Programmer

I am a Computer Science major in college right now. What would you recommend I do now to help find a job and make money when I get out into the "real world?"

Asked by Jack about 12 years ago

Fresh out of school, your main problem getting employed will be lack of a track record. This is a double-bind that catches a lot of new graduates: can't get a job without experience, can't get experience without a job. As a programmer, though, there's one excellent way to build a portfolio that other fields don't benefit from. I'm talking about open source software. Anyone can download it, anyone can read the source, anyone can modify it--and, thanks to Github, anyone can put it up online where anyone else can see it. If you interview with any halfway-conscious organization these days, at some point they are going to ask for your Github username, and they ask because they want to see what you have there. So what kind of software exactly should you be writing? Doesn't much matter. The common recommendation here is "scratch your own itch." That is, write a program that solves a problem you have. Once it's in reasonable shape, get it up on Github, write a little blog post about it, and iterate. Definitely make a point of writing and open-sourcing different types of programs too. Apart from showing versatility, you're at an ideal point in your career to explore all the different possibilities. Good luck and welcome to the occupation!

If you had a teenage kid right now, would you advise him or her to go into programming?

Asked by JBM about 12 years ago

Given it was something they were interested in, absolutely! It's interesting and intellectually stimulating work that pays well.

Were Mark Zuckerberg and the developers who started Facebook true geniuses or did they just execute the right idea at the right time?

Asked by MMA83 about 12 years ago

I've actually never used Facebook (though I love Twitter), so my answer may not be worth much here. However, I'll make an attempt based on what I do know. It's my understanding that Zuckerberg is indeed extremely intelligent and a highly skilled programmer. However, the common wisdom in this industry is that brilliance counts for much less than hard work, giving the market what it wants, and a lot more luck than anybody is comfortable talking about. I don't see anything that makes me think that Facebook is different in this regard.

What's an appropriate hourly rate for a programmer in the US?

Asked by TomTom about 12 years ago

Depends on the specialty. If I were freelancing right now, I'd be charging $125 an hour.

Why are so many developers such bad communicators (never pick up a phone, ignore emails, don't alert client of delays, etc)?

Asked by Benjiboo about 12 years ago

I was tempted to leave this unanswered--seems kind of fitting, doesn't it? Although I'm guessing that you ask because you're in a snit over a perceived slight from a developer, I'm going to treat the question seriously, since I have a few minutes to kill while my tests run. There's a stereotype that programmers work with computers because they have poor social skills, but get a bunch of us together and add beer and we'll be talking shop until the wee hours. The fact is, programming is one of those careers that's also a subculture, and it's a clannish subculture at that. As for the phone: programmers as a rule hate synchronous communication, which includes the phone and any kind of instant messaging. This is because to code you must concentrate, deeply and for an extended period of time. I've seen estimates that, after an interruption, it takes a programmer at _least_ 15 minutes to mentally return to where they were. A freelancer with in-demand skills (e.g. Rails or iPhone apps) can make over $100 an hour, so every time you interrupt a coder at work, you just set fire to $25. What's more, coding is lots of fun and listening to thoughts slowly trickle out of your head is boring. As for not alerting a client of delays, well, I can't really defend that. Absolutely a programmer should diligently alert their boss or client as soon as they realize that there are going to be delays. But programmers like being the bearer of bad news just as much as anyone else does (i.e. not a damned bit), and there's this temptation to think that if we just work _extra_ hard _right now_ we can pull off a miracle and deliver on time. So, in other words, programmers do that because we're human.

When a new site with a novel UE catches fire, do you as a programmer immediately go and learn the basics of how that UE is created?

Asked by UnPinterested about 12 years ago

Personally I don't. While you have to be a generalist to work at a company this small, I'm much more interested in the "backend," meaning roughly the things that happen behind the scenes. A novel UX like Pinterest (and looking at their UI is a reminder that "novel" isn't the same as "good") doesn't capture my interest like it does that of some of my co-workers. Of course, this doesn't mean that I don't steal from other websites' design when I see something I do like.

What's up with programmers looking like such slobs all the time? There are hundreds at the company I work for, and for them it's like sweatpants, flip-flops, unwashed, unshaven, the whole bit. I don't expect 3-piece suits, but it's a pretty professional place - they should at least look the part.

Asked by KGB about 12 years ago

You know what makes a programmer a professional? When they write good-quality code that lets the user get done what they want to get done, that lets them do it efficiently, and that another person can maintain long after they're gone. Let me review that statement...nope, don't see anything about dressing any particular way in there.

Any big lessons learned you can share about past and present start-ups you've worked with?

Asked by Reubenesque about 12 years ago

I don't know how big these are, but these are the things I'd tell to someone about to join their first startup: * The emotional rollercoaster is normal. It's not like in a big organization where every success and every failure is shared with hundreds of people. Everything that happens feels very personal. * Apple computers are overrated. Buy a commodity PC and install Linux. You'll get more power for your money. * Take care of your body. Make sure you get enough exercise, sleep and water. Snack on fruit and nuts, not candy or chips. Get up and stretch regularly, or rig up a standing desk. Startups are stressful enough already without ruining your health on top of it, and your mind is _not_ separate from your body. If one is in bad shape, the other can only do so well. * The business dudes are not your enemy, but they do bear watching. Don't let them make promises you can't keep. Remember that they need you (a lot) more than you need them. * It's normal, every so often, to wake up and realize that you are in a completely different business than you originally thought. A startup that can "pivot" in a new direction at this point has a better chance of success than one that carries on with the original plan. * Don't start a company where the only plausible exit strategy is getting acquired. Build something that actually takes in revenue.

Do you think people overestimate the difficulty of coding? Like, obviously it's not easy, but is it the rocket science non-programmers make it out to be?

Asked by Christophe about 12 years ago

Probably! Not everybody is cut out to do this for a living but anyone of reasonable intelligence can learn to do at least a little programming. One good reason to do so is that it de-mystifies computers. There are plenty of them around, and they are here to stay, so you may as well know something about them. To a lot of people, a computer is a magic box filled with 0's and 1's that lets you look at Internets and occasionally sends your checking account number to a gentleman in Nigeria. To a programmer, a computer is a scientific box that operates according to very simple rules applied over and over and over again. Knowing a few of these rules will help you deal with these machines that make up so much of our environment these days.

How long would it take me to become proficient in Ruby if I'm starting with a decent understanding of computers and technology, but no hands-on programming experience? How about for becoming a Ruby expert?

Asked by Crosby87 about 12 years ago

Even though I assume that you probably want to learn Ruby to use Rails, I'm also going to leave Rails out of the equation. The reason is that Rails is a big framework that itself takes considerable time to master, especially if you're trying to get your head around the basics of programming and Ruby at the same time. I don't recommend doing this in any case, because Rails imposes its own conventions on programs that you don't want to get into the habit of using too early. The good news is that Ruby (likewise Python) is particularly well suited for learning on. It's got a gentle learning curve that's forgiving to absolute novices but is still powerful enough for professionals to use. Historically, that's a surprisingly rare combination in a programming language. The bad news is that it still takes a long time to become proficient. Assuming that by "proficient" you mean you can write a program of a few hundred lines that does something you actually find useful, without too many horrendous bugs in it, I'd expect it would take about six months of regular practice. Notice too that I say "practice" as opposed to "study": a little bit of theory is very useful, but the only ways to get better at programming are to write programs, and to read and modify other people's programs. As for "expert," well, I've been doing this since I was a little kid, and now I'm in my middle 30s, and I'll let you know the minute I'm an expert. If you'd like to start learning Ruby--and I heartily recommend this, since programming is seriously a ton of fun as well as being useful--I recommend Learn Ruby The Hard Way, available for free at http://ruby.learncodethehardway.org/book, with printable or eBook versions available for a very reasonable price (I have no connection with this work or its authors). As noted above, programmers are also surprisingly gregarious (at least with other programmers), and if you live in or near a city of any size there's probably a local group for Ruby programmers open to the public. Good luck!

What's the longest coding bender you've ever been on?

Asked by Jay about 12 years ago

In college, I participated in several programming competitions that lasted all weekend. Our strategy was to open the question packets at midnight Friday (the first moment that was allowed), read the question, talk about a strategy for a little while, then get a good night's sleep and regroup Friday morning. The good night's sleep was key, since after that it was just catnaps until 6 PM Monday when the contest ended. So, call it not quite 80 hours.

Long hours during crunch time are the rule in this business, and mental stamina is vital, but being able to occasionally bust out 24+ hours isn't actually that useful. After being awake past a certain point, even if you're technically awake and theoretically working, you're not producing and in fact you're likely doing harm by introducing bugs that you wouldn't if you were alert. Much more valuable is the ability to work 12-16 hours in a day, get a few hours sleep, then come back the next day and do it again the next day, and the next.

What are some less obvious places to look for good devs? I'm going to shoot myself if I have to go to another tech meet-up.

Asked by frizzlefry about 12 years ago

It's difficult no matter what you do to find a good developer these days. Assuming that you have a particular technology that you're trying to recruit someone to work in, and not having a lot of luck, try looking for a good programmer who _doesn't_ know that technology and hiring them to learn it. One of the key attributes of a good programmer is that they don't pigeonhole themselves into thinking that they are an "X programmer," where X is some technology. They're a programmer and they can learn any technology that comes along--and they will. If you live in a place like San Francisco or Boston that has a thriving software industry, find the one guy who knows everybody in town in the business and make friends with him. How do you find that guy? By definition, ask anyone.

Do you think there will come a time when there will be tools available such that a non-developer can essentially build websites for themselves? I'm not talking about the Wordpress-type of tools, but rather tools that would allow some to build a reasonably sophisticated custom site.

Asked by royleeeeee about 12 years ago

You can build somewhat sophisticated static sites (meaning sites that always present the same information to every visitor, the equivalent of printed material stuck up on the Web) using Dreamweaver or Frontpage (if they still make Frontpage). If you want to do something more complicated than that, and you can't quickly slap it together out of Wordpress plugins and whatnot, you'll have to learn some programming. Sorry, no way around it. Basically, if you have a tool that's powerful enough to let you do that, it's going to be a programming language, or something roughly equivalent (and comparably complex) but for the interface. The bad news is that it takes a long time to get good at programming. The good news is that it's lots of fun and can come in handy no matter what field you're in. If you like, I could recommend a number of good resources for getting started, enough to keep you busy literally for years.

Why are most developers socially withdrawn? Is that WHY they go into more solitary fields like programming, or is it the other way around?

Asked by dramatard about 12 years ago

Another old joke: Q: How can you tell an extroverted engineer? A: When they talk to you, they look at YOUR shoes. I think the introversion generally comes first. In my case, for instance, I live with my girlfriend (wipe that surprised look off your face) and have a few close friends--the operative word there is "few"--but I spend a lot more time alone than the average person, mainly by choice.

I totally get why "hacking" would be fun, but what's the motivation of hackers who do evil shit?

Asked by Salt-of-the-mirth about 12 years ago

The same as the motivation of someone who does evil shit without a computer. They get something of value in return, or they're bored and want to make trouble, or they see what they're doing as good or at least justifiable.

What's your opinion on all of this "brogrammer" BS?

Asked by Maestro757 about 12 years ago

There are people who take it seriously?

Not to say they don't exist, but have you ever known any really good FEMALE programmers?

Asked by The Taxman about 12 years ago

Absolutely, and I've had the pleasure of working alongside a few too. Since you brought it up, yes, almost all professional programmers are men, and that's one of the things I dislike about this industry. Partly it offends my sense of fairness (since, for reasons I mentioned above, programming is a good field to be in, and why shouldn't women get the benefits of being in it as well?), and partly because I've always enjoyed the company of women and wish there were more of them around at work. Why are there so few female programmers? It didn't used to be like this: back in the very early days of programming (the late 1940s and the 1950s) IBM made a point of recruiting women to work as programmers. It's probably not a coincidence that, at the time, programming was not seen as particularly important or prestigious, and didn't pay very much. So where did they all go? I think the redoubtable Zach Weiner sums up the answer perfectly in this cartoon (which is down at the moment but hopefully will be back up soon): http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883#comic In short, girls learn early on that computers are "for boys," and that being smart is uncool and unfeminine. In the meantime, boys are hacking away merrily. If, a few years later, the girl turned into a young woman decides that programming sounds good after all, she's lost a few crucial years' head start, and getting started at all becomes much tougher. That's just one aspect and one opinion, though. This is one of the classic questions of the field and the debate about it is still quite lively.

What types of projects does it make sense to outsource to cheaper places like India? Or is that always a bad idea in that you'll 'get what you pay for'?

Asked by stephan about 12 years ago

I don't have a lot of personal experience with outsourcing, but based on what I've seen, I'd consider doing it for a prototype, or for an auxiliary project that wasn't critical to the business (but then why are you building it in the first place?).

Can an application created on C++ be able to run and be hosted on the cloud.

Asked by sihle almost 12 years ago

There's no such thing as "the cloud" as a single monolithic service. It's a term invented by marketers, and you know how much engineers love marketers and their terminology (*). So let's dig a little deeper. What all cloud services have in common is that they're remotely hosted, run on virtual machines, and are billed on a commodity or pay-as-you-go basis. One class of services here is virtual servers, something like you'd get from Amazon EC2 or Rackspace Cloud Services. This is a virtual machine running Linux, or Windows if you're masochistic, and as far as this machine can tell it's a real computer with all the capabilities of one. You have full root access to this "computer," and can install and run whatever software you like on it. So the short answer is yes, there are some "cloud" services that will allow you to run an application written in C++--or C, or Ruby, or Perl, or OCaml, or Haskell, or... (*) As a rule, not enough to piss on them if they were on fire.

How many programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Asked by mstrkrft about 12 years ago

The basic answer: "None, that's a hardware problem." The Microsoft answer: "None, we just define darkness as a new standard." The Apple answer: "Just take it to the Genius Bar and we can replace the lightbulb for you in 3-5 days." The Linux answer: "One. I just did it myself."

What programming language should I learn first? Is one language acknowledged as better than others for building websites? Are some that used to be popular dying?

Asked by bacon about 12 years ago

Right now most of the people I know who build websites use either the Rails framework written in Ruby (which is what my company uses), or the Django framework written in Python. Django vs. Rails is what we call a "holy war," meaning that it's based on tiny differences in doctrine that to an outsider seem trivial. PHP is still very popular too but has a bad reputation amongst some coders: it's thought of as the tool of choice for hacks (as opposed to hackers), and is said to be virtually unmaintainable. Bigger shops tend to use various Java frameworks, about which I know little and care less. I started learning Java some years ago and quickly decided that it wasn't any fun at all. To anyone who works with Java reading this: learn Rails, you have nothing to lose but your chains. As for languages dying out, sure, they do all the time. Thousands of programming languages have been invented over the years, and at any given time maybe 30 are reasonably popular. In my own career, for instance, Perl used to be the center of the universe, but I haven't written a single line in it for maybe 10 years. There's something wistful and sad about happening across docs for a dead language.

Are most programmers generally pro- or anti- "Anonymous?"

Asked by SimonD33 about 12 years ago

It's hard to generalize about programmers' political beliefs: they range from far left to far right, with an annoyingly large contingent of libertarians.

Re: programmers hating synchronous communication, I completely agree, and I'm not talking about impromptu, unscheduled calls. Those suck. In fact, in this day and age, seems like MOST people hate synchronous communication. But what about when there's something that simply NEEDS to be discussed verbally, and you can't even get a dev to take a *scheduled* call? Believe me, as the client, we don't want to be one the phone any more than the dev, but it seems rude/arrogant/diva-ish to just force all communication to be asynchronous b/c that's what the dev prefers. (sorry to be testy, it's a recurrent problem)

Asked by Benjiboo about 12 years ago

Well, yes, that's a different story. Sounds like the problem is your particular developer.

What do your clients or coworkers do that that drives you the most nuts and makes your working life more difficult?

Asked by Tadzilla about 12 years ago

A multi-way tie between: * interrupting me when I'm thinking (see many comments on the subject above); * bullshitting (programmers don't tend to, since you can't bullshit a computer); * calling meetings that don't need to be held for the sake of having a meeting.

Why do programmers wear headphones? How do you concentrate on such complicated stuff while listening to blaring music?

Asked by Roxsolid29 about 12 years ago

It's a hell of a lot harder without the headphones, because then we can hear people talking.

But couldn't ANYONE can claim "My appearance is irrelevant, it's all about the work I produce"? So what makes programmers special in that regard?

Asked by KGB about 12 years ago

I think what we have here are two related questions: why programmers can do this, and why they do. We can because we have a lot of leverage in the workplace (due simply to supply and demand) and this is one of the few ways we use it. Also, we don't deal with the public, or even other people in general, very much. We do because, without a reason to dress up, we might as well be comfortable. I also wouldn't underestimate the lingering effects of the early connections between programming and 1960s counterculture (a book about called _What The Dormouse Said_ is said to be good). Take a look at this old staff photo of Microsoft from 1978, and notice how in bad light you could easily mistake them for the Manson Family: http://www.flixya.com/photo/1020798/Microsoft-Staff-Photo-December-7-1978

How do programmers deal with wrist problems? I am itnerested in learning but my wrists having been having tingling and soreness problems for years, despite being very healthy.

Asked by JackKelly over 11 years ago

Hate to do this, but I'm going to have to cop out and suggest you ask a professional about this. Luckily for me, even though I've been programming for decades, I'm apparently not prone to RSIs.

(RSI = "repetitive stress injury", meaning carpal tunnel syndrome and whatnot).

I designed an app for a computer and now want it to be compatible with mobiles how do I go about doing that ? whats the code?

Asked by smile over 10 years ago

Take out everything that's specific to desktop machines, replace it with a corresponding version for mobiles.

Seriously. Read the answer I posted to your question the other day. That's how you do it.

Given how high the demand has become for programmers, are you starting to see more people in the field who don't fit the introverted / nerdy stereotype?

Asked by --Bo-- almost 12 years ago

I believe that you have to be, to some degree at least, introverted to be a programmer. It's a job that would make an extrovert unhappy. I'm not sure what even qualifies as "nerdy" anymore when everyone and their dog has a Facebook account, goes to comic-book-superhero movies, and plays video games. Perhaps it has something to do with living in your mom's basement and never showering, in which case no: we tend to bathe as often as anyone and live in our own homes (sometimes even with a spouse or SO).

To what extent do the head honchos of your company involve you, their CTO, in the big strategic decisions? Are you there to offer guidance, or are you expected to just follow their strategic direction?

Asked by Yohimbe Bro almost 12 years ago

I'm the voice of reason, or, to put it another way, the wet blanket. I'm Scotty down in the engine room yelling "Ye canna change the laws of physics!" at the head-in-the-clouds bridge officers (*). I mostly don't set the agenda but I do veto parts of it that are impossible or ill-advised. (*) That's my Star Trek reference for the year taken care of.

Do programmers need a college degree? Or more to the point, do EMPLOYERS require programmers to have a degree?

Asked by PAH over 11 years ago

As a rule, larger employers are more likely to care about a degree than smaller ones. But even larger employers often leave themselves an out by saying "Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience". I know plenty of skilled and successful programmers who are college or even high school dropouts.

I think it's great that there's still at least one form of skilled white-collar work you can do without a degree. But there are advantages to studying CS in college. It'll get you a foot in the door early in your career. You'll learn a few useful things about computational complexity, algorithms, and data structures that you might not otherwise. You'll be exposed to a lot of different sub-fields (e.g. AI, graphics, databases, operating systems) and might fall in love with one you never suspected existed.

If a good programmer is someone who writes good code, what would you say makes for a good MANAGER of programmers?

Asked by roooofus almost 12 years ago

That's an excellent question, and if you ever find a recipe for one let me know...actually, don't, you could figure out a way to make a ton of money off of it. The one thing I can think of that all good engineering managers I've known had in common is that all of them were current or former programmers themselves. But that's not sufficient by itself.

I forgot my phone's password any suggestions ? ( I have an android phone)

Asked by The clumsy one over 11 years ago

Yes--try googling "Android phone forgot password." Programming is not the same as IT.

I have a website with a CMS (1UpSoftware). Most of the pages on the site are behind a paid wall. One of the menu items redirect to another website. Is there a way to keep the redirect behind the paid wall? Is there a script that I could redirect

Asked by Marsha almost 12 years ago

Hard to say for sure without details but almost certainly not. From the browser's point of view there's little difference between a redirect and the user entering the site in their address field directly. Probably your best bet is to figure out how to remove the menu item in question entirely.

My dad always used to tell me "You'd make so much writing code!" Now that I'm older, money sounds like a good sorta thing to have. So, what the heck's a progammer and what's an average day?

Asked by Oblivious High.. Schooler over 11 years ago

Money's pretty handy.

 

So a programmer is someone who writes programs for computers. And what a program is, at the heart of it, is a list of instructions.

This can be "low-level" stuff where you deal pretty directly with the basic capabilities built into the computer, like: "Get this number from here, get that number from there, add them together, then put the result over there." Or you can build stuff at a "high level," using a lot of other software other people have already written, that would look more like "If Fred logs in to the system between 2 AM and 4 AM, and records show that he had more than 8 beers that night, cut off his access to email until 9 AM."

This is tricky because computers have no brains and no initiative of their own: their strength is in doing really simple, tiny, mechanical operations on information, but doing them extremely quickly and following the instructions they're given exactly. It's "exactly" that gets you, because if you write some code that you think is telling the computer to do one thing, and what it actually tells the computer is something entirely different, the computer is going to do what it's told, not what you meant. So even though we say a bug is a "computer error," it's almost always actually a programmer error.

 

My day is pretty typical of programmers in a small company: the big company experience is going to be diferent.

I come in to work between 10 and 11 (I'm a night owl), and check in with my co-workers to see if anything notable is happening that day. If something urgent had come up, they'd have called me on the phone already, but now that our site is a little more mature it's gotten a lot more stable than it used to be, and emergencies are a lot rarer. Which is great.

I've got a few people who report to me, so I check on their progress real quick and make sure they have a plan for the day. Then ideally I spend most of the rest of the day actually programming. The key is to avoid a lot of interruptions, because to write code efficiently you've got to concentrate for a long time. You learn to schedule unavoidable interruptions for either the start or the end of the day, so that you're not chopping up your day into lots of little pieces.

About 5 PM we get everyone (there aren't many of us) together in one room and talk briefly about what we did that day. People start to leave after that, and I often have the place to myself for two hours or more, which is a great opportunity to work on hairier stuff that takes some peace and quiet.

I normally try to leave by 7:30 or 8 PM, so I can get home and have a while to hang out with my wife before she goes to bed.

It's not for everyone but I think it's a pretty fun way to make a living.

What's the difference between a programmer, a developer, and a software engineer?

Asked by Artamus almost 12 years ago

"Programmer" and "developer" are pretty much synonyms, and refer to anyone who writes code, whether for love or money. "Software engineer" implies that the subject programs for a living, and that they've mastered what we call "programming in the large." What that latter refers to is the fact that making a large software system is not the same as making a small system, only with more of it. There are certain techniques and principles that help prevent a big system from becoming a giant unmaintainable mess, and a "software engineer" should ideally be competent in those.

I have a programmer/analyst aptitude examination to do, do you know anything about what kinda of topics would be on the exam itself? worried because i am pretty sucky at math.

Asked by Aaron over 11 years ago

The kinds of math that keep coming up in programming are mostly what they call "discrete math," which is logic and set theory more than the algebra and geometry you'd probably learn in high school. (That assumes high school still works like I remember.) So you can expect to see a fair number of logic problems. A typical one might be like:

 

1. John is taller than Mary
2. Mary is shorter than Steve

Hello, I need to somehow convert search results from Hotel websites and return the available rates to the corresponding search dates back into the form of a table or csv doc. I am unsure as to where I should start ? which systems to use or learn ?

Asked by marc over 11 years ago

If you're starting from no experience and want to get this done, your best bet is probably to use Amazon Mechanical Turk, and pay people about five cents per listing they enter.

Assume that video store employee works 60 hours.she get paid GH4.10 for the first 40 hours; she get 2 times the regular pay rate for hours up to 50hours; and she gets 3 times pay for all hours over 50. Assume the tax rate of 28%, write a c program

Asked by mose about 10 years ago

Sure thing. Here you go, you'll just need to fill in some details:



int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { [...calculate payment here...] return(0);}

function named groupPairs inputs a new array thats half the length of the given array. the function then fills the new array by concatenating the successive pairs of elements of given array, how do i write line that concatenates?

Asked by Nathaniel Turner over 11 years ago

Depends on the language, I suppose. We're talking mutable array passed by reference, so I'm thinking C and I'm thinking strings passed in.

I am not going to do your homework for you, but if my assumptions above are correct, here are some hints to get you thinking in the right direction.

• There are existing built-in ways to join strings. Use those if you are allowed. Even finding out how you find this out is a useful skill to develop.
• If you are expected to do the actual concatenation of strings yourself (which you might be if this is a basic exercise), understand how you know a string is over in C.
• Look at all the parts that go into a for loop and think about what each one really does: this is about getting past looking at the for syntax as a monolithic blob.

I need to be able to convert a flow chart into a program using visual basic. What is the quick and easiest way to do this?

Asked by StrcuturesGirl about 11 years ago

1. Learn to program in Visual Basic.
2. Write a Visual Basic program that corresponds to the flowchart.

hi i have a problem to open .D file plz tell me how to open it .

Asked by shahbaz about 10 years ago

It really depends on what language you're using. Reading a file is something almost every program has to do at some point, but some languages make you jump through more hoops than others.

For instance, this one line of Ruby:

data = File.read("filename")

replaces the many lines of C you need to accomplish the same thing.

can you please tell me what adding ?fd=1 to the back of a url does? I was trying to use a URL for a G+ page that would enable users to leave a review from desktop OR mobile the only way to do that is by placing ?fd=1 at the end of the desktop URL

Asked by stephanie over 10 years ago

It depends entirely on the site in question. Try asking Google.

Hello,
I am a web designer looking for inspiration for a website design (for any purpose) or creating a system that would be also created the aid of the web programming languages.

Asked by Sara over 10 years ago

Check out Foundation or Twitter Bootstrap. These are web design libraries that may give you the leg up you seem to be looking for.

Hello I started to learn prog 9 months ago, but I can't find the right language for my project, I want to create a felix clone

http://myfelix.software.informer.com/2.1/

in other words, an interactive program that runs WITHOUT a window.

Asked by Bobijoe about 10 years ago

So, I can't say for sure, but I think Flash might be a good bet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash

Is it difficult to learn how to set up a program to scrape data from a website? and how long would it take an experienced programmer?

Asked by DTSMT over 10 years ago

Compared to other programming tasks, it's not so hard--it's more a matter of gluing together big parts that other people have already made.

What gets tricky with screen scraping is dealing with pages that almost-but-don't-quite fit the pattern. Setting up a basic scraper is pretty easy, dealing with the exceptions to the rules is what gets you.

Design a calculator that evaluates an infix expressions entered by the user.
- You must use Stacks.
- The calculator accepts the 4 binary operators “+”, “-”, “*”, “/”
- Convert the infix to a postfix expression and display it.
- Evaluate the expr

Asked by kma over 10 years ago

Gladly. My freelance rate is $150 an hour, with a 40-hour minimum. If you're interested please post your e-mail address, name, mailing address, and the name of the company you work for/school you attend.

How much RAM do I really need? My choices are 8, 12 or 16 GB. I'm going to use my system for programming, specially advanced numerical programs. By increasing RAM, can I execute my programs & numerical models much faster or it mostly depends on CPU?

Asked by Siavash over 9 years ago

More RAM will never hurt performance but it may or may not help. Some tasks are "CPU-bound" and some are "memory-bound," meaning some will top out your CPU first and others will run through all your memory first. The only way to find out is to measure your particular usage and see.

When I'm buying a computer I tend to buy as much RAM as I can afford: you save money in the long run that way because the computer will have a longer useful life.

How To Make Own Game Like Ancient Empires 2 For PC

Asked by Rizqi about 10 years ago

Get millions of dollars, hire a game development studio. A commercial-quality game is the creation of hundreds of people working together.

I am learning C++ and want to know why is it not a good idea to redefined the predefined identifiers cout and fin

Asked by Leo about 10 years ago

Basically, because other people exist. Other people are either going to extend your code someday, or you'll be using code that other people wrote. And if you redefine "cout" or "fin," things will get as confused as if you redefined a common natural-language word like "dog" or "red."

what degree would you reccomend for a person to get into website programming and app development, computer science or computer programming, does either have benefits over the other?

Asked by spartan616 about 10 years ago

This is actually a very perceptive question. In short, if your heart lies specifically in website programming, a programming degree is probably better.

Computer science, properly speaking, is the branch of mathematics that deals with the theoretical underpinnings of computation. Computer programming is a practical, not so much a theoretical, discipline: how do you get a computer to do what you want to do? You could say that computer science is to computer programming as physics is to mechanical engineering. As a mechanical engineer you'd better know some physics, but your interest is mostly going to be in practical applications.

One secret of web programming is that, from a theoretical point of view, it's really simple. A browser somewhere makes a request to your site; based on that, you get some data out of a database; and then you wrap the bits of information you got in some HTML and send it back. What makes it trickier is being able to do that tens or hundreds of thousands of times per second, 24 hours a day, on all sorts of different browsers. But the algorithmic aspects are largely well understood and already taken care of.

Design a calculator that evaluates an infix expressions entered by the user.
- You must use Stacks.
- The calculator accepts the 4 binary operators “+”, “-”, “*”, “/”
- Convert the infix to a postfix expression and display it.
- Evaluate the expr

Asked by kholoud over 10 years ago

Do your own homework.

How do you change a computer application to a mobile app?

Asked by smile over 10 years ago

Generally you don't, but your question gives me an opportunity to explain a few interesting aspects of software engineering, so here we go anyway.

Engineers (software and otherwise) talk about the concept of "coupling." This means, roughly, "If I change Part A of this thing, how much if any do I have to change Parts B, C, D, et cetera?"

Good design usually calls for "loose coupling," which means that you can change one part mostly or totally independently of all other parts. In other words, Part A is a "black box" to Part B: Part B knows that it can get Part A to do something, but it doesn't have to know or care how Part A does that thing exactly, so you can replace Part A with something completely different, and as long as it continues to do the same task that Part A did, everyone's still happy with it.

When you see the opposite, "tight coupling," that means parts work together more closely, and it's a bigger pain to change one, because you have to change many others. Once in a while this is done for performance reasons, but usually it means that the design or implementation is bad.

So as programmers we like to make chunks of code that don't overlap, that only do one thing, and that offer certain services to other chunks of code ("expose an API") without actually committing ourselves to doing those services in a particular way. These high-level chunks of code are generically called "modules" although there are plenty of other terms too, for different contexts.

In particular, if you have an application with a complex UI, you would have one or more modules that did nothing but the UI: a module to put things in windows onscreen, to know what to do if someone clicks here or types there, and so on. But there would be more modules that handle things behind the scenes. Imagine for instance a mapping app where you could either type in an address, or say the address into the mic. These would be two separate modules, as piece of text in a window is a very different thing than a pattern of sounds, but the meaning of the address "123 Elm Street" is the same in both cases, so both of these UI modules would talk to one common module in the "backend," which means basically all the code that does something that the user doesn't see directly.

And this brings us, finally, to an answer of sorts to your question: if you can get your hands on the source code to the original application (which if the application is proprietary good luck with that), and if the UI is loosely coupled to the backend, and if you know how to program in whatever language the application is written in, then you replace the UI modules with modules appropriate to a phone or tablet.

The rest is just details. Thousands and thousands of details.

Hello,
I am using GameMaker to create a small Jump and Run game but when i press the Left key it enters into a Main loop which basically stops the game. Please help ASAP as I need an answer quickly.
Thanks,
Ahmed Jamal

Asked by ajamalm3@gmail.com over 9 years ago

Not a clue, have never touched GameMaker.

Hello I'm still a beginner in uni so if you will please show me how to draw a flowchart for this pattern

*
***
*****
*******

Asked by Shatha about 10 years ago

I can't. The last time I drew a flowchart was...possibly never. They're not much used anymore.

Hello,
i'm building a sharing website for an internet providing company, i want this website to be accessed by only registered users for that company or else the website would be forbidden, how can i manage that? depending on their IP's or what ?

Asked by Sarah over 10 years ago

You should only do this by IPs if the site is going to be used exclusively from their internal network. Otherwise, for a number of reasons, it's not a reliable technique.

If that's not the case, I'd see about implementing single-sign on with their site.

using RAM Chips of size 1024*1bit, Design 32 k words of memory for a 32-bit process system.

1-calculate the number of chips used
2-determine the number of address line

Asked by yasser over 10 years ago

No.

Write an application (name the class “AddCash”) that adds a number of coins (stored in 6 integer variables) and displays the total in dollars and cents. Define a variable (type double) to store the total number of cents.

Asked by Elpz over 10 years ago

10 PRINT "I think some random programmer on the Internet is going to do my homework for me"

20 GOTO 10

 

 

Give that a try.

Hello, can you please give me ideas and stuff how to create a smart counter that can be used as a "code number" generated for a program? I've tried searching online but can't seem to find any.. please help

Asked by apc about 10 years ago

I'm not really clear on what you want, but it sounds like you may want a hash function like MD5 or SHA-1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5

a certain electrical company charges for electricity as follows:

kilowatt-hours cost

1-200 50.00
201-100 50.00+.05
1001 and more 50.00+.03

Asked by Xel about 10 years ago

That's nice.

hello , What is better visualbasic.net or c ???

Asked by Sherif almost 10 years ago

C. But if you're asking because you're looking for a language to learn as your first language, I recommend Python over both of these.

Problem : Compiler Design - Limit the loops
Rajni is a newbie to the programming and while learning the programming language he came to know the following rules:
???• Each program must start with '{' and end with '}'.
???• Each progr

Asked by periyasamy over 10 years ago

Ask the professor for help.

What programming language would be best to code a program that identifies, manipulates, and processes audio inputs like music or tones?

This program would be used to eg. distinguish different tones, and instruments.

Asked by Jackie about 10 years ago

It's not a matter of the language. Most programming languages are general-purpose. It's like asking "Is English or French better for writing novels?"

The answer is whichever one you know and can either find appropriate libraries for, or can write them in.

Can you please explain very basically what REST and SOAP are and also if either of them are actually needed in a simple web application.

Asked by Zac over 10 years ago

The absolute simplest explanation I can think of, is they're both ways of using other people's systems on the web, and if you don't need to do that for your application, you don't need to worry about them yet.

how do i write a simple algorithm that will check win for tic tac toe diagonals?

Asked by John about 10 years ago

The details depend on how you've represented your tic-tac-toe grid internally. But in general, observe that there are only two possible diagonal wins: upper-left to lower-right, or upper-right to lower-left. That's just two possibilities you have to check.

Men and women are running races. We need to know what was the lowest men's score and the highest womens score. Data are given so mens score alternate with those of women. First men's then womens. The program stops when a time of 0 is readfromman scr?

Asked by Lexxx about 10 years ago

Please see the note above. DO NOT COPY AND PASTE YOUR HOMEWORK QUESTIONS HERE.

Shall I try and be a programmer this late in life? I am 35 have been learning some for about a year and like it but I worry after I master it in about 3 years I will be around 37/38 is that too old to get work in the field?

Asked by Doug about 10 years ago

Go for it! You were planning to be alive and doing something in three years anyway, right?

There's a bit of an ageism problem in the industry, but I no longer think it's as bad as I used to think. The hard part is getting the first opportunity, and after you've proven yourself on a project even once, getting work will be much easier.

Hello, is it possible to write a Windows application (.exe) that will check something on a website (check if a string is on a website page source), and if the string isn't found then run a shortcut from my desktop or an .exe. Thank you!

Asked by Sam almost 10 years ago

Well, it's been maybe 20 years since I wrote a program for Windows. But that said, although I can't tell you exactly how to do it, that should be eminently possible.

What exactly are elements in Javascript?? The web seems to be void of a definition on them. Or maybe the answer is too obvious?

Asked by Bos about 10 years ago

If we're talking about a Web context, the elements Javascript is concerned with are HTML elements: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_element

Those elements make up the browser's internal representation of a page, and mostly they correspond to an HTML tag on the page and whatever stuff is inside the tag. For example:

<p>This "p" tag indicates a paragraph of text.</p>

By manipulating the elements, Javascript can change what's displayed on the page. That ability is what made possible, over the past 10 years or so, all the fancy special effects that became standard on Web pages.

Let's say I want to write code that does this: an input into the Google Search field causes the text to fly over the earth, via Google Earth, to the location of the top search result. What size programming team is needed? Or just sell idea to Google?

Asked by Bry over 9 years ago

You can't sell the idea to Google.

To implement it takes just one programmer--if they're the right one.

I have a website that sells signs through Big Commerce, I would like to add a page where a customer could type in what he wants on a sign and it would be display his sign on different size signs I offer for sale.

Asked by J Robert about 10 years ago

Okay. Sounds like something people might pay for.

Did you have a question?

I have to make a Isometric game fantasy themed game, since I only have a lil delphi knowledge what language should I use to make it.
something easy and intuitive please. And yes, i know this is oppinion based, that's what I want, oppinions

Asked by Miguel Silva about 10 years ago

You can write a game in Delphi perfectly well. (I think. I don't actually know Delphi, but last I heard it's a general-purpose language).

Except in a few specialized applications, "What language should I use to write X?" is not the right question to be asking.

How do I send my visual basic project to a friend via an email attachment?

Asked by Nick over 9 years ago

I don't know exactly how Visual Basic encourages you to organize projects, but if everything is under one directory, there are programs built specifically to take a directory tree and pack it neatly into one file so that you can easily send around that one file. I hear that 7Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) is pretty good.

Note: Please forgive my ignorance of programming lingo
What does "error: expected expression before ‘int’ "
in "c = int gah(d);" mean?
int gah(d)is a function I wrote outside of int main() and I'm trying to assign its value to c. How do I fix it?

Asked by madnecessity about 10 years ago

I'm assuming this is C, which is what it looks like, anyway. Try leaving out that "int" so that the line reads:

c = gah(d);

You need the type when you're declaring or defining a function, but not when you're actually using it.

can I update version of galaxy s4 without rooting it fist and installind a recovery mode ?

Asked by 049 about 10 years ago

This is programming in here, tech support is down the hall, third door on the right.

is it possible (or advisable) to start an internet company when i can't write a single line of code? i have lots of ideas but talk is cheap and i am no jack ma. (who till today can't code)

Asked by kelvinC about 10 years ago

Well, you have to have SOMETHING besides an idea to bring to the table: ideas are cheap. I used to set myself an "idea quota" each day, where I'd require myself to think up and write down ten ideas for a project every day. That's a lot of work at first but after a week or two they come very easily.

If you know, for example, how to run a small business, or how to sell things to people, or even how to MANAGE a technical project (which is a very different skill than working on one as a developer), that would be good.