Post: #201

I recently was let go from my PM position in Avaya. With the compensation package got me a nice laptop and I am dedicating several hours per day to learn Python. I learned that unless you sleep only 4 hrs every day and live inside a room there is no way to work and study and yet function like a normal human being. I tried it but the pressure from work plus studying python till 2 am every day got the better of me and nearly collapsed while working during regular business hours (thank gods I was working from home on a pretty regular basis).
Now is time to grasp Python and move onto Django like FrenchC suggested

Post: #202

What form of text editor do you guys recommend? (stuff like Notepad++ or Sublime?)

Just completed my HTML course on Codeacademy and was wondering what text editor you guys use for that.

Post: #203

(12-16-2014 04:55 AM)R Smoov Wrote:  What form of text editor do you guys recommend? (stuff like Notepad++ or Sublime?)

Just completed my HTML course on Codeacademy and was wondering what text editor you guys use for that.

vim or emacs.

Post: #204

(12-12-2014 01:13 PM)TravellerJay Wrote:  I recently was let go from my PM position in Avaya. With the compensation package got me a nice laptop and I am dedicating several hours per day to learn Python. I learned that unless you sleep only 4 hrs every day and live inside a room there is no way to work and study and yet function like a normal human being. I tried it but the pressure from work plus studying python till 2 am every day got the better of me and nearly collapsed while working during regular business hours (thank gods I was working from home on a pretty regular basis).
Now is time to grasp Python and move onto Django like FrenchC suggested

I hope you get back on track with Python.

Post: #205

(12-10-2014 02:38 PM)The Great Basilisk Wrote:  https://wiki.python.org/moin/WebFrameworks

Django is very popular atleast. If you are heading into web development, I'd suggest that your learn HTML, CSS and Javascript. In addition to those, Twitter Bootstrap for responsive websites and/or possibly one css preprocessor, like SASS.

It is very popular now but who knows the next 10 years down the road? My point is web technology is constantly changing, and if you don't want to code in your late 30s and above, you should think of switching your career.

Post: #206

(12-16-2014 04:55 AM)R Smoov Wrote:  What form of text editor do you guys recommend? (stuff like Notepad++ or Sublime?)

Just completed my HTML course on Codeacademy and was wondering what text editor you guys use for that.

I use Sublime Text 2. I used to use Vim but I like Sublime a lot more.

Post: #207

I've decided to take the challenge and follow in fC's footsteps. I've completed the HTML and CSS programs on codecademy and built a simple website for my band.

Www://tlatc.com if you wanna check it out. All I have so far is the front page and the Bio but feel free to I've me some critique. I started lpthw this past weekend and completed the crash course on windows power shell.

I put in atleast an hour a day to learning and I'll be putting in 4-6 hours on Saturday and Sunday. My goal I'd to become proficient and to start developing my own apps by summer of next year.

I'm greatly inspired by this thread and feel that this is a goo path to pursue to increase my market value, financial income, and to skill set.

If anyone would like to study together via Skype feel free to PM me and I'll be sure to keep you all up to date on my progress.

I hope all of us that follow in FCs footsteps succeed in the ways he had so we can become examples for others to follow and more importantly,so we can increase the value of our lives.

P.s. I'd suggest using notepad ++. Lightweight and intuitive.Mny professionals use it as well.
Its what I use on my windows box with power shell.

Post: #208

Now that's some 90s style web design

You should really consider how you are using width attribute in your css. For example the topleft-div has a width of 500px while the image inside is like 800px or something. Another thing i noticed is that you have an empty "spacer" div. That is really not how you should apply empty space. Rather use top/bottom padding or margin on the divs with actual content.

Post: #209

Vim is more useful as there are vim on many platforms, like Windows, Unix, Mac, etc.

Post: #210

(12-16-2014 05:28 AM)roid Wrote:  

(12-12-2014 01:13 PM)TravellerJay Wrote:  I recently was let go from my PM position in Avaya. With the compensation package got me a nice laptop and I am dedicating several hours per day to learn Python. I learned that unless you sleep only 4 hrs every day and live inside a room there is no way to work and study and yet function like a normal human being. I tried it but the pressure from work plus studying python till 2 am every day got the better of me and nearly collapsed while working during regular business hours (thank gods I was working from home on a pretty regular basis).
Now is time to grasp Python and move onto Django like FrenchC suggested

I hope you get back on track with Python.

That is the idea mate. With enough time to goof around there is no excuse not to study. I am reading some Python introduction to grasp the idea, the statements, the basics and then will follow FC steps with LPTHW.
It has to work, if it did for FC and many others, then it will do it for me.

Post: #211

(12-16-2014 10:52 AM)The Great Basilisk Wrote:  Now that's some 90s style web design

You should really consider how you are using width attribute in your css. For example the topleft-div has a width of 500px while the image inside is like 800px or something. Another thing i noticed is that you have an empty "spacer" div. That is really not how you should apply empty space. Rather use top/bottom padding or margin on the divs with actual content.

I edited my code to reflect your suggestions. The div elements sit the same and the code looks cleaner now. Thanks for the tip. I'll keep that in mind when creating the other pages for the site and any future pages I may create or edit.
I'm not sure how to apply empty space so I'll stay away from using it in any format.

I'm gonna burn through some excercises from LPTHW for this saturday afternoon.

Anyone got any updates? Noteworthy or otherwise?

Edit: I just signed up for a coursera course starting June 15, 2015. Sure it's a ways away, and I will probably have learned most of the stuff they'll be teaching by then but it wouldn't hurt to get a different perspective on some of the basics. I wish the course would start sooner so it would be more applicable to what I'm learning and doing now but hell, it can't hurt. If I'm lucky, I might just learn something I didn't know.

https://www.coursera.org/course/pythonlearn -- If you want to check out the course info.

Post: #212

For those interested in JavaScript and want to experiment their code or understand how the machine reads it, professors from my university has developped this tool: http://codeboot.org/

Post: #213

Honestly.
Use sublime because learning vim/emacs takes time from practicing python. Learn vim/emacs later on because you will need it for quick edits that are server side.

Granted you could use nano but its completly useless for files larger than 12 lines.

Post: #214

I just ordered a Raspberry Pi B+ and downloaded "Learning Python with Raspberry Pi" and "Raspberry Pi User Guide, 2nd Edition" thanks to this thread.

I do have a question. What type of undergraduate degree would be useful in this field? I have about 80% of a teaching degree done but I don't know if I want to teach English anymore.

Post: #215

(12-20-2014 11:24 PM)enderilluminatus Wrote:  I just ordered a Raspberry Pi B+ and downloaded "Learning Python with Raspberry Pi" and "Raspberry Pi User Guide, 2nd Edition" thanks to this thread.

I do have a question. What type of undergraduate degree would be useful in this field? I have about 80% of a teaching degree done but I don't know if I want to teach English anymore.

If you've read through this and other threads you'd know that you don't NEED a degree to get a coding job.

Just learnt he code, build up a portfolio and start applying for jobs.

On another note, you're nearly done with your teaching degree so just finish it

Post: #216

(12-20-2014 11:24 PM)enderilluminatus Wrote:  I just ordered a Raspberry Pi B+ and downloaded "Learning Python with Raspberry Pi" and "Raspberry Pi User Guide, 2nd Edition" thanks to this thread.

I do have a question. What type of undergraduate degree would be useful in this field? I have about 80% of a teaching degree done but I don't know if I want to teach English anymore.

You can teach other subjects as long as you're certified in them. Or you can teach English and take part in the computer/programming club at school.

Not to mention that teaching leaves you a lot of free time to learn or do other stuff like programming as a side gig.

Post: #217

(12-20-2014 11:24 PM)enderilluminatus Wrote:  I just ordered a Raspberry Pi B+ and downloaded "Learning Python with Raspberry Pi" and "Raspberry Pi User Guide, 2nd Edition" thanks to this thread.

I do have a question. What type of undergraduate degree would be useful in this field? I have about 80% of a teaching degree done but I don't know if I want to teach English anymore.

I had a friend who started an Economics degree in his 4th year at school. He had to grind like crazy but finished it, and his original English degree.

Get your teaching degree and just extend your university stay so you can double-major.

Don't most programs only require about 15 or so classes for a major? That's 3-4 solid semesters. Doable.

Post: #218

Excellent. Thanks for the advice. This forum is seriously the most helpful and supportive place I've ever seen on the internet.

Post: #219

The best programmers graduated from Comp Sci, bar none. But not just from any Comp Sci, they are from prestigious uni like Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, etc. You won't find them working for just any companies. They will be headhunted to work for Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. They will not do much code monkey jobs. See the kind of work that Peter Norvig does. ITT, most people are looking to be code monkeys.

Post: #220

Like many posters in this thread I've been in the process of acquiring web dev skills for the past few months. What I've found is that the syntax and the coding itself is quite easy; the hard part is understanding how all the pieces fit together.

For example: CSS is a joke. It's not even coding; you're basically just describing how you want something to look like, in plain English. The hard part is taking the granular knowledge of the syntax and understanding the design philosophy used to achieve the "best in class" designs. Eg: it's easy to learn what a float is and the difference between percentage and pixel sizing. But when creating a standard 3-column layout, do you float all three columns and don't specify the widths? Do you make each column into a div and have them lie out there independently, or you do have one parent "wrapper" div holding the three column divs? etc, etc, etc. I learned HTML and CSS syntax in a couple days but then stagnated for a few weeks trying to create layout without any kind of direction until I found a good book that explained design philosophies.

Likewise with server side programming. Once you've coded one language you've coded them all, more or less. It's easy to master programming logic: loops, functions, operators, etc. The hard part, again, is figuring out how your loops and if statements and other bullshido are going to help you build a web-app. I knew some python before trying to learn how server side works but soon gave up trying to use python as my server side language in favor of PHP. Why? Because while I find coding in python to be easier and more fun than PHP, it's far easier to get your head around back-end development with PHP. I had zero idea how html forms, server side languages, and mySQL databases combine to create a functional back-end, and the python tutorials online kind of assume you know how that shit works and just teach you how to do something you're already supposed to understand, but in python.

With PHP, I was able to find a great book that laid out exactly how all these components (html, java script, php, mySQL) work together to create a fully functional web-app. Now that I understand the principles-create an HTML form, send user input from HTML form into PHP script, use PHP script to initiate a mySQL session and pass a string variable containing a SQL command to mySQL-it is a lot easier to go back to those python tutorials if I end up wanting to switch from PHP.

Right now I'm at the point where I can create a somewhat decent front-end and a very simple back-end like collecting user supplied data etc. Of course, all this shit would only work under the most ideal of situations. I have no idea what would happen if there are many concurrent users. I would have no clue how to deal with lag experienced by users. I have no idea about security aside from simple anti SQL injection formatting. And on it goes.The worst thing is that I have no idea how much/what I need to know before my skillset is marketable, or even useful.

At any rate, I found the following two books to be very helpful in overcoming the obstacles I described in the first part of my post:

CSS3: The Missing Manual- after I became comfortable with basic html/css syntax from online tutorials, this book was invaluable in helping me understand the design principles necessary to create robust and attractive page layouts.


Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS & HTML5, 3rd Edition
I used this book to gain understanding of back-end coding. I spent a few days futilely trying to learn this shit online before picking up the book, and it was like night and day. It takes you from the very first step, ie choosing and installing a development server on your machine, teaches you basis PHP syntax, SQL syntax, and then-most importantly-shows you how html, PHP, and mySQL work together to create the backend.

My next step is to take all this theoretical knowledge and take the plunge into making a website, hopefully one that is either revenue generating or at least can provide functionality some would find valuable.

Post: #221

I have no previous background in any programming language, or even Html.

I began doing Ruby on Codecademy. I was able to follow the directions, since they are very explicit, and advance through the course, but I felt like I was copying Chinese characters without understanding what they meant.

A friend suggested I should really start with html to get some basic understanding of coding, and I am currently doing that.

As I understood the OP he went right into Python without even doing Html. Or is it assumed one knows Html before getting into real programming languages?

Post: #222

If you want to do web dev in Python then you need to learn HTML, Python, Django in that order preferably.

Post: #223

@Fast Eddie. I think you would make one class for all 3 columns and make it either vw or % for mobile functionality. Im not sure what you mean by lag but if your code is good then wouldnt that be a hosting problem?

Post: #224

(12-23-2014 11:13 AM)roid Wrote:  If you want to do web dev in Python then you need to learn HTML, Python, Django in that order preferably.

Hey man,

Thanks for the info, would you mind expanding a bit? I have just been learning HTML/CSS for a few weeks, at what point would you say one is roughly "ready" to begin learning Python?

Post: #225

@Sonsowey it all depends on what you want to do. If you just want a job in serverside programming then you dont need to know much css. But generally you should understand html since its core. I would master css then move to php which is what im currently doing. That way you can create good looking websites for businesses more than just a static webpage.
My 2cents.