Does anyone here program and what is the language? I’m heavily into the Swift language. I want to continue that, but at the moment I’m trying to be a normal person and learn basic web development with html,css, and js, before continuing swift. Awhile ago I used to use core in reaktor but I don’t think any of those skills transferred at all to swift.
Anyways, would love to hear what other peeps on here use!
I know a little bit of C# as I need it for Unity, but as I’m too stupid to understand the use of ; I decided to learn the engine and stick to Bolt, a visual scripting extension. I’d love to get more into C#, but I do not have the time for it.
I do find it fascinating though…
The only C I know is objective C. It’s more for legacy things with swift, so that knowledge is extremely rudimentary. I think I remember using unity but when I tried to tackle that 5-6 years ago, I felt dead in the water with what was available for me to learn with, plus not practicing enough. There’s been tons made with unity now, and I think people definitely take it a little more seriously, I even saw unity in the corporate environment
My main languages:
Things I’ve used a bit but wouldn’t call myself proficient in using:
I’ve dabbled with enough web code that with a tutorial open in one window, I could follow along and modify a template to build a website. Never figured out the hosting and DNS business though.
So that’d be some Javascript, HTML, and CSS.
A whole lotta PowerShell, some Python, and SQL. Back end stuff for work.
I don’t think I’ve messed with anything beyond basic web code (tweaking DB front ends) since flying banners were still a thing. It’s like my Italian - I can read a bit, but no joy trying to converse in it.
Hosting a website isn’t too hard, I’ve actually been able to practice hosting a bit using Apache and Ubuntu on google cloud, it’s very straightforward, with getting a domain name being the issue. alternatively a simpler/free way to host a site would be to upload the website to a github repo, and let github host it for you, you won’t get to pick the domain name, but it’s entirely free to my knowledge. Hope that helps if you do it again!
Yeah even in helpdesk, I use basic powershell. I wish I could use it more but I don’t get much assistance from system admins on proper usage in the environment. It’s super helpful working with exchange though,
I actually never got to learn python, but I do hear it compared to swift now and then. I always hear it highly recommended from the devs here.
I got to try a little sql here lately using a MySQL on Linux test enviroment. My first impression was like man the convention to capitalize all the commands sucks lol! I’m sure you get used to it after awhile,
Domain names aren’t bad. I got mine on sale like $1 for the year. Then I decided to host on AWS using their DNS and S3 for storage and serving. Never got that to work, but I did get my domain name for another year when I tried to host with them as part of the cost (which is next to free by the way). So I have my domain name for another year and a half, but there’s not much I want to do with a site right now. To be honest, 95% of all visitors would probably be forum members, so isn’t it just easier for everyone if I just use the right places here when I’ve got an announcement?
the old IDMF had a technology subforum that would have hosted all threads like this.
I’ve been running basic functionality on python using numpy due to my addiction to matrix math. I want to steer away from bash/dash/sh/zsh due to syntax reasons & octave is getting too heavy. Python seems to be the leatherman that can handle calling many different languages. I only wish syntax was a bit more C oriented (I know there are special modes & conditions to allow this) because of selfish reasons.
Alright, anymore sticking around in here & I will be itching to open old projects I have on hiatus.
Hey @Vulpes , haven’t talked to you since like irc, good to hear from you again! Swift gets toted by apple as “C without the baggage.” As a challenge of my skills so far, The most I’ve done with swift in that regard is a program that solves a sudoku using brute force, with a barely acceptable form of backtracking. I have also seen more experienced programmers use maps to calculate the same in seconds, so I really need to learn the concept or backtracking better as my solution takes much longer ahaha. It’s crazy cause I’ll look at the github and can’t understand the logic,
No pressure to open old projects, if you think you could share some information on here about programming please do ahah
@White_Noise I use my site currently more/less to host the sites for showing whatever is my current project to friends easily. I would think hosting it as a CV of sorts or example of your work would be helpful as it also gives an employer or potential client the ability to see some of your work. Personally I’m almost to the point of considering freelancing later, as my current job doesn’t necessarily need front end developing or have an environment for an apple programmer. I think a lot of people do what you hint at there and use them like blogs, which if you have a creative outlet in writing, I’m sure could be a fun thing.
At work I do Powershell scripting for all our applications, which can be pretty interesting work, making all the appropriate changes and running programs appropriately to get them install without user input. I also use command line on Windows for routine stuff here and there.
On Linux, I like using bash/sh, and actually wrote a script a while back for unpacking zips from Bleep.com (for buying music) and sorting them into their appropriate directories for my music library. I’m working on porting it over to command line for when I’m on my Windows desktop.
I have some knowledge of using Python and C++, tho my C++ is probably fairly rusty and I haven’t had any real regular usage of either since taking classes.
Working at my job now, and scripting software has exposed me to tracking down bugs and issues in software and working with devs to get them fixed, or exploring how things are packed and how installers are made, and how software is put together, i.e. necessary computer resources needed and working across different technologies (network, SQL, registry changes, etc), and I’ve become interested in trying to find work in it somewhere. If I could get more direct experience with coding, that is practical coding, integrating code from different sources, adding on functionality, updating code when new versions of the languages are released, things like that I enjoy.
For music production stuff, I do use Max/MSP here and there. In fact, I have one sample looper (called “Slooper”) that I made in Max/MSP, which is essentially a sample player/looper that you can make cool stutter edits and time stretch sort of FX with. I’ve actually used it in productions here and there, which has been pretty cool.
I also occasionally like setting things up on my home server, which I use for the Beat Battle archives. I recently setup a new minecraft server on that as well, and I’d like to additionally setup a sort of music player server, for listening to my music when I’m away from my apartment.
Somehow I missed this thread from a while back! I figured there would be one of these around 
I’ve been learning Python for the past few months but I feel like my skills are still kind of garbage. I tried a few books earlier this year, got mildly into Processing (Python mode, of course) at one point and just kind of forgot a bunch of shit each time I wanted to generate something cool.
Now I’m doing this 100 Days of Python thing on one of those fake school sites (Udemy) and it seems a little more like my learning style since it’s a bunch of lectures, good demos and a bunch of projects. I’m hoping it sticks at this point if I put in the ‘reps’ (so to speak) because I’ve been dying to do this but life just got in the way enough to slow down my progress. Everything takes me longer than it’s supposed to, but I guess maybe it’s sinking in? #WishfulThinking
Is anyone else still programming? Got any tips for a noob?
All the time, though nothing super complex. Mostly stuff for work.
I’ll be honest, for years I bounced off every book and course I looked at. I always had this sort of vague understanding of how code worked, but a huge disconnect between that and getting started, making it work, or even trying to read other people’s code or examples.
For me, the catalyst is having a real, definite thing I need to do. I think my first solo project was when somebody at work said “I need you to get X information about these computers”, “These computers” amounted to like 1500 of them, which I was going to have to remote into, open system information and type out the crap into a spreadsheet. I figured there was a way to do it programmatically and started figuring it out, mostly cobbling together other people’s code from the internet and adopting it to what I needed.
Point is, I wasn’t coding to do some bullshit example, I was trying to do a thing that was going to save me a ton of time and sweat. Most of my learning has come from figuring out how to do a thing, not doing a thing to learn, if that makes sense. Of course you do need a understanding of stuff like basic commands (defining a variable, foreach, while, how to read/write a file, difference between a string and a variable, etc), but even that can come with figuring out how to do something. Having a solid goal motivates me more than anything, after that I can start googling and reading docs and whatnot to figure out what I don’t know.
Even if you’re working through a course, I think it’s a good idea to have your own goals in mind, and start looking at what you’re learning through that lens. You just learned how to read/write to a file and maybe sort it, consider how you might leverage that in something you might want to do and then try it. I personally don’t have those examples click for me until I take them and use them myself, without the safety net of having the answer at the end. The nice thing about code is it either works or it doesn’t, and the people that write compilers are good enough to give you error messages so you can figure out what’s broken. Debugging your shit is part of the learning process.
I dunno, that’s a long rambling thing that’s probably not too helpful. You want a solid noob tip? Comment EVERYTHING. Comments are free and they don’t hurt your code, so feel free to write questions to yourself, long explanations about how a function or loop works, or whatever. It’s super helpful when you go back to look at old projects or reuse code.
EDIT: Here’s a great real world thing to work on that sounds easy but has some complexity to it - write code to find the five largest and five newest files on your computer.
Still going, but only C# and in Unity so I’m kinda sure I would be of no help…
