Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Learning the Web

developer.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–47 of 47 posts

Re: Learning the Web

#41

Post by vq »

SiVal wrote: post #37
quadrangle wrote: post #35

"So why do we need variables? Well, variables are needed to do anything interesting in programming. If values couldn't change, then you wouldn't be able to do anything dynamic, like personalize a greeting message to the user visiting your site, or change the image displayed in an image gallery, etc." — from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Learn/Getting_started_wi... Well, I don't know much, but having only studie…

No, the statement isn't nonsense. If variables always had the same value and "never changed" in Haskell, they wouldn't be variables. They could be hard-coded literals. You're just mistaking a claim about variables that change each time a program is run (which means they are initialized to a different value each time, whether mutable or immutable) vs. changing during the execution of a single run, which would require…

Not that quadrangle made that point, but a program written in point-free style could still exhibit dynamic behaviour.

Still not very constructive or relevant criticism on the page though.

Re: Learning the Web

#42

Post by tim333 »

rcthompson wrote: post #38

I'm an advanced programmer, but I know very little about web programming in particular. Most web programming tutorials seem like they're designed for beginning programmers. Is there a resource designed for someone like me who already knows how to program and just wants to learn how to do it on the web?

Although it's still a bit aimed at beginning programers you might like Udacity's Web Dev course. I thought it was good. Taught by Steve Huffman who built Reddit. Python based.

https://www.udacity.com/course/cs253

Re: Learning the Web

#43

Post by klez »

UUMMUU wrote: post #10

That page is pretty overwhelming. No real calls to action on it other than the suggested links on the main page. I can really see this page being too much information at once for a beginner. Maybe get rid of all the information between the end of the Note and the footer; it seems like you could put that stuff at the end of the Getting Started tutorial in a sort of "where to go from here" section. Make sure they're in…

The Learning Area is still a work in progress, and contributions are more than welcome!

We're having a weekly IRC meeting on mondays at 19.00 CET, on irc.mozilla.org, #mdn channel.

Re: Learning the Web

#44

Post by tel »

SiVal wrote: post #37
quadrangle wrote: post #35

"So why do we need variables? Well, variables are needed to do anything interesting in programming. If values couldn't change, then you wouldn't be able to do anything dynamic, like personalize a greeting message to the user visiting your site, or change the image displayed in an image gallery, etc." — from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Learn/Getting_started_wi... Well, I don't know much, but having only studie…

No, the statement isn't nonsense. If variables always had the same value and "never changed" in Haskell, they wouldn't be variables. They could be hard-coded literals. You're just mistaking a claim about variables that change each time a program is run (which means they are initialized to a different value each time, whether mutable or immutable) vs. changing during the execution of a single run, which would require…

The statement may not be nonsense, but it's certainly not at a level of detail required to be genuinely true.

Variables do always have the same value and never change in Haskell. They represent constant abstracted unknowns. That said, a lambda binder which introduces a variable can be applied repeatedly and therefore each independent time it's applied the body of it, where the abstraction occurs, is now understood to operate with a new value for that variable.

That's very different from change, though. The semantics of beta reduction clearly don't allow for change---merely substitution. The statics of it clearly demonstrate that even substitution isn't doing anything new---merely replacing like for like.

Even when your Haskell program responds to outside interaction---clearly, this is dynamic information, right?---it's still the same static artifact which is doing it. The variables at this point are all erased. It's merely the semantics of your program under outside intervention.

Re: Learning the Web

#45

Post by malandrew »

jimmaswell wrote: post #30
malandrew wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that fourth one should be replaced with options. Learn these for the frontent: HTML, CSS, JavaScript Backend options: JavaScript (NodeJS or io.js), Python, Go, Ruby All four of those backend options are reasonable options for beginners moving from the frontend to the backend or learning the frontend and backend simultaneously.

I've written some backend in C# and it was highly productive. I hate dealing with the uncertainty and mushyness that seems to show itself in dynamic or script-like languages in projects larger than a small script. Obviously they're viable choices according to their userbases but it wouldn't hurt to point out some more strongly or statically typed choices. There are solid frameworks in Java too, which has had a lot of…

C# is also a legitimate option if you're using windows. Java is a good option too (although I would hesitate to recommend any language where you need to have an IDE to be productive). I should have included C# or both.

I left PHP out intentionally. If you're going to be immersed in a new community, you should at least be immersed in one where a greater percentage of the code you come across is of reasonable quality and is more likely to have tests. The PHP community is the epitome of cowboy coding and a novice programmer would pick up many bad habits from the code they come across in that community.

Re: Learning the Web

#47

Post by jimmaswell »

malandrew wrote: post #45
jimmaswell wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've written some backend in C# and it was highly productive. I hate dealing with the uncertainty and mushyness that seems to show itself in dynamic or script-like languages in projects larger than a small script. Obviously they're viable choices according to their userbases but it wouldn't hurt to point out some more strongly or statically typed choices. There are solid frameworks in Java too, which has had a lot of…

C# is also a legitimate option if you're using windows. Java is a good option too (although I would hesitate to recommend any language where you need to have an IDE to be productive). I should have included C# or both. I left PHP out intentionally. If you're going to be immersed in a new community, you should at least be immersed in one where a greater percentage of the code you come across is of reasonable quality a…

Mono works well enough that .NET languages can be a good option outside Windows as well.
Post reply on HN