Search Results

Search found 25589 results on 1024 pages for 'software developers'.

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

Page 147/1024 | < Previous Page | 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154  | Next Page >

  • Which software is best for browser compatibility testing?

    - by Camran
    Which software is recommended? I know of Adobe Browser Lab only, and it seems pretty new... Is there any better SW out there? Thanks PS: I have a classifieds website (PHP, MySql, Solr, js) developed on local computer using virtual server etc... Now I need to test it on different browsers. It is developed only with Firefox, so it works fine in FF.

    Read the article

  • best software synthesizer for piano

    - by pianoman
    Could someone recommend a good and inexpensive software synthesizer which generates really good piano sound (sample-based); support for other instruments is not required. OS: Windows or MacOS. Java interface would be a great asset.

    Read the article

  • Programming language for opengl screenshot software

    - by mandril
    I need to develop a multiplatform software that takes screenshots from opengl games without affecting the game in performance, it will run in the background and will add a watermark to my screenshots. What language should i use? I thought of Perl / Python. Anyone can point me out something to start? Thanks!

    Read the article

  • What is the best php encoder software ?

    - by question_about_the_problem
    What is the best php encoder software? http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/php_encoder_software/ http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=596680 or another. Everybody say Zend Guard. But you can decode/decript zend's files at the page http://www.showmycode.com/ I think, SourceGuardian is good. But I'm not so sure.

    Read the article

  • Real World Examples of read-write in concurrent software

    - by Richard Fabian
    I'm looking for real world examples of needing read and write access to the same value in concurrent systems. In my opinion, many semaphores or locks are present because there's no known alternative (to the implementer,) but do you know of any patterns where mutexes seem to be a requirement? In a way I'm asking for candidates for the standard set of HARD problems for concurrent software in the real world.

    Read the article

  • Eclipse software management

    - by Maroloccio
    How to streamline/automate the configuration of Eclipse? Given N developers running a mixture of Ubuntu and Mac OS X, all with the same version of Eclipse, how to make sure that: Each developer, on top of his favourite "Available Software Sites" selection, has a common set of installation sources? Each developer has an easy (automated?) way of installing a base set of plug-ins? Each developer can just as easily install a custom plugin developed in-house and distributed over the local network? No automatically deployed plugins conflict with any others a developer might already be using? I would post this to serverfault.com if it wasn't that I am more interested in a "scripting" answer than a traditional "system management" solution... ;-)

    Read the article

  • Should Competent Programmers be "Mathematically Inclined"

    - by Abhijeet Patel
    From a blog post by Jeff Atwood of the same title, I can tell from personal experience that it's much more easier to grasp math after having worked professionally as a developer for a while. I appreciate math much more as I can see it's real world applicability. Can you recommend any resources/books that can help become familiar and comfortable with the kind of math concepts that developers should be familiar with for being well rounded and effective developers.

    Read the article

  • Funniest code names for software projects

    - by furtelwart
    Developers are creative. Not as they create wonderfull GUIs or proof their sense for art with good color combinations, but with code names. Every project has a code name, sometimes official, sometimes private (with a good reason!). Here are my favourites: Android: 1.6 = Donut 2.0 = Eclaire (picture of Google's eclaire) grml (Live distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux, comes from Austria therefore in German) Hustenstopper (cough stopper) Eierspass (egg fun) Meilenschwein (mile pig, it's a pun with milestone) Lackdose-Allergie (lacquer can allergy, it's a pun with lactose allergy) Hello-Wien (pun with Halloween, Wien being German for Vienna) I really like to see the funniest code names you ever heard of. Aren't there any more funny project names?

    Read the article

  • Developer workload management software: recommendations?

    - by PaddyC
    In my place, we use two issue tracking tools, one for production bugs, and another for issues on projects in development. These tools are good for managers. However, at an individual level, other work can also arrive through desk visits, email, or the phone, and those allocating the work aren't always interested in issue tracking systems. I've recently rolled off an 18-month project where I got into a cycle of overtime, and I found that I didn't always have good visibility of all work assigned to me. As a result, I was always very busy, and felt constantly laden down with work, but didn't have the clear data to show my manager (or, ironically, the time to stop and gather the information!). A handwritten list, updated at the end of each day, is a good start, but can anyone recommend better tools to help me get a clear view of my own workload? Ideally, I'm thinking of software tools for developers, which could incorporate estimates, but all suggestions welcome. Thanks, Paddy

    Read the article

  • Why do software engineers hate writing documentation?

    - by Stewart Johnson
    I ask because I quite enjoy it! I'm talking about design documentation and implementation notes (NOT user manuals), which are non-existent in most of the codebases I've been handed. I can understand why a developer wouldn't want to write requirements (that's the analyst's job) or the user documentation (that's a technical writer's job) but I don't get why developers hate writing design docs. I don't think I would feel as if I'd finished the job if I only wrote the code and walked away -- mainly because when I've been introduced to code-only situations I've seen how hard it is to figure out what's been done and what the software does. I would hate for people to suffer the same situation when inheriting my code. What makes you loath writing supporting documentation for your code?

    Read the article

  • How many developers before continuous integration becomes effective for us?

    - by Carnotaurus
    There is an overhead associated with continuous integration, e.g., set up, re-training, awareness activities, stoppage to fix "bugs" that turn out to be data issues, enforced separation of concerns programming styles, etc. At what point does continuous integration pay for itself? EDIT: These were my findings The set-up was CruiseControl.Net with Nant, reading from VSS or TFS. Here are a few reasons for failure, which have nothing to do with the setup: Cost of investigation: The time spent investigating whether a red light is due a genuine logical inconsistency in the code, data quality, or another source such as an infrastructure problem (e.g., a network issue, a timeout reading from source control, third party server is down, etc., etc.) Political costs over infrastructure: I considered performing an "infrastructure" check for each method in the test run. I had no solution to the timeout except to replace the build server. Red tape got in the way and there was no server replacement. Cost of fixing unit tests: A red light due to a data quality issue could be an indicator of a badly written unit test. So, data dependent unit tests were re-written to reduce the likelihood of a red light due to bad data. In many cases, necessary data was inserted into the test environment to be able to accurately run its unit tests. It makes sense to say that by making the data more robust then the test becomes more robust if it is dependent on this data. Of course, this worked well! Cost of coverage, i.e., writing unit tests for already existing code: There was the problem of unit test coverage. There were thousands of methods that had no unit tests. So, a sizeable amount of man days would be needed to create those. As this would be too difficult to provide a business case, it was decided that unit tests would be used for any new public method going forward. Those that did not have a unit test were termed 'potentially infra red'. An intestesting point here is that static methods were a moot point in how it would be possible to uniquely determine how a specific static method had failed. Cost of bespoke releases: Nant scripts only go so far. They are not that useful for, say, CMS dependent builds for EPiServer, CMS, or any UI oriented database deployment. These are the types of issues that occured on the build server for hourly test runs and overnight QA builds. I entertain that these to be unnecessary as a build master can perform these tasks manually at the time of release, esp., with a one man band and a small build. So, single step builds have not justified use of CI in my experience. What about the more complex, multistep builds? These can be a pain to build, especially without a Nant script. So, even having created one, these were no more successful. The costs of fixing the red light issues outweighed the benefits. Eventually, developers lost interest and questioned the validity of the red light. Having given it a fair try, I believe that CI is expensive and there is a lot of working around the edges instead of just getting the job done. It's more cost effective to employ experienced developers who do not make a mess of large projects than introduce and maintain an alarm system. This is the case even if those developers leave. It doesn't matter if a good developer leaves because processes that he follows would ensure that he writes requirement specs, design specs, sticks to the coding guidelines, and comments his code so that it is readable. All this is reviewed. If this is not happening then his team leader is not doing his job, which should be picked up by his manager and so on. For CI to work, it is not enough to just write unit tests, attempt to maintain full coverage, and ensure a working infrastructure for sizable systems. The bottom line: One might question whether fixing as many bugs before release is even desirable from a business prespective. CI involves a lot of work to capture a handful of bugs that the customer could identify in UAT or the company could get paid for fixing as part of a client service agreement when the warranty period expires anyway.

    Read the article

  • strategies for learning complex software packages

    - by Tom
    I am a fairly novice Java programmer and I am currently working on a project to extend a piece of software that has been developed over a few years. So it has pretty big code base and the previous developers knew it well, so extending it is not going to be easy without a thorough understanding of the structure and function. 1) I had begun by trying to tackle small parts of the system and document them with mindmap. (particularly I am trying to document the interactions with external systems) 2) I have the book "code complete", which I am working through. 3) I have pointed some tools like "tattletale" at the code to get some diagrams of dependency relationships. What other strategies should I employ, should I focus on one particular aspect?

    Read the article

  • Any tips on getting hired as a software project manager straight out of college?

    - by MHarrison
    I graduated with a BS in compsci last September, and I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find a job as a project manager ever since. I fell in love with software engineering (the formal practice behind it all, not just coding) in school, and I've dedicated the last 3-4 years of my life to learning everything I can about project management and gaining experience. I've managed several projects (with teams around 12 people) while in school, and I worked with my university's software engineering research lab. My résumé is also decent - I worked as a programmer before I went to school (I'm 27 now), and I did Google Summer of Code for 3 summers. I also have general "people management" experience via working as the photo editor for my university's newspaper for 2 years. My first problem with the job hunt is not getting enough interviews. I use careers.stackoverflow.com, which is awesome because I usually get contacted by non-HR people who know what they're talking about, but there's just not enough companies using it for me to get interviews on a regular basis. I've also tried sites like monster.com, and in a fit of desperation, I sent out no less than 60 applications to project management positions. I've gotten 3 automated rejection letters and that's it. At least careers.stackoverflow gets me a phone interview with 8/10 places I apply to. But the main (and extremely frustrating) problem is the matter of experience. I've successfully managed projects from start to finish (in my software engineering classes we had real customers come in with a real software need and we built it for them), but I've never had to deal with budgets and money (I know this is why HR people immediately turn me away). Most of these positions require 5+ years PM experience, and I've seen absurd things like 12+ years required. Interviews are also maddening. I've had so many places who absolutely loved me and I made it to the final round of interviews, and I left thinking things went extremely well and they'd consider me. However, when I check in with them a week later, they tell me "We really liked you and your qualifications are excellent, but we're hoping to find someone with more experience." The bad interviews I can understand - like the PM position that would have had me managing developers both locally and overseas - I had 3 interviews with them and the ENTIRE interview process was them asking me CS brainteasers and having me waste time on things like writing quicksort on paper or writing binary search trees. Even when I tried steering the discussion towards more relevant PM stuff, they gave me some vague generic replies and went back to the "We want to be Google/MS" crap. But when I have a GOOD interview, they say my "qualifications are excellent" but they want "more experience"...that makes me want to tear my hair out. What else can I DO? While I'm aiming for technically-involved PM positions (not just crunching budget numbers), I really don't want a straight development job because I like creating software from the very high-level vs. spending a lot of time debugging memory leaks. In fact, I can't even GET development positions that I'm qualified for because I make the mistake of telling them that my future career goals are as PM (which usually results in them saying something like "Well we already have PMs and this position isn't really set up to get you there." - which I take to mean "No, that's my job, stay away.") My apologies on the long rant, but I'm seriously hellbent on getting hired as a PM since it's both my career goal and the passion that keeps me awake at night. Any suggestions on what the heck else I can do? I'm currently writing a blog where I talk about my philosophies about software engineering, and I'm writing up specs for an iOS app which I will design, code, and show employers, but this takes an awful lot of time that I don't have.

    Read the article

  • Best Tools for Software Maintenance Engineering

    - by Pev
    Yes, the dreaded 'M' word. You've got a workstation, source control and half a million lines of source code that you didn't write. The documentation was out of date the moment that it was approved and published. The original developers are LTAO, at the next project/startup/loony bin and not answering email. What are you going to do? {favourite editor} and Grep will get you started on your spelunking through the gnarling guts of the code base but what other tools should be in the maintenance engineers toolbox? To start the ball-rolling; I don't think I could live without source-insight for C/C++ spelunking. (DISCLAIMER: I don't work for 'em).

    Read the article

  • What do you need to know to be a world-class master software developer? [closed]

    - by glitch
    I wanted to bring up this question to you folks and see what you think, hopefully advise me on the matter: let's say you had 30 years of learning and practicing software development in front of you, how would you dedicate your time so that you'd get the biggest bang for your buck. What would you both learn and work on to be a world-class software developer that would make a large impact on the industry and leave behind a legacy? I think that most great developers end up being both broad generalists and specialists in one-two areas of interest. I'm thinking Bill Joy, John Carmack, Linus Torvalds, K&R and so on. I'm thinking that perhaps one approach would be to break things down by categories and establish a base minimum of "software development" greatness. I'm thinking: Operating Systems: completely internalize the core concepts of OS, perhaps gain a lot of familiarity with an OSS one such as Linux. Anything from memory management to device drivers has to be complete second nature. Programming Languages: this is one of those topics that imho has to be fully grokked even if it might take many years. I don't think there's quite anything like going through the process of developing your own compiler, understanding language design trade-offs and so on. Programming Language Pragmatics is one of my favorite books actually, I think you want to have that internalized back to back, and that's just the start. You could go significantly deeper, but I think it's time well spent, because it's such a crucial building block. As a subset of that, you want to really understand the different programming paradigms out there. Imperative, declarative, logic, functional and so on. Anything from assembly to LISP should be at the very least comfortable to write in. Contexts: I believe one should have experience working in different contexts to truly be able to appreciate the trade-offs that are being made every day. Embedded, web development, mobile development, UX development, distributed, cloud computing and so on. Hardware: I'm somewhat conflicted about this one. I think you want some understanding of computer architecture at a low level, but I feel like the concepts that will truly matter will be slightly higher level, such as CPU caching / memory hierarchy, ILP, and so on. Networking: we live in a completely network-dependent era. Having a good understanding of the OSI model, knowing how the Web works, how HTTP works and so on is pretty much a pre-requisite these days. Distributed systems: once again, everything's distributed these days, it's getting progressively harder to ignore this reality. Slightly related, perhaps add solid understanding of how browsers work to that, since the world seems to be moving so much to interfacing with everything through a browser. Tools: Have a really broad toolset that you're familiar with, one that continuously expands throughout the years. Communication: I think being a great writer, effective communicator and a phenomenal team player is pretty much a prerequisite for a lot of a software developer's greatness. It can't be overstated. Software engineering: understanding the process of building software, team dynamics, the requirements of the business-side, all the pitfalls. You want to deeply understand where what you're writing fits from the market perspective. The better you understand all of this, the more of your work will actually see the daylight. This is really just a starting list, I'm confident that there's a ton of other material that you need to master. As I mentioned, you most likely end up specializing in a bunch of these areas as you go along, but I was trying to come up with a baseline. Any thoughts, suggestions and words of wisdom from the grizzled veterans out there who would like to share their thoughts and experiences with this? I'd really love to know what you think!

    Read the article

  • The challenge of communicating externally with IRM secured content

    - by Simon Thorpe
    I am often asked by customers about how they handle sending IRM secured documents to external parties. Their concern is that using IRM to secure sensitive information they need to share outside their business, is troubled with the inability for third parties to install the software which enables them to gain access to the information. It is a very legitimate question and one i've had to answer many times in the past 10 years whilst helping customers plan successful IRM deployments. The operating system does not provide the required level of content security The problem arises from what IRM delivers, persistent security to your sensitive information where ever it resides and whenever it is in use. Oracle IRM gives customers an array of features that help ensure sensitive information in an IRM document or email is always protected and only accessed by authorized users using legitimate applications. Examples of such functionality are; Control of the clipboard, either by disabling completely in the opened document or by allowing the cut and pasting of information between secured IRM documents but not into insecure applications. Protection against programmatic access to the document. Office documents and PDF documents have the ability to be accessed by other applications and scripts. With Oracle IRM we have to protect against this to ensure content cannot be leaked by someone writing a simple program. Securing of decrypted content in memory. At some point during the process of opening and presenting a sealed document to an end user, we must decrypt it and give it to the application (Adobe Reader, Microsoft Word, Excel etc). This process must be secure so that someone cannot simply get access to the decrypted information. The operating system alone just doesn't have the functionality to deliver these types of features. This is why for every IRM technology there must be some extra software installed and typically this software requires administrative rights to do so. The fact is that if you want to have very strong security and access control over a document you are going to send to someone who is beyond your network infrastructure, there must be some software to provide that functionality. Simple installation with Oracle IRM The software used to control access to Oracle IRM sealed content is called the Oracle IRM Desktop. It is a small, free piece of software roughly about 12mb in size. This software delivers functionality for everything a user needs to work with an Oracle IRM solution. It provides the functionality for all formats we support, the storage and transparent synchronization of user rights and unique to Oracle, the ability to search inside sealed files stored on the local computer. In Oracle we've made every technical effort to ensure that installing this software is a simple as possible. In situations where the user's computer is part of the enterprise, this software is typically deployed using existing technologies such as Systems Management Server from Microsoft or by using Active Directory Group Policies. However when sending sealed content externally, you cannot automatically install software on the end users machine. You need to rely on them to download and install themselves. Again we've made every effort for this manual install process to be as simple as we can. Starting with the small download size of the software itself to the simple installation process, most end users are able to install and access sealed content very quickly. You can see for yourself how easily this is done by walking through our free and easy self service demonstration of using sealed content. How to handle objections and ensure there is value However the fact still remains that end users may object to installing, or may simply be unable to install the software themselves due to lack of permissions. This is often a problem with any technology that requires specialized software to access a new type of document. In Oracle, over the past 10 years, we've learned many ways to get over this barrier of getting software deployed by external users. First and I would say of most importance, is the content MUST have some value to the person you are asking to install software. Without some type of value proposition you are going to find it very difficult to get past objections to installing the IRM Desktop. Imagine if you were going to secure the weekly campus restaurant menu and send this to contractors. Their initial response will be, "why on earth are you asking me to download some software just to access your menu!?". A valid objection... there is no value to the user in doing this. Now consider the scenario where you are sending one of your contractors their employment contract which contains their address, social security number and bank account details. Are they likely to take 5 minutes to install the IRM Desktop? You bet they are, because there is real value in doing so and they understand why you are doing it. They want their personal information to be securely handled and a quick download and install of some software is a small task in comparison to dealing with the loss of this information. Be clear in communicating this value So when sending sealed content to people externally, you must be clear in communicating why you are using an IRM technology and why they need to install some software to access the content. Do not try and avoid the issue, you must be clear and upfront about it. In doing so you will significantly reduce the "I didn't know I needed to do this..." responses and also gain respect for being straight forward. One customer I worked with, 6 months after the initial deployment of Oracle IRM, called me panicking that the partner they had started to share their engineering documents with refused to install any software to access this highly confidential intellectual property. I explained they had to communicate to the partner why they were doing this. I told them to go back with the statement that "the company takes protecting its intellectual property seriously and had decided to use IRM to control access to engineering documents." and if the partner didn't respect this decision, they would find another company that would. The result? A few days later the partner had made the Oracle IRM Desktop part of their approved list of software in the company. Companies are successful when sending sealed content to third parties We have many, many customers who send sensitive content to third parties. Some customers actually sell access to Oracle IRM protected content and therefore 99% of their users are external to their business, one in particular has sold content to hundreds of thousands of external users. Oracle themselves use the technology to secure M&A documents, payroll data and security assessments which go beyond the traditional enterprise security perimeter. Pretty much every company who deploys Oracle IRM will at some point be sending those documents to people outside of the company, these customers must be successful otherwise Oracle IRM wouldn't be successful. Because our software is used by a wide variety of companies, some who use it to sell content, i've often run into people i'm sharing a sealed document with and they already have the IRM Desktop installed due to accessing content from another company. The future In summary I would say that yes, this is a hurdle that many customers are concerned about but we see much evidence that in practice, people leap that hurdle with relative ease as long as they are good at communicating the value of using IRM and also take measures to ensure end users can easily go through the process of installation. We are constantly developing new ideas to reducing this hurdle and maybe one day the operating systems will give us enough rich security functionality to have no software installation. Until then, Oracle IRM is by far the easiest solution to balance security and usability for your business. If you would like to evaluate it for yourselves, please contact us.

    Read the article

  • Diagramming Software for a Developer/Designer

    - by Craig Walker
    For a long time I've been looking for a good diagramming/vector-based drawing program that meets my needs as a developer. I'd like to: Draw database diagrams Draw flow charts Draw object-modeling diagrams (UML being the standard) Draw other free-form diagrams (basically boxes & arrows with the occasional clipart) Draw mockups of user interfaces and web pages EDIT: I want good-looking electronic-format diagrams that I can show to 3rd parties, not just something for my own internal use. EDIT 2: I'm also looking for Windows software, although I'm toying with the idea of switching to Mac, so a really good Mac-only product might get me to switch. Basically I need a good vector graphic program (with decent grouping, connecting lines, and ideally auto-routing). I'd prefer a diagramming tool that can also be used for drawing (for the UI mockups) rather than a drawing tool that can also be used for diagrams. I've tried Visio on several occasions, and every time I've been disappointed. The interface always seems to get in my way at some point. It's pretty close to what I want, and the latest version (I got the trail from MS) seems to be better than previous ones in terms of usability, but I really don't want to plunk down that sort of cash for a mediocre product. I've tried Dia and Inkscape, and while initially promising and with the right price tag, I found both of them to be lacking in several ways (including some recurring bugs). I've toyed with getting Adobe Illustrator, but I've never used it before, and I have a feeling that it wouldn't handle the diagramming aspect very well, and I don't want to buy a copy just to find out it doesn't meet my needs. So far, the product that I've had the most success with is, sadly, OpenOffice Draw. It's free of course (which lowers my expectations and thus improves my view of it) and its usability is pretty good, but in the end I'd like something more suited to diagramming. I'm willing to spend real money (in the $500-$1K range) for a really good piece of software if it does everything I want it to. The front runner is of course Visio but I'm hoping for more. Does anybody have any recommendations? CONCLUSION: @dlamblin had the most informative post, but the part I gained the most from was his/her (and others) mention of OmniGraffle, not Gliffy. I gave Gliffy a try, and it seemed neet for occational use, but since it's a Flash app (note: not AJAX as dlamblin mentioned) it's still a bit of a pain to use (no keyboard shortcuts for copy/paste was pretty much a deal breaker for me). I also tried SmartDraw, but it had 3-strikes-you're-out against it: The trial period was only 7 days long. It used some nonstandard (and visually jarring) GUI widget toolkit for its UI. At the very least it makes me suspicious (how do I know it will actually work & support the standard Windows features?) It crashed on me early into my trial. OmniGraffle looks like exactly what I want... except that it's Mac-only (so I couldn't give it a try). However, it got good reviews from my Mac-owning coworker, and I hope to try it on a friend's Mac soon. If it's good enough then I might spring for a new MacBook.

    Read the article

  • Stop Spinning Your Wheels&hellip; Sage Advice for Aspiring Developers

    - by Mark Rackley
    So… lately I’ve been tasked with helping bring some non-developers over the hump and become full-fledged, all around, SharePoint developers. Well, only time will tell if I’m successful or a complete failure. Good thing about failures though, you know what NOT to do next time! Anyway, I’ve been writing some sort of code since I was about 10 years old; so I sometimes take for granted the effort some people have to go through to learn a new technology. I guess if I had to say I was an “expert” in one thing it would be learning (and getting “stuff” done) in new technologies. Maybe that’s why I’ve embraced SharePoint and the SharePoint community. SharePoint is the first technology I haven’t been able to master or get everything done without help from other people. I KNOW I’ll never know it all and I learn something new every day.  It keeps it interesting, it keeps me motivated, and keeps me involved. So, what some people may consider a downside of SharePoint, I definitely consider a plus. Crap.. I’m rambling. Where was I? Oh yeah… me trying to be helpful. Like I said, I am able to quickly and effectively pick up new languages, technology, etc. and put it to good use. Am I just brilliant? Well, my mom thinks so.. but maybe not. Maybe I’ve just been doing it for a long time…. 25 years in some form or fashion… wow I’m old… Anyway, what I lack in depth I make up for in breadth and being the “go-to” guy wherever I work when someone needs to “get stuff done”.  Let’s see if I can take some of that experience and put it to practical use to help new people get up to speed faster, learn things more effectively, and become that go-to guy. First off…  make sure you… Know The Basics I don’t have the time to teach new developers the basics, but you gotta know them. I’ve only been “taught” two languages.. Fortran 77 and C… everything else I’ve picked up from “doing”. I HAD to know the basics though, and all new developers need to understand the very basics of development.  97.23% of all languages will have the following: Variables Functions Arrays If statements For loops / While loops If you think about it, most development is “if this, do this… or while this, do this…”.  “This” may be some unique method to your language or something you develop, but the basics are the basics. YES there are MANY other development topics you need to understand, but you shouldn’t be scratching your head trying to figure out what a ”for loop” is… (Also learn about classes and hashtables as quickly as possible). Once you have the basics down it makes it much easier to… Learn By Doing This may just apply to me and my warped brain.  I don’t learn a new technology by reading or hearing someone speak about it. I learn by doing. It does me no good to try and learn all of the intricacies of a new language or technology inside-and-out before getting my hands dirty. Just show me how to do one thing… let me get that working… then show me how to do the next thing.. let me get that working… Now, let’s see what I can figure out on my own. Okay.. now it starts to make sense. I see how the language works, I can step through the code, and before you know it.. I’m productive in a new technology. Be careful here though…. make sure you… Don’t Reinvent The Wheel People have been writing code for what… 50+ years now? So, why are you trying to tackle ANYTHING without first Googling it with Bing to see what others have done first? When I was first learning C# (I had come from a Java background) I had to call a web service.  Sure! No problem! I’d done this many times in Java. So, I proceeded to write an HTTP Handler, called the Web Service and it worked like a charm!!!  Probably about 2.3 seconds after I got it working completely someone says to me “Why didn’t you just add a Web Reference?” Really? You can do that?  oops… I just wasted a lot of time. Before undertaking the development of any sort of utility method in a new language, make sure it’s not already handled for you… Okay… you are starting to write some code and are curious about the possibilities? Well… don’t just sit there… Try It And See What Happens This is actually one of my biggest pet peeves. “So… ‘x++’ works in C#, but does it also work in JavaScript?”   Really? Did you just ask me that? In the time it spent for you to type that email, press the send button, me receive the email, get around to reading it, and replying with “yes” you could have tested it 47 times and know the answer! Just TRY it! See what happens! You aren’t doing brain surgery. You aren’t going to kill anyone, and you BETTER not be developing in production. So, you are not going to crash any production systems!! Seriously! Get off your butt and just try it yourself. The extra added benefit is that it doesn’t work, the absolute best way to learn is to… Learn From Your Failures I don’t know about you… but if I screw up and something doesn’t work, I learn A LOT more debugging my problem than if everything magically worked. It’s okay that you aren’t perfect! Not everyone can be me? In the same vein… don’t ask someone else to debug your problem until you have made a valiant attempt to do so yourself. There’s nothing quite like stepping through code line by line to see what it’s REALLY doing… and you’ll never feel more stupid sometimes than when you realize WHY it’s not working.. but you realize... you learn... and you remember. There is nothing wrong with failure as long as you learn from it. As you start writing more and more and more code make sure that you ALWAYS… Develop for Production You will soon learn that the “prototype” you wrote last week to show as a “proof of concept” is going to go directly into production no matter how much you beg and plead and try to explain it’s not ready to go into production… it’s going to go straight there.. and it’s like herpes.. it doesn’t go away and there’s no fixing it once it’s in there.  So, why not write ALL your code like it will be put in production? It MIGHT take a little longer, but in the long run it will be easier to maintain, get help on, and you won’t be embarrassed that it’s sitting on a production server for everyone to use and see. So, now that you are getting comfortable and writing code for production it is important to to remember the… KISS Principle… Learn It… Love It… Keep It Simple Stupid Seriously.. don’t try to show how smart you are by writing the most complicated code in history. Break your problem up into discrete steps and write each step. If it turns out you have some redundancy, you can always go back and tweak your code later.  How bad is it when you write code that LOOKS cocky? I’ve seen it before… some of the most abstract and complicated classes when a class wasn’t even needed! Or the most elaborate unreadable code jammed into one really long line when it could have been written in three lines, performed just as well, and been SOOO much easier to maintain. Keep it clear and simple.. baby steps people. This will help you learn the technology, debug problems, AND it will help others help you find your problems if they don’t have to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls just to figure out what you are trying to do…. Really.. don’t be that guy… try to curb your ego and… Keep an Open Mind No matter how smart you are… how fast you type… or how much you get paid, don’t let your ego get in the way. There is probably a better way to do everything you’ve ever done. Don’t become so cocky that you can’t think someone knows more than you. There’s a lot of brilliant, helpful people out there willing to show you tricks if you just give them a chance. A very super-awesome developer once told me “So what if you’ve been writing code for 10 years or more! Does your code look basically the same? Are you not growing as a developer?” Those 10 years become pretty meaningless if you just “know” that you are right and have not picked up new tips, tricks, methods, and patterns along the way. Learn from others and find out what’s new in development land (you know you don’t have to specifically use pointers anymore??). Along those same lines… If it’s not working, first assume you are doing something wrong. You have no idea how much it annoys people who are trying to help you when you first assume that the help they are trying to give you is wrong. Just MAYBE… you… the person learning is making some small mistake? Maybe you didn’t describe your problem correctly? Maybe you are using the wrong terminology? “I did exactly what you said and it didn’t work.”  Oh really? Are you SURE about that? “Your solution doesn’t work.”  Well… I’m pretty sure it works, I’ve used it 200 times… What are you doing differently? First try some humility and appreciation.. it will go much further, especially when it turns out YOU are the one that is wrong. When all else fails…. Try Professional Training Some people just don’t have the mindset to go and figure stuff out. It’s a gift and not everyone has it. If everyone could do it I wouldn’t have a job and there wouldn’t be professional training available.  So, if you’ve tried everything else and no light bulbs are coming on, contact the experts who specialize in training. Be careful though, there is bad training out there. Want to know the names of some good places? Just shoot me a message and I’ll let you know. I’m boycotting endorsing Andrew Connell anymore until I get that free course dangit!! So… that’s it.. that’s all I got right now. Maybe you thought all of this is common sense, maybe you think I’m smoking crack. If so, don’t just sit there, there’s a comments section for a reason. Finally, what about you? What tips do you have to help this aspiring to learn the dark arts??

    Read the article

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

< Previous Page | 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154  | Next Page >