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    Read this if you feel perpetually stuck in the beginner phase learn programming

    February 19, 2018

    Read this if you feel perpetually stuck in the beginner phase learn programming

    Read this if you feel perpetually stuck in the beginner phase

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 02:41 AM PST

    I see a lot of posts on this subject so I decided to write a blog post on it. I moved all the text here:

    As someone who began learning to code a little over two years ago, it wasn't until recently that I no longer felt that I was stuck in that beginner phase I'm sure everyone knows of.

    I'm going to go through my experience learning to code and why I felt stuck in that beginner phase. Hopefully, you might learn a thing or two and progress faster as a programmer.

    My Story

    Two years ago, I bought a beginner Python book Learn Python The Hard Way and worked through it during the school holiday. After finishing the book, I never felt that I was getting any better at programming until recently.

    Over the past two years, I learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, then picked up Java before venturing into Android Dev for a brief period, then picked up C from CS50. Oh, I didn't mention that I spent small amounts of time (that added up considerably) learning Ruby and ML and Cryptography with Python.

    You might be able to tell where I went wrong.

    Where I went wrong

    1. Learning everything under the sun

    I dabbled in many different areas, which unfortunately meant I was mediocre with every language and skillset I picked up. I believe that's where most people go wrong when learning to code.

    Learning more languages does not necessarily make you a better programmer.

    Most concepts can be transferred between languages, meaning that for the most part, you are familiarising yourself with the syntax when you pick up a new language.

    No one desires a jack of all trades programmer

    Of course, there are some exceptions (certain startups), but companies tend to prefer having teams of specialists over programmers that are knowledgeable in many fields. It's for the same reason why specialists are better paid than general practitioners.

    Pick a language/field and stick to it

    Seriously, stop learning a new language every few months. Pick one language and get really good at it. Programming languages are only distinctly different when you dig deeper into the lower-level advanced stuff.

    Okay, maybe I was exaggerating when I told you to learn only one language (chances are you need more than one), but my point still stands: being excellent in one or two languages is better than being mediocre in plenty.

    Similarly, do not jump between different fields of programming. Learning both mobile and web development will only derail you from both. It's better to specialize in one area.

    What about libraries and frameworks?

    The same thing. You don't need to learn both React and Angular. In fact, I would advise against that. Just pick one and you're good to go.

    2. Not Trusting the Process

    One factor that prevented me from progressing as a programmer was uncertainty. Will I continue to struggle with this thing like I am right now? What if this framework gets phased out by the time I become decent at it?

    Unfortunately, you can't predict many things with certainty. You just have to make reasonable and informed decisions - and commit to them. It's better to get started ASAP than having analysis paralysis set in and never getting any work done due to lack of confidence and self-doubt.

    Conclusion

    Hopefully, this can help you advance as a programming and get out of that beginner phase. Share with other beginner programmers you know if you think this might help them.

    You can find my programming blog here if you are interested.

    submitted by /u/codethesite
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    Microsoft released Quantum Development Kit and a new programming language - Q#

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 08:32 PM PST

    Can a .NET Developer/ any software engineer learn quantum computing and Q# if has interest in this new technology? What does it take to train oneself in this new technology ?

    submitted by /u/vinay6666
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    I’m using VS Code and having a hard time finding color theme which is easy on the eyes.

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 07:08 PM PST

    Any suggestions ? Do most people use the dark themes ? I think I prefer white. I tried the github theme but it still did not feel right.

    submitted by /u/datasci1100
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    Leaving teaching, retraining as a webdev. How much time should I spend learning WebFlow?

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 08:42 PM PST

    I decided to leave my profession last year, and decided to become a programmer instead. Two of my buddies from graduate school are an MS and PhD in computer science and have been incredibly helpful in guiding me on my new career path. I am also being trained by a gentleman at my new company who is regarded in his department as something equivalent to a grandmaster of coding.

    My new job isn't programming, but it treads lightly into that territory. I manage the public face of our company through web content, our blog, and our social media (among other more boring database-related tasks). My boss just recently tasked me with building us a new website through WebFlow, and migrating all the data from our old site onto the new one.

    I have never before used WebFlow, but I immediately recognized it as a powerful tool for non-coders. It produces W3C-compliant HTML/CSS/JS and has a ridiculous amount of customizability and precision compared to Weebly and the other website builders I've used previously. So far, I've made a few simplish dummy websites on WebFlow, and have been watching tons of YouTube videos on it. I am impressed with its functionality, but that might be because of my limited experience.

    I'm just wondering how much of my life I should devote to mastering WebFlow if I'm interested in doing full-stack web development, potentially freelance, down the road. I totally realize it is not coding, but I wonder if learning the concepts (positioning, containers, style sheets, etc) will assist me in some meaningful way when I take up the task of learning CSS/JS.

    Since you might ask anyway, here is the roadmap my 'team' of programmer friends/trainers have developed for me: I aim to learn Python, JS, HTML, CSS, and the web frameworks Flask and Angular. So far, I've worked my way through Eric Matthes' Python Crash Course and am building a few web apps with my trainer. I took an HTML course years ago and have a few new books on HTML/CSS that I plan to work through when I feel somewhat competent with Python.

    I realize the importance of not spreading myself too thin over several languages, but I'm trying to gain competency at specific projects, and I'm trying to make the most employable decisions about languages. Here in the Bay Area, Python and JS are reasonably employable, and web development is the most interesting field of programming to me. I don't think I'd be happy doing PHP/Java and managing databases all day.

    What do you think about WebFlow, and my career path in general?

    submitted by /u/Nightmare_Tonic
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    Challenges to learn multimedia programming

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 08:30 PM PST

    Hey guys,

    I'm entering my fourth year of software engineering, and I was accepted into this exiting program where I get to go to a university abroad and partake in research about whatever the lab is all about.

    So as it happens I was placed in a lab that's all about multi media such as video, audio, images ETC ETC... and in inludes multimedia processing, security, encoding, digital signal processing and so on and so fourth.

    Anyway, I have some time between now and when I get there, and I really want to make a good impression, so I was wondering if there are any particular challenges / projects or I can work on in the mean time so I can be familiar with what I may have to do when I'm in the lab. Even a tutorial series would be good

    I have no coding experience with this kind of stuff and I was wondering if anyone has a good starting point for me.

    Thanks in advance!

    submitted by /u/The-IT
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    How do I setup a user login/signup database?

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 06:46 AM PST

    I have a personal website I am working on and I am attempting to add a login and sign up option to the site. I have a namecheap domain and hosting on github pages. I am trying to do all of this for free and I have access the Github Student Developer Pack which contains everything on this link: https://education.github.com/pack Would I use a SQL server for this?

    submitted by /u/Miineral
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    C is hard

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 10:13 AM PST

    So I'm doing this function for school where I have to make a quick sort algorithm with C.

    But I can only pass as parameter a pointer for an array and an int, which is basically the array size.

    And bloody hell its harder than I thought. If I only had 1 extra parameter to use, it would be been super easy ( just pass the array, first and last index, and easy life )

    Today, I spent my whole morning fixing my partition function because of 1 line :

    int a,b = 0;

    Yup I was using a non initialised index the whole time.

    the right thing to write was

    int a = 0, b = 0;

    Just wanted to share this with you guys

    I already miss Python :(

    submitted by /u/truvaking
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    I Am New to Website Design And I am Information Overloaded

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 11:06 PM PST

    Firstly, I am posting this on an throwaway for privacy reasons.

    I belong to a very, very small organization that has a lot of problems with their website. We have a web developer, but a singular web developer is obviously not enough, so it is lacking, but it does it's job. I offered my help and explained that I wanted to help improve it, so the person has agreed to take me on almost as an understudy. I am very quick to learn, but I know very little. I remember HTML and CSS from school, but, besides that, I don't know much, and my CSS could need some work.

    The website is run by a MVC through Bitbucket and is primarily designed using HTML, CSS, JS, PHP (through codeigniter), and it uses Bootstrap. I am just so lost on where to start learning. There is so much that I have never seen before such as a MVC and Bitbucket and Bootstrap and all of these languages. What would you do to start learning?

    submitted by /u/ExcitingThrowaway91
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    Android chat heads for text messaging

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 10:41 PM PST

    I want to make an app that has the same function as Facebook messenger chat heads for the stock Samsung text messaging app. What language would I program this in? How difficult would it be?

    submitted by /u/Splitface2811
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    C sscanf giving wrong value?

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 10:22 PM PST

    I am writing a program that is supposed to act as an RPC simulation.

    The server receives a network message in the form of a Message struct that contains a char array and the length of the message, unmarshals the message into an RPCmessage struct that contains some identifying information and two int arguments. The server computes the result (a simple arithmetic expression), marshals the result into an RPCmessage with a matching RPC ID and sends the reply to the client.

    The client takes a prompt from the user (e.g. 5 + 2), marshals the message into an RPCmessage, sends it to the server, and waits for a reply. The reply is then unmarshalled into an RPCmessage and displayed to the user.

    I'm finding that when unmarshalling, I'm getting some right values and some wrong values. For example:

    5 + 2

    This produces the network message "+ 5 2 0" where the first three tokens are the arithmetic expression in prefix expression and the 0 is the RPC ID. When the server receives the message, it receives "+ 5 2 0" and proceeds to try to unmarshal, which results in:

    arg1 = 5 arg2 = 2 RPCId = 16

    Why is the RPCId unmarshalling to 16? I thought perhaps it was due to network byte order differing from host byte order? Using htonl and ntohl didn't fix the issue, and just gave me even weirder numbers like 0 21 0.

    Here're the relevant snippets:

    void unMarshal(RPCmessage* rm, Message* message) { ... // Unmarshalling an addition request rm->procedureId = 1; // 1 indicates addition sscanf(message->data, "%d %d %d", &a, &b, &c); rm->arg1 = a; rm->arg2 = b; rm->RPCId = c; ... } ... void marshal(RPCmessage* rm, Message* message) { ... // Marshalling an addition request sprintf(message->data, "+ %d %d %d", rm->arg1, rm->arg2, rm->RPCId); ... }

    Messages are sent using sendto and recvfrom.

    A side note is that when using sscanf in the unmarshalling, if I replace the temporary variables with the destinations themselves, I get no values?

    Debug messages give the following output:

    Client:

    Enter a simple arithmetic expression or (quit/ping): 5 + 2

    Marshalling Request 0 with Procedure Id 1 and Arguments 5, 2

    Marshal Request 0 Result (7): + 5 2 0

    Sending Network Message: + 5 2 0

    Sent RPC Request 0 with Procedure Id 1 and Arguments 5, 2

    Received Network Message: = 7 0 0

    Unmarshalling: = 7 0 0

    Unmarshalled Request 16 with Procedure Id 1 and Arguments 0, 7

    Server:

    Received Network Message: + 5 2 0

    Unmarshalling: + 5 2 0

    Unmarshalled Request 16 with Procedure Id 1 and Arguments 0, 7

    Received RPC Request 16 with Procedure Id 1 and Arguments 0, 7

    Marshalling RPC Reply 16 with Procedure Id 1 and Arguments 7, 0 // 7 is the result, 0 is a status

    Replied: = 7 0 0

    So, I'm seeing that the strings are correct, but sscanf is giving me the wrong values? I'm not sure what's going on. I have a hunch it has something to do with network and host byte orders but I'm not sure what to do to fix it.

    submitted by /u/DenizenEvil
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    Making a discord server for us to learn C++ through competitive programming

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 10:06 PM PST

    Hello! I have a discord server where our group of members do competitive programming contests together on codeforces.com

    We'd love to have you! We discuss problems, support each other, and even have an experienced competitive programmer mentoring us.

    Here's the invite link https://discord.gg/rJBAn5N

    submitted by /u/laikasowner
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    Is there any benefit when coding long hours to using a fast gaming monitor running at 144hz as opposed to regular 60hz ?

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 09:58 PM PST

    Also would size matter in this config ? ( that's what she said )

    submitted by /u/datasci1100
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    I created a python package that makes GUI programming easy for everyone on your team. I'm keen for feedback and feel free to ask me for help on how to get it up and running.

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 09:51 PM PST

    The package is called Scripted Forms and it is for making GUIs easy for everyone on your team.

    The GitHub repository is over at:

    https://github.com/SimonBiggs/scriptedforms

    I'm keen for feedback. Let me know if you need any help getting it up and running. Also let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement.

    Cheers,

    Simon

    submitted by /u/MeshachBlue
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    Is there some commonly used random algorithm that gives poor distributions for "shuffle play" lists?

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 05:54 PM PST

    A recurring problem I've seen in anything with a "shuffle playlist" is that certain items will be frequently replayed, while other items never get played at all.

    I'm absolutely familiar with the idea that "random" doesn't mean "evenly distributed" but this seems to be a pattern I see over and over, which starts to feel like there's one shitty algorithm that everyone uses for "shuffle play" and they shouldn't be... Kind of like how every newb implements a simple selection sort for sorting until they learn differently.

    submitted by /u/DonLaFontainesGhost
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    [Java] Quick questions on trying to import a library I downloaded.

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 09:24 PM PST

    I'm trying to use LWJGL. I downloaded the class files from the website, it was a .zip which contains folders than all contain JAR files.

    https://imgur.com/BLt3Bav

    I can't seem to get the import statements from the tutorial to work.

    import org.lwjgl.opengl.Display; import org.lwjgl.opengl.DisplayMode; import org.lwjgl.LWJGLException;

    I tried using the solution I saw online which was using the -classpath flag, but I can't tell what the correct level directory to set it is to. They all keep not compiling due to not finding the libraries. (directory levels shown up in the pic). setting it to the lib folder does not work.

    Would appreciate any help. Thanks!!

    submitted by /u/BobodyBo
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    what are subnets?

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 07:26 AM PST

    in which cases do you need to create subnets? to isolate a bunch of network node(e.g. app servers) from other networks?

    submitted by /u/muatik
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    [Python] PIL shows black image when attempting to view image

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 08:53 PM PST

    The current goal of what I am writing is to download an image from S3, open it using Pillow, and show the image. I am able to download the image fine; it can be viewed properly from my photos. However, when I try to use the image with PIL, all of the pixel values are black. It does however, retain the shape of the image, which leads me to know that the image is at least being read. the code is shown below:

    s3.Bucket(bucket).download_file(key, key) # downloaded perfectly fine img = Image.open(key) img.show() # shows all black with the Images's dimensions

    I know I can read from bytes, but that will give me a 1d array of all the bytes instead of the dimensions needed for an image.

    submitted by /u/TheLegendOfCode
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    What's the difference between these two things in JavaScript?

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 08:32 PM PST

    I've learning JavaScript using coding with Chrome and there are two ways to print something: using "command.write" and "document.write". Not sure exactly what the difference is

    submitted by /u/aqatish
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    Decompiling and Finding URLs in a Windows Program

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 08:17 PM PST

    I'm trying to find certain URLs in a program to try and create my own automated account creator. If I use "JetBrain DotPeek", would I be able to see these URLs?

    submitted by /u/perroh
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    [Python Pandas] More efficient way to iterate through two dataframes?

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 08:05 PM PST

    I have two datas frames, each with the same number of columns.

    I need to compare a certain column in both of the dataframes.

    Let's say that column in the first df is:

    apple

    bat

    cat

    and the second is:

    dog

    egg

    frog

    Is there a way to go through and do the comparisons without a nested for loop?

    apple dog

    apple egg

    apple frog

    bat dog

    bat egg

    etc . .

    submitted by /u/democraticwhre
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    Building a Full Stack Web App

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 07:57 PM PST

    Does anyone have any hints and tips for beginners wanting to learn game/app development?

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 12:05 PM PST

    I have wanted to learn for a while but find it hard to work out the best way to do it.

    I like to make a game of things where possible so my ideal way of learning this would be via guides to create something (like a recipe); where to start with, at least, I don't have to come up with the ideas.

    Anyone got some hints for this?

    submitted by /u/Foxjump231
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    Using Google's API to upload, download, modify and delete files from Drive

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 03:35 PM PST

    Does Google offer an easy way of doing those things in a language like C++?

    submitted by /u/ziegpanzer
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    Built a commandline decentralized p2p file sharing application

    Posted: 19 Feb 2018 11:30 AM PST

    Hey guys, last year, I felt like building a command line decentralized file sharing application for fun. Since then, I have been building it. It is my first attempt in the domain of distributed systems. I would really appreciate some feedback.

    This is the link to my project: https://github.com/nirvik/iWant

    The features are as following:
    1. Discover files/folders in the network by typing: iwanto search "silicon valley" [exact name is not required]
    2. Download files/folders in the network by typing: iwanto download <hash of the file or folder>
    3. Decentralized: No central server hosting files. No central point of failure. Zero downtime.
    4. Consistent data: Changes to any file/folder inside the shared folder, gets instantly reflected to all the peers
    5. Cross Platform: Works in Linux/Windows/Mac.
    6. Change shared folder anytime by typing: iwanto share /home/User/Movies Or iwanto share "C:\Users\Movies\". Similarly, change download path by typing: iwanto download to /home/Users/Downloads
    7. Only LAN

    Why I built it ?
    - I like the idea of typing some filename in the terminal and download it if people around me have it.
    - No browser
    - No third party

    I have been working on this personal project for quite a long time. Would love it if you guys could try it out and leave some feedback.

    submitted by /u/kivrin1993
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