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Stop reading this blog and learn something

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Re: Stop reading this blog and learn something

#31

Post by bitsoda »

alinajaf wrote: post #30
billpatrianakos wrote: post #22

I just had to go through this and was forced to learn these tips myself recently. Before I discovered HN I was a PHP guy. I knew it. Used it. Was comfortable with it. Then I came lurking around here and found out that I wasn't cool because I didn't know Ruby and therefore Rails. Then I found out that I wasn't cool because I was using Apache instead of Nginx or nodejs. So I read about all that stuff for most of this y…

> I've come to almost despise the hipsters Can you give me a concrete example of one of these hipsters? I'd like to know because I work at a company where we use rails and related tech exclusively, so we'd probably fit right into this camp. > who are too cool to do things the standard, time tested way. It's one thing to go bleeding edge for the sake of experimentation and furthering your knowledge and skill but when…

I don't think Bill was targeting all Ruby users with his response. If anything, RoR is the poster child for what he describes as a "standard and time-tested" technology. As long as you're actually building something with your stack -- whatever it may be -- you probably don't fall into the "hipster" camp.

Re: Stop reading this blog and learn something

#32

Post by 8ig8 »

Any time I want to learn something new, I always try to start with a book... SEO, JavaScript, Ruby, Version Control, etc. Being forced to follow a linear learning path works well for me. Even thought many of these concepts are evolving rapidly, books get me the core understanding I need to then venture out online for more current, even cutting edge material.

For me, there's nothing better than cracking open the pages of a book on a new topic.

Edit: Crappy grammar.

Re: Stop reading this blog and learn something

#33

Post by minikomi »

evoltix wrote: post #8

When it comes to programming books, I tend to prefer paper-based books versus e-books. With paper-based book it's easier for me to flip back and forth through the book to quickly reference something. Also, reading code snippets is a whole lot easier since you don't have to worry about screen size messing up the code readability and formatting.

Not to mention hi-light, scribble in the margins, fold corners, add postit notes.. I like to get to know a book like an old friend.

When I first came to Japan a little j-e/e-j pocket dictionary did wonders for learning vocab. I may just pick up a new one...

Re: Stop reading this blog and learn something

#34

Post by thebrokencube »

Stwerner wrote: post #11
artursapek wrote: post #7

I don't know why he pushed you should learn "the popular one" so hard, unless he meant that ironically. There's no way to choose the most popular language from PHP, Ruby, and Python. I do agree on books vs. blogs though. When I started learning Python as my first real language this summer the best source I ended up learning from was LPTHW[1] (I used the free online edition). I think a book like that is a good tool fo…

I think that was his way of saying just pick one. Whichever one seems to you like the most popular, go with that. Because it doesn't really matter which you choose, what matters is that you start.

I think he also was trying to make the point that the more popular the language is, the more resources there are to reference when you get stuck.

Re: Stop reading this blog and learn something

#35

Post by billpatrianakos »

bitsoda wrote: post #31
alinajaf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've come to almost despise the hipsters Can you give me a concrete example of one of these hipsters? I'd like to know because I work at a company where we use rails and related tech exclusively, so we'd probably fit right into this camp. > who are too cool to do things the standard, time tested way. It's one thing to go bleeding edge for the sake of experimentation and furthering your knowledge and skill but when…

I don't think Bill was targeting all Ruby users with his response. If anything, RoR is the poster child for what he describes as a "standard and time-tested" technology. As long as you're actually building something with your stack -- whatever it may be -- you probably don't fall into the "hipster" camp.

Right. Thank you. I wasn't targeting any language really. I just happened to remember some instances of Ruby hipsters who laughed at people using anything else and used it as an example. The language or whatever technology doesn't really matter, you can swap out Ruby for anything (literally anything), because the hipsters exist in every camp. Some languages are more well known for their hipsters but I wasn't trying to single out any one group so I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

Re: Stop reading this blog and learn something

#36

Post by araneae »

>Now use what you’ve learned in a project. For the love of pete do not use it on a project you get paid for, unless you have an explicit understanding with your employer that you are using something you’ve never used before, and will probably get it totally wrong and have to rip it up and start again in six months. Otherwise, use it on a personal project. A small personal project.

Whoops.

To be fair, with my current project there was an expectation that this was a going to be a month long "use and dump it" project.

Well, I just got hired for the rest of the year to expand my horrible, horrible mistakes. It was my first django project and I didn't realize you have to explicitly define relationships in the model on related fields in order to do joins. Now there's too much data and legacy code to go back, and I'm stuck pulling up related fields in other tables one by one... kill me now.

Re: Stop reading this blog and learn something

#37

Post by SkyMarshal »

gruseom wrote: post #16
SkyMarshal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Books are also the result of much more time and effort spent thinking about, planning, and evolving the content, structure, presentation. A book-length collection of blog posts just won't have the attention to detail and completeness that most books do. I also believe books improve one's ability to concentrate, which directly benefits a programmer's ability to get into and stay in flow. Whereas blog posts are…

How do you find the support for pdfs?

Servicable, sometimes only given that I have 20/20 vision (PDFs with particularly small text), but plenty of room for improvement.

The biggest problem is that Kindle can't reflow PDF text the way it does with mobi formats (which I believe is true anywhere you read PDF, not just kindle), so you can't seamlessly resize the text. You can zoom the PDF document to enlarge the text, but page turning functionality doesn't work until you zoom back out since a zoomed document will reinterpret page turn actions as horizontal scrolling actions (on Kindle Touch at least, not sure about the others with specific hardware buttons for page turning).

There is a literal ton of info on converting PDF to mobi at the Kindle subreddit, but no perfect conversion techniques yet:

http://www.reddit.com/r/kindle/search?q=pdf&restrict_sr=...

Some suggestions:

1. Use Briss (http://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/) to trim the margins of the pdf, then read it in Landscape mode. This naturally enlarges the text without breaking page turning.

2. Use any of the converters listed in the Reddit/r/kindle sidebar, whether downloadable software or web-based (Readability, Instapaper, SendToReader, etc).

3. Use Calibre to convert PDF to mobi (results are mixed, and graphs and images aren't handled so well).

4. Email your PDF to your_kindle_id@free.kindle.com with "convert" in the subject to have the PDF converted to mobi by Amazon and then delivered to your kindle. Similar results as 4.

All of them except #1 result in mangled formatting to some degree or other, especially PDFs (or PDFs created from websites) with special math or code formatting. Like I said, servicable, you can read it and get the info, but not the brilliant reading experience it is with native .mobi files.

Re: Stop reading this blog and learn something

#38

Post by gruseom »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #37
gruseom wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find the support for pdfs?

Servicable, sometimes only given that I have 20/20 vision (PDFs with particularly small text), but plenty of room for improvement. The biggest problem is that Kindle can't reflow PDF text the way it does with mobi formats (which I believe is true anywhere you read PDF, not just kindle), so you can't seamlessly resize the text. You can zoom the PDF document to enlarge the text, but page turning functionality doesn't w…

Thanks. Makes me wonder if there's a startup in there somewhere, for converting pdf to mobi or even a device optimized for reading pdfs.

I respect pdfs for their Postscript origins but man do I hate getting a pdf link, hate waiting for them to load, hate reading them on my computer. And yet much of what I want to read is locked inside them.

Re: Stop reading this blog and learn something

#39

Post by SkyMarshal »

gruseom wrote: post #38
SkyMarshal wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Servicable, sometimes only given that I have 20/20 vision (PDFs with particularly small text), but plenty of room for improvement. The biggest problem is that Kindle can't reflow PDF text the way it does with mobi formats (which I believe is true anywhere you read PDF, not just kindle), so you can't seamlessly resize the text. You can zoom the PDF document to enlarge the text, but page turning functionality doesn't w…

Thanks. Makes me wonder if there's a startup in there somewhere, for converting pdf to mobi or even a device optimized for reading pdfs. I respect pdfs for their Postscript origins but man do I hate getting a pdf link, hate waiting for them to load, hate reading them on my computer. And yet much of what I want to read is locked inside them.

That thought occurred to me too. There are a bunch already working on it and are all listed in the sidebar of the kindle subreddit. But I imagine whoever perfects it is looking at a quick buyout from one of them, or maybe even Amazon. It's definitely a real pain point for an otherwise brilliant product.
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