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How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

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Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#111

Post by Ronsenshi »

foobarge wrote: post #54
Ronsenshi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading literature, watching films, listening to the music. Basically, delving into culture which contains common phrases, idioms and sayings scattered around. You hear/read them, understand meaning from context, and commit to memory so you can use it later on. This is not really that different from how kids learn idioms too, isn't it? By the way, a lot of idioms/saying are pretty similar in different countries. Thei…

France here - starting as a student and stepping into the university library, it took me 30 seconds to realize that everything interesting was written in English and not being able to proficiently ingurgitate vast amount of it was going to be a problem. I just shunt French as written input for the next 5 years. When the valley called for a job, I was ready. Pasteur said "Chance favors the prepared mind" - he was rela…

> Nowadays, if you have access to the Internet, there's no excuse not to be proficient with English.

That is so true. A lot of my compatriots seem to not realize that they are missing an incredible amount of information by disregarding English. And I often find myself angry at them when they try to argue that English is not that important and they don't need to know/learn it. So frustrating.

> France has an official language which means that content is vastly translated and this-is-bad(TM) - the we are slower at getting better at English.

Again, completely agree. I'm a huge proponent of subtitled media content and believe that that's what should be used when showing movies/tv shows on national networks (cable or sat can do whatever they want).

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#112

Post by joslin01 »

Kenji wrote: post #70
Wilya wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from HTML/Javascript, which is usually taught in a web development course, most of these aren't taught in usual computer science courses because they have nothing to do with computer science. They are software engineering concepts.

I am well aware of that, being a CS student myself. However, those things are expected to be learned alongside. There won't be lectures about it but hand-on exercises will be impossible without them.

Lol that's not true either. How would hands-on exercises be impossible without Heroku? Haha. You know what I did in my CS classes? Wrote my own server in C. That's real CS, which is very focused on deep understanding -- not domain knowledge in software tools. You should ditch the attitude. Your first comment wasn't even necessary. You were just looking to feel good about yourself.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#113

Post by mawburn »

oevi wrote: post #39
mapcars wrote: post #22

>Some Small Advice: if you’re just beginning to program, I’d suggest starting with JavaScript/HTML/CSS because there is a plethora of help out there. What a terrible advice.

Why? For beginners web technologies are perfect. you can have results like a first static page within the first day and from that point go on to eventually build complex web apps. and all that with the same tools and languages. you will not be a programmer at first, but you might become one.

I think it's a great entry point. HTML/CSS is a very low entry bar to be introduced on how to talk to a computer. Of course it's not "programming" and very little logic, but it can show people one very important thing:

"See look, it's not so hard to talk to a computer. Those words on TV aren't all gibberish."

It's not like it teaches bad practices like a number of other "entry level" languages do. I'm sure the majority of people in my generation (late 20's, early 30's) started with HTML/CSS when they were kids.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#114

Post by aragot »

chrisBob wrote: post #92
fhadley wrote: post #67

I found that one particular phrase,"technically privileged", both hilarious and utterly horrifying. Hilarious because I suppose I never paused to consider that the folks in my major who were both curious and motivated enough to be involved in the field outside of class to be particularly "privileged". I suppose I should have given greater thought to how unfair it was that read API documents and I didn't! Like I said…

Did we read the same thing? I got the impression that the author realized at the end that "technically privileged" was just an illusion, and the whole point is that they don't exist.

Yes, to me this piece flies way past the "technically privileged" assertion. And in this way, it is one of the best counter-arguments to the "technically privileged" accusation some people have against our field.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#116

Post by abrahamepton »

fhadley wrote: post #67

I found that one particular phrase,"technically privileged", both hilarious and utterly horrifying. Hilarious because I suppose I never paused to consider that the folks in my major who were both curious and motivated enough to be involved in the field outside of class to be particularly "privileged". I suppose I should have given greater thought to how unfair it was that read API documents and I didn't! Like I said…

I don't think the author meant "technically privileged" as "those unfairly given an advantage for whatever reason". To me, it read more as, "folks who grew up immersed in this stuff" vs "folks who come to it later in life". I started coding in high school, and I think I approach it very differently than people who never wrote a line of anything until sometime in college or later. It strikes me as a legit difference, not one to bemoan as unjust but worth pointing out to people just getting started who might be intimidated.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#117

Post by sbierwagen » 

  The first time I met him, he was in the middle of writing a 
  script to scrape Craigslist of all its free furniture 
  listings (which is illegal, btw).
It's a violation of the Craigslist TOS, a contract between two citizens, so it would be covered under civil law, not criminal. A creative prosecutors could try to spin it as a crime under the CFAA, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act) and there in fact have been CFAA prosecutions for scraping Craigslist listings, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_v._3Taps) but I doubt there's much a case here.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#119

Post by jElais »

sbierwagen wrote: post #117

The first time I met him, he was in the middle of writing a script to scrape Craigslist of all its free furniture listings (which is illegal, btw). It's a violation of the Craigslist TOS, a contract between two citizens, so it would be covered under civil law, not criminal. A creative prosecutors could try to spin it as a crime under the CFAA, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act ) and there in…

This would fall under US v Drew (http://www.dmlp.org/threats/united-states-v-drew). A case where someone violated the MySpace TOS and then was charged under the CFAA. The Judge ruled this was not a violation citing the void-for-vaguness doctrine and not wanting to give the power to right federal laws to websites.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#120

Post by nevergotenglish »

paublyrne wrote: post #87
tanto wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious. What exactly is wrong with "some few words"? In german it would make total sense.

It's just not common in an idiomatic way, really. Technically, it is 'incorrect' because 'few' is the object of the sentence, not 'words'. But there are plenty of examples of phrases in English which are acceptable but which break grammar rules. In short, you would say "a few words".

In Spanish you should also say "unas pocas palabras" (perhaps jdiez is an Spanish name). The adjective of Google perhaps should be in lowercase. Remember perhaps should be recall. As I almost never speak English I (don't have the opportunity or the like of it) I find it very difficult I will ever grok English, but that is my ever unsatisfied greater aspiration (aside from getting a bigger salary and other pleasures for a young male man).
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