they see a keyword or construct that they aren't familiar with, they'll complain that the code is "tricky." What would you think of a civil engineer who shied away from calculus because it had "all those tricky math symbols?" I'm not suggesting that we all need to become "language lawyers." But if you make your living as a programmer, and claim to be a competent user of language X, then I think at a minimum you should know the following: Do you know the keywords of the language and what they do? What are the valid syntactic forms? How are memory, files, and other operating system resources managed? Where is the official language specification and library reference for the language? The last one is the one that really gets me. Many programmers seem to have no idea that there is a "specification" or "standard" for any particular language. I still talk to people who think that Microsoft invented C++, and that if a program doesn't compile under VC6, it's not a valid C++ program. Programmers these days have it easy when it comes to obtaining specs. Newer languages like C#, Java, Python, Ruby, etc. all have their documentation available for free from the vendors' web sites. Older languages and platforms often have standards controlled by standards bodies that demand payment for specs, but even that shouldn't be a deterrent: the C++ standard is available from ISO for $30 (and why am I the only person I know who has a copy?). Programming is hard enough even when you do know the language. If you don't, I don't see how you have a chance. What do the rest of you think? Am I right, or should we all be content with the typical level of programming language expertise? Update: Several great comments here. Thanks. A couple of people hit on something that I didn't think about: What really irks me is not the lack of knowledge, but the lack of curiosity and willingness to learn. It seems some people don't have any time to hone their craft, but they have plenty of time to write lots of bad code. And I don't expect people to be able to recite a list of keywords or EBNF expressions, but I do expect that when they see some code, they should have some inkling of what it does. Few people have complete knowledge of every dark corner of their language or platform, but everyone should at least know enough that when they see something unfamiliar, they will know how to get whatever additional information they need to understand it.

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  • Flow Based Programming

    - by Software Monkey
    I have been doing a little reading on Flow Based Programming over the last few days. There is a wiki which provides further detail. And wikipedia has a good overview on it too. My first thought was, "Great another proponent of lego-land pretend programming" - a concept harking back to the late 80's. But, as I read more, I must admit I have become intrigued. Have you used FBP for a real project? What is your opinion of FBP? Does FBP have a future? In some senses, it seems like the holy grail of reuse that our industry has pursued since the advent of procedural languages.

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  • An Attitude of Programming Gratitude

    - by DonnyD
    A few years ago, I felt privileged to be involved in a mature open-source project where my salary was paid by a government research grant. As it turned out, I was ill-equipped for this three-month contract which included some very stressful network support in a medical setting and, to add to that, the project was poorly managed with poor lines of communication. My dream job had suddenly become a nightmare. Never, in my experience, though, did I learn as much about programming in as short a period of time. Psychologically, the only way through this episode in my life was for me to actively look for the good in things and focus on my love of programming. What role has gratitude played in your life as a programmer?

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  • Programming tutorials for people with zero experience

    - by www.aegisub.net
    A friend of mine is interested in learning how to program computers, but she knows nothing about programming. I suggested that Python might be a good language to start with, but after some googling, I couldn't find any tutorials that covered both programming and Python in an adequate way. I don't want her to go through the tiresome "learn algorithms in pseudocode first" routine. Instead, I'd like a tutorial that will explain the basic ideas while working towards a real goal, e.g. a very simple console game. Does anyone know of any such tutorials? Do you think that I'm mistaken in how I'm handling this? Is Python a bad choice? I know that something like C, C++ or Java won't work - too many details will be very counterproductive. On the other hand, I think that Lisp might be too mathematical and abstract. Python, on the other hand, will let her even do something like coding primitive graphical games in a short period of time.

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  • C++ USB Programming

    - by JB_SO
    Hi, I am new to hardware programming(especially USB) so please bear with me and my questions. I am using C++ and I need to send/receive some data (a byte array) to/from a USB port on a microprocessor board. Now, I have done some serial port programming before and I know that for a serial port you have to open a port, setup, perform i/o and finally close the port. I am guessing to use a USB port, it is not as simple as what I mentioned above. I do know that I want to use Microsoft standard drivers and implement standard Windows IO commands to accomplish this, since I believe there are no drivers for the microprocessor board for me to interact with. If somebody can point me in the right direction as to the steps needed to "talk" to a USB port (open, setup, i/o) via standard Windows IO commands, I would truly and greatly appreciate it. Thanks you so much!!

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  • Problems with dynamic programming

    - by xan
    I've got difficulties with understanding dynamic programming, so I decided to solve some problems. I know basic dynamic algorithms like longest common subsequence, knapsack problem, but I know them because I read them, but I can't come up with something on my own :-( For example we have subsequence of natural numbers. Every number we can take with plus or minus. At the end we take absolute value of this sum. For every subsequence find the lowest possible result. in1: 10 3 5 4; out1: 2 in2: 4 11 5 5 5; out2: 0 in3: 10 50 60 65 90 100; out3: 5 explanation for 3rd: 5 = |10+50+60+65-90-100| what it worse my friend told me that it is simple knapsack problem, but I can't see any knapsack here. Is dynamic programming something difficult or only I have big problems with it?

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  • Proper programming procedure?

    - by Rob
    I am creating a scoring application which is dependent upon what a user selects at the beginning menu. Example: If a user clicks 18, I want it to base itself off 18 holes of golf. If a user clicks 9, I want it to base itself off 9 holes of golf. Is it better to create a separate class for the code for 9 holes, and then another for 18 holes and then launch whichever depending on what the user selects? Or should I keep everything in 1 file and use a global variable to define different parameters? Still very new to android programming (or programming in general) so not sure of the proper "etiquette" if you will... Also what would be the pro's and con's of doing it either way? (If any) Thanks in advance!

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  • gVim and multiple programming languages

    - by Abhi
    My day job involves coding with Perl. At home I play around with Python and Erlang. For Perl I want to indent my code with two spaces. Whereas for Python the standard is 4. Also I have some key bindings to open function declarations which I would like to use with all programming languages. How can this be achieved in gVim? As in, is there a way to maintain a configuration file for each programming language or something of that sort?

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  • Resources for Win32 C/C++ programming

    - by EricM
    I have experience in a variety of languages (Java, Perl, C#, PHP, javascript, ansi-C for microprocessors, Objective-C and others), with Win32 programming not being an area I've done a lot of work in. Now part of my job entails maintaining a large Win32 codebase that stretches back 15 years and includes everything from C written originally for Win95 to MFC to COM to 64-bit code for Win7 to C++ using Boost and so on. If there's a variation on how to do something it's in there. Are there any good Win32 C/C++ references that discuss both the proper way to do things today and give you a little sense of how things evolved? Something like this discussion of all the various boolean types, or how to approach the API monstrosity of simply copying a string. I don't see my career heading too far down this path, but I do like to understand what I'm working with and I think this is an important part of programming history. thanks, Eric

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  • Value of A.S. Degree in Programming

    - by MiseryIndex
    I am in a quite unusual family situation. For the next two years, I have to stay at home where the only post-secondary institution available is a community college. After two years, I will have to start earning a living. I do not really have any real-world programming experience to put on my résumé. I did some not-too-advanced work in PHP for family and friends, and I’m pretty sure that I want to program for a living. I have been working on an A.S. Degree in Computer Programming and Analysis since fall. My question regarding the degree is: is it worth anything to potential employers or am I just wasting my time? Is there a better way to spend the oncoming two years? If I could get an internship and some experience, would that hold more weight than a two-year degree without experience?

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  • How to prepare for a programming competition? Graphs, Stacks, Trees, oh my! [closed]

    - by Simucal
    Last semester I attended ACM's (Association for Computing Machinery) bi-annual programming competition at a local University. My University sent 2 teams of 3 people and we competed amongst other schools in the mid-west. We got our butts kicked. You are given a packet with about 11 problems (1 problem per page) and you have 4 hours to solve as many as you can. They'll run your program you submit against a set of data and your output must match theirs exactly. In fact, the judging is automated for the most part. In any case.. I went there fairly confident in my programming skills and I left there feeling drained and weak. It was a terribly humbling experience. In 4 hours my team of 3 people completed only one of the problems. The top team completed 4 of them and took 1st place. The problems they asked were like no problems I have ever had to answer before. I later learned that in order to solve them some of them effectively you have to use graphs/graph algorithms, trees, stacks. Some of them were simply "greedy" algo's. My question is, how can I better prepare for this semesters programming competition so I don't leave there feeling like a complete moron? What tips do you have for me to be able to answer these problems that involve graphs, trees, various "well known" algorithms? How can I easily identify the algorithm we should implement for a given problem? I have yet to take Algorithm Design in school so I just feel a little out of my element. Here are some examples of the questions asked at the competitions: ACM Problem Sets Update: Just wanted to update this since the latest competition is over. My team placed 1st for our small region (about 6-7 universities with between 1-5 teams each school) and ~15th for the midwest! So, it is a marked improvement over last years performance for sure. We also had no graduate students on our team and after reviewing the rules we found out that many teams had several! So, that would be a pretty big advantage in my own opinion. Problems this semester ranged from about 1-2 "easy" problems (ie bit manipulation, string manipulation) to hard (graph problems involving fairly complex math and network flow problems). We were able to solve 4 problems in our 5 hours. Just wanted to thank everyone for the resources they provided here, we used them for our weekly team practices and it definitely helped! Some quick tips that I have that aren't suggested below: When you are seated at your computer before the competition starts, quickly type out various data structures that you might need that you won't have access to in your languages libraries. I typed out a Graph data-structure complete with floyd-warshall and dijkstra's algorithm before the competition began. We ended up using it in our 2nd problem that we solved and this is the main reason why we solved this problem before anyone else in the midwest. We had it ready to go from the beginning. Similarly, type out the code to read in a file since this will be required for every problem. Save this answer "template" someplace so you can quickly copy/paste it to your IDE at the beginning of each problem. There are no rules on programming anything before the competition starts so get any boilerplate code out the way. We found it useful to have one person who is on permanent whiteboard duty. This is usually the person who is best at math and at working out solutions to get a head start on future problems you will be doing. One person is on permanent programming duty. Your fastest/most skilled "programmer" (most familiar with the language). This will save debugging time also. The last person has several roles between assessing the packet of problems for the next "easiest" problem, helping the person on the whiteboard work out solutions and helping the person programming work out bugs/issues. This person needs to be flexible and be able to switch between roles easily.

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  • Are there deprecated practices for multithread and multiprocessor programming that I should no longer use?

    - by DeveloperDon
    In the early days of FORTRAN and BASIC, essentially all programs were written with GOTO statements. The result was spaghetti code and the solution was structured programming. Similarly, pointers can have difficult to control characteristics in our programs. C++ started with plenty of pointers, but use of references are recommended. Libraries like STL can reduce some of our dependency. There are also idioms to create smart pointers that have better characteristics, and some version of C++ permit references and managed code. Programming practices like inheritance and polymorphism use a lot of pointers behind the scenes (just as for, while, do structured programming generates code filled with branch instructions). Languages like Java eliminate pointers and use garbage collection to manage dynamically allocated data instead of depending on programmers to match all their new and delete statements. In my reading, I have seen examples of multi-process and multi-thread programming that don't seem to use semaphores. Do they use the same thing with different names or do they have new ways of structuring protection of resources from concurrent use? For example, a specific example of a system for multithread programming with multicore processors is OpenMP. It represents a critical region as follows, without the use of semaphores, which seem not to be included in the environment. th_id = omp_get_thread_num(); #pragma omp critical { cout << "Hello World from thread " << th_id << '\n'; } This example is an excerpt from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMP Alternatively, similar protection of threads from each other using semaphores with functions wait() and signal() might look like this: wait(sem); th_id = get_thread_num(); cout << "Hello World from thread " << th_id << '\n'; signal(sem); In this example, things are pretty simple, and just a simple review is enough to show the wait() and signal() calls are matched and even with a lot of concurrency, thread safety is provided. But other algorithms are more complicated and use multiple semaphores (both binary and counting) spread across multiple functions with complex conditions that can be called by many threads. The consequences of creating deadlock or failing to make things thread safe can be hard to manage. Do these systems like OpenMP eliminate the problems with semaphores? Do they move the problem somewhere else? How do I transform my favorite semaphore using algorithm to not use semaphores anymore?

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  • Why do old programming languages continue to be revised?

    - by SunAvatar
    This question is not, "Why do people still use old programming languages?" I understand that quite well. In fact the two programming languages I know best are C and Scheme, both of which date back to the 70s. Recently I was reading about the changes in C99 and C11 versus C89 (which seems to still be the most-used version of C in practice and the version I learned from K&R). Looking around, it seems like every programming language in heavy use gets a new specification at least once per decade or so. Even Fortran is still getting new revisions, despite the fact that most people using it are still using FORTRAN 77. Contrast this with the approach of, say, the typesetting system TeX. In 1989, with the release of TeX 3.0, Donald Knuth declared that TeX was feature-complete and future releases would contain only bug fixes. Even beyond this, he has stated that upon his death, "all remaining bugs will become features" and absolutely no further updates will be made. Others are free to fork TeX and have done so, but the resulting systems are renamed to indicate that they are different from the official TeX. This is not because Knuth thinks TeX is perfect, but because he understands the value of a stable, predictable system that will do the same thing in fifty years that it does now. Why do most programming language designers not follow the same principle? Of course, when a language is relatively new, it makes sense that it will go through a period of rapid change before settling down. And no one can really object to minor changes that don't do much more than codify existing pseudo-standards or correct unintended readings. But when a language still seems to need improvement after ten or twenty years, why not just fork it or start over, rather than try to change what is already in use? If some people really want to do object-oriented programming in Fortran, why not create "Objective Fortran" for that purpose, and leave Fortran itself alone? I suppose one could say that, regardless of future revisions, C89 is already a standard and nothing stops people from continuing to use it. This is sort of true, but connotations do have consequences. GCC will, in pedantic mode, warn about syntax that is either deprecated or has a subtly different meaning in C99, which means C89 programmers can't just totally ignore the new standard. So there must be some benefit in C99 that is sufficient to impose this overhead on everyone who uses the language. This is a real question, not an invitation to argue. Obviously I do have an opinion on this, but at the moment I'm just trying to understand why this isn't just how things are done already. I suppose the question is: What are the (real or perceived) advantages of updating a language standard, as opposed to creating a new language based on the old?

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  • Summer Programming Plans

    - by Gabe
    I've wanted to start "hacking" for many months now. But I put it off in favor of school and other things. Now, though, I'm free for the summer and want to learn as much as I can. I have a rough idea of what I want to try my hand at, but need some guidance as to what specifically - and how - I should learn. This is my plan so far: 1) Get good at programming in general. I plan to read up on how to think/work like a programmer. I'm waiting for the Pragmatic Programmer to arrive, which will be the first book I read. Q: What other books/ebooks should I look at? What more can I do here? 2) Learn/Improve at HTML/CSS. My first project will be to make a personal website/blog for myself using HTML and CSS. ----Then I hope to write/design articles like Dustin Curtis. After I finish this (and learn a programming language) I'll try to create user-based a user-focused website. Q: It's my understanding that just trying to design/manage websites is a good way to learn/improve at HTML/CSS. Is that all correct? 3) Try music development. This might be a sort of stretch for stackoverflow, but I'm interested in mixing/making techno songs. (Think Justice, or Daft Punk, or MSTRKRFT.) Q: I have a Mac. Any ideas on how I could start/learn music making? Any programs I should download, for instance? 4) My main goal: Learning a web development language/framework. I'm a year into learning/using C++. But what I really want to do is develop websites and web apps. I've searched online, and there seems to be great debate over which language/framework to learn first (and which is best). I think I've narrowed it down to three: Ruby (Rails), Python (Django), and PHP (?). Q #1: Which should I learn and use first? (Reasons?) Q #2: One reason I was leaning towards PHP is that I'm taking a PHP development course next semester. Learning it now would make that course easy. If PHP was not the answer to Q #1, is it worth learning both? Or, would it be better to just focus on PHP for this summer and next semester, and then transition thereafter to a better language? 5) iPhone/iPad Programming (Maybe). I've a number of simple, useful app ideas that I'd like to eventually get too. I just bought a Mac, as well as a few app development books. Q #1: Am I spreading myself thin trying to learn all of the above, and objective-C? Q #2: How much harder/easier is objective-C compared to the above languages? Also, how easy is it to learn obj-C after learning a web development language (and some C++)? Q #3: Yes or no? Should I go for it, or just keeep with #1-4 for now? Also: If you have any tips on how I should learn (or how you learned to hack), I'm all ears. I'd be especially interested in how you planned out learning: did you just hack whenever you felt like it, or did you "study" the language a few hours a day, or something else? Thanks so much, guys.

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  • Primary language - C++/Qt, C#, Java?

    - by Airjoe
    I'm looking for some input, but let me start with a bit of background (for tl;dr skip to end). I'm an IT major with a concentration in networking. While I'm not a CS major nor do I want to program as a vocation, I do consider myself a programmer and do pretty well with the concepts involved. I've been programming since about 6th grade, started out with a proprietary game creation language that made my transition into C++ at college pretty easy. I like to make programs for myself and friends, and have been paid to program for local businesses. A bit about that- I wrote some programs for a couple local businesses in my senior year in high school. I wrote management systems for local shops (inventory, phone/pos orders, timeclock, customer info, and more stuff I can't remember). It definitely turned out to be over my head, as I had never had any formal programming education. It was a great learning experience, but damn was it crappy code. Oh yeah, by the way, it was all vb6. So, I've used vb6 pretty extensively, I've used c++ in my classes (intro to programming up to algorithms), used Java a little bit in another class (had to write a ping client program, pretty easy) and used Java for some simple Project Euler problems to help learn syntax and such when writing the program for the class. I've also used C# a bit for my own simple personal projects (simple programs, one which would just generate an HTTP request on a list of websites and notify if one responded unexpectedly or not at all, and another which just held a list of things to do and periodically reminded me to do them), things I would've written in vb6 a year or two ago. I've just started using Qt C++ for some undergrad research I'm working on. Now I've had some formal education, I [think I] understand organization in programming a lot better (I didn't even use classes in my vb6 programs where I really should have), how it's important to structure code, split into functions where appropriate, document properly, efficiency both in memory and speed, dynamic and modular programming etc. I was looking for some input on which language to pick up as my "primary". As I'm not a "real programmer", it will be mostly hobby projects, but will include some 'real' projects I'm sure. From my perspective: QtC++ and Java are cross platform, which is cool. Java and C# run in a virtual machine, but I'm not sure if that's a big deal (something extra to distribute, possibly a bit slower? I think Qt would require additional distributables too, right?). I don't really know too much more than this, so I appreciate any help, thanks! TL;DR Am an avocational programmer looking for a language, want quick and straight forward development, liked vb6, will be working with database driven GUI apps- should I go with QtC++, Java, C#, or perhaps something else?

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  • Primary language - QtC++, C#, Java?

    - by Airjoe
    I'm looking for some input, but let me start with a bit of background (for tl;dr skip to end). I'm an IT major with a concentration in networking. While I'm not a CS major nor do I want to program as a vocation, I do consider myself a programmer and do pretty well with the concepts involved. I've been programming since about 6th grade, started out with a proprietary game creation language that made my transition into C++ at college pretty easy. I like to make programs for myself and friends, and have been paid to program for local businesses. A bit about that- I wrote some programs for a couple local businesses in my senior year in high school. I wrote management systems for local shops (inventory, phone/pos orders, timeclock, customer info, and more stuff I can't remember). It definitely turned out to be over my head, as I had never had any formal programming education. It was a great learning experience, but damn was it crappy code. Oh yeah, by the way, it was all vb6. So, I've used vb6 pretty extensively, I've used c++ in my classes (intro to programming up to algorithms), used Java a little bit in another class (had to write a ping client program, pretty easy) and used Java for some simple Project Euler problems to help learn syntax and such when writing the program for the class. I've also used C# a bit for my own simple personal projects (simple programs, one which would just generate an HTTP request on a list of websites and notify if one responded unexpectedly or not at all, and another which just held a list of things to do and periodically reminded me to do them), things I would've written in vb6 a year or two ago. I've just started using Qt C++ for some undergrad research I'm working on. Now I've had some formal education, I [think I] understand organization in programming a lot better (I didn't even use classes in my vb6 programs where I really should have), how it's important to structure code, split into functions where appropriate, document properly, efficiency both in memory and speed, dynamic and modular programming etc. I was looking for some input on which language to pick up as my "primary". As I'm not a "real programmer", it will be mostly hobby projects, but will include some 'real' projects I'm sure. From my perspective: QtC++ and Java are cross platform, which is cool. Java and C# run in a virtual machine, but I'm not sure if that's a big deal (something extra to distribute, possibly a bit slower? I think Qt would require additional distributables too, right?). I don't really know too much more than this, so I appreciate any help, thanks! TL;DR Am an avocational programmer looking for a language, want quick and straight forward development, liked vb6, will be working with database driven GUI apps- should I go with QtC++, Java, C#, or perhaps something else?

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