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That Time I Made A Website

tiffany-young.com

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Re: That Time I Made A Website

#111

Post by klibertp »

rjbwork wrote: post #103
robbyking wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I immediately thought that, too. I've worked with junior developers who, instead of learning from their mistakes, were defensive in code reviews and never took time to learn from their mistakes.

I'm 3ish months into my first post-graduation development job. It's really hard to go from school, where results counted, to an internship, where there was far more emphasis on getting shit done than how it was done (enterprise back office systems) to a professional software development job on a fully functional profitable web app. It's not so much that the skillset that's required is different, though that's certain…

> or worse yet, during code review have the sudden realization that it is indefensible.

When all else - I mean google and more importantly talking with colleagues during breaks about what you're doing - to make you realize this is the point of code reviews. And it's good - after that realization you suddenly have one more known mistake under your belt which you won't make in future.

When I was young I practiced kendo. One of the things I learned then was that when a partner hits you, he's actually helping you realize your technique has a flaw. That's how you grow as a swordsman - and as a developer too.

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#112

Post by stan_rogers »

C1D wrote: post #56
jfarmer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few things worth responding to in your comment, some technical and non-technical, but both important for beginners to keep in mind. I assume you know most of what I'm going to say, so I'm pretending a student asked this. So, what's the problem with the tag? First, at the purely technical level, was deprecated in HTML4.01 and is not part of HTML5 at all. As far as I know browsers will still render it fine, b…

Wow. That was a very in depth explanation. Thank you. I'm currently working on a very HTML/JS heavy open source project and a co-developer had included some center and bold tags in the code. I will instead replace them with em/strong and inline:center; since I would not like our project to be judged by our absense of "best practice".

I will instead replace them with em/strong ...

Watch that as well. The and tags are valid (except in some XHTML dialects) and are not interchangeable with and . And don't forget , and either. There is more than one reason for text to be presented as italic or bold (by typographic convention), and emphasis is only one of them. On introducing a new term, you would use ; foreign words and phrases would use with a lang attribute. It's all usually a jumble in a CMS (where the user entering the text is usually only concerned with the appearance), but if you're creating static pages or page fragments, it's best to keep in mind that the markup is metadata. (There is a lot of nineteenth-century literature that took on new meaning for me once I realized that half of the italicized words, which I assumed were emphasized, were just new imports that didn't "feel English" yet at the time.)

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#113

Post by kunil »

lsc wrote: post #76
mb_72 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well .... making a website != programming. Maybe it's because I'm old (41, starting programming on a TRS-80 in the early 80s), but I'm astonished sometimes at how much fuss is made over such relatively minor achievements. This is lowering the bar on what stories are 'interesting', and - honestly - turns me off coming to HN because of the (for me) lower signal : noise ratio. And I disagree that accessibility is so imp…

>Well .... making a website != programming. Oh man, I remember when everyone looked down on web programmers and PHP monkeys. Hah. (I also did my much of my early programming on a trs-80, but mine was an obsolete tandy model 100 that I brought to school in the mid-90s, mostly to automate the 'guess and check' rote math homework.) It used to be that there was a strong hierarchy. I know in the '90s and the first half of…

"Oh man, I remember when everyone looked down on web programmers and PHP monkeys. "

I believe this is still the case

"web programmers"

hah!

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#114

Post by kunil »

goblinfoblin wrote: post #61
teddynsnoopy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback! I was having a bit of a debate with myself on whether or not I should keep the font, since the punctuation kind of bugs me, so I'll definitely look into that.

Remember that OSX makes fonts a lot thicker so this font looks insanely thin on other OSs. I'm on linux with ubuntu font rendering which is somewhat thicker than windows and it looks to thin to me. Usually this means that it will look impossibly thin on Windows. Raleway medium would look better, or you could look at some other fonts like Lato http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Lato

I am also on ubuntu & firefox and font is almost only anti-alias for me, not even 1 px wide. I can't imagine Windows if it is thinner

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#115

Post by kunil »

rwg wrote: post #106
mb_72 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well .... making a website != programming. Maybe it's because I'm old (41, starting programming on a TRS-80 in the early 80s), but I'm astonished sometimes at how much fuss is made over such relatively minor achievements. This is lowering the bar on what stories are 'interesting', and - honestly - turns me off coming to HN because of the (for me) lower signal : noise ratio. And I disagree that accessibility is so imp…

Well .... making a website != programming. A friend told a story about a recent job interview for a devops position. He'd already had phone interviews and a breakfast chat with some engineers from a company with offices in his city, and all that was left was meeting the bigwigs at their office. As the interview started, one of the executives asked, "So what programming languages do you use most often?" My friend repl…

It is like, "you are not man enough"

Although, I call the work itself "Python scripting" or "Shell scripting" so if only thing I was doing is those two then I would also call myself "Scripter".

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#116

Post by kunil »

klibertp wrote: post #110
theseoafs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not a requirement for being a "programmer." It never has been. Programmers program computers. We call them programmers because they program. If you can't write programs, you're not a programmer. What other definition of "programmer" could you possibly be using?

Why won't you acknowledge that web development is not about HTML+CSS only? Why are you insisting that web developers know these technologies and not JavaScript, and in effect do not program? You're obviously not very familiar with web development. The one who you have in mind is called designer. He's as you say, although it's still very hard and important job. Web developers are programming all day long. They use JS…

Still you are not writing a program though. Sure you are using algorithms, data structures but it is not a program. You are writing a helloworld.py while the real program is /usr/bin/python. I don't think you could a text file program unless it actually runs. Thus, not a programmer. If I write some code on paper, is it a program too?

Difference is just a word, I believe main issue is despising scripting languages.

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#117

Post by mironathetin »

mb_72 wrote: post #43
jmduke wrote: post #25

This is why I love programming -- and the programming community, warts and all. Tiffany's an Environmental Science major who had a month of free time so she decided to learn how to make web pages. That's the same way I started (albeit as an English major), and the cocktail of instant feedback and ease of discovery kept me as a happy addict of the command line ever since. To me, accessibility and approachability are t…

Well .... making a website != programming. Maybe it's because I'm old (41, starting programming on a TRS-80 in the early 80s), but I'm astonished sometimes at how much fuss is made over such relatively minor achievements. This is lowering the bar on what stories are 'interesting', and - honestly - turns me off coming to HN because of the (for me) lower signal : noise ratio. And I disagree that accessibility is so imp…

"Maybe it's because I'm old (41, ..."

with 41 you are certainly NOT old! You just started to be very experienced. You comment and your annoyance about this "news" proves it. And I totally agree with you.

Her facebook friends are a sufficient audience to say a "well done".

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#118

Post by iamwil »

mb_72 wrote: post #95
iamwil wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's interesting, but especially if you think of the context and a broader scope when you look beyond the immediate story. I'll start with the smallest scope and zoom out. On its face, it's a person talking about their personal accomplishment in making a static HTML/CSS website--something that you seems minor to you as a professional that has been doing it for as as long as you have--but I think you forgot…

As a beginner to programming I had enough self-awareness to realise that my achievements were of little to no interest to those with more ability and experience, and certainly would not have been worth publishing in a magazine (as the equivalent would have been at the time). This is 'Hacker news' - but these days the word 'Hacker' has been diluted in meaning to something that doesn't really mean 'hacking' any more. T…

I think you identify as a programmer and hacker, and things that encroach on that identity--such as beginners doing html/css calling it programming--causes you discomfort. And that blinds you to the interesting things about this.

Of course it is. Driving is a skill. You only consider driving the operation of a tool rather than a skill because its accessibility is so good.

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#119

Post by rjbwork »

klibertp wrote: post #111
rjbwork wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 3ish months into my first post-graduation development job. It's really hard to go from school, where results counted, to an internship, where there was far more emphasis on getting shit done than how it was done (enterprise back office systems) to a professional software development job on a fully functional profitable web app. It's not so much that the skillset that's required is different, though that's certain…

> or worse yet, during code review have the sudden realization that it is indefensible. When all else - I mean google and more importantly talking with colleagues during breaks about what you're doing - to make you realize this is the point of code reviews. And it's good - after that realization you suddenly have one more known mistake under your belt which you won't make in future. When I was young I practiced kendo…

>when a partner hits you, he's actually helping you realize your technique has a flaw

I really like that viewpoint. It's very zen. Thanks for the discussion!

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#120

Post by KirinDave »

kunil wrote: post #116
klibertp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why won't you acknowledge that web development is not about HTML+CSS only? Why are you insisting that web developers know these technologies and not JavaScript, and in effect do not program? You're obviously not very familiar with web development. The one who you have in mind is called designer. He's as you say, although it's still very hard and important job. Web developers are programming all day long. They use JS…

Still you are not writing a program though. Sure you are using algorithms, data structures but it is not a program. You are writing a helloworld.py while the real program is /usr/bin/python. I don't think you could a text file program unless it actually runs. Thus, not a programmer. If I write some code on paper, is it a program too? Difference is just a word, I believe main issue is despising scripting languages.

> I don't think you could a text file program unless it actually runs.

So you only have a program when it has no compilation errors? What were you doing up before then, besides the obvious typing?

> Thus, not a programmer. If I write some code on paper, is it a program too?

If I print a program on paper, does it cease to be a program. This is some philosophy of mind here.

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