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Closed 9 years ago.
I was looking around SO to find some exercises or interesting problems to do when learning a new language. Mostly of the time learning a language directly from reading the book does not work, even when a book tries to make an application from scratch to end.
Besides Code Kata, 15 Exercises to know... and Project Euler what are some other resources?
Also, what if the language in question is mainly used for web development..or that is the main intent of the developer for learning the language. In those cases, I doubt stuff in Project Euler will help. Are there sets of functionalities that should be implemented in a web app for a developer to feel confident about his skills in that language/framework?
The main and best resource is tasks that you care about! Come on, don't you have a backlog of "N cool things I wish I could be doing (to make my life -- or somebody else's -- better)"?! I've had dozens and dozens of things on such backlogs ever since... well, as far back as I can recall. So pick one, and do it with the new language (or framework, or whatever) -- the fact that you care about the result, rather than it being an artificial task set by somebody else!, makes all the difference!
When learning a new language I usually build something that I've previously built in another language.
Try to rewrite some simple tools you wrote in another language, if it is possible. In this case you'll know what do you need to do it and what is the difference between those languages.
FizzBuzz ( this is for the req. )
Create something that the language you are learning is good at. For instance, if you're working with Ruby on Rails, make a data driven web application. If you're working with Perl, write something that does advanced text parsing. Most languages were created to solve a certain set of problems. Focusing on those problems allows you to learn the differentiating features of the language you are studying.
There are many puzzles and challenges you can take part in, such as Facebook Career Puzzles. These puzzles are for people who want to work for facebook, but there is no reason you can't try them even if you aren't interested in a job. They start from very simple, to complex.
Programming Puzzles for Interviews (you could write programs to solve these)
Programming Puzzles hosted by companies like this one are also fun.
I would say create something useful to help yourself, or try tackling some puzzles. In addition to learning new ways to tackle problems, you'll learn the language better.
Related
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Closed 10 years ago.
I want to spend the summer getting into web development. I have some basic C++ and Java background. I was told by some people to master HTML & CSS first then Javascript. Then someone else told me that I should go with Grails while another person told me Ruby on Rails. I've always been interested in web development but never had the time to fully learn it and now I have some free time and I'm hoping to hone my skills.
The problem is there are so many platforms and languages that it's quite confusing. I want to eventually create a website and then embark on a tech startup. I'm quite confused. Please help. I know I need to master HTML, CSS but what do you recommend?
Thanks.
I personally use Grails and JavaScript for developing web apps. I like Grails very much, as I used to work with Java and Grails adds many cool features to the old Java and makes it easier to use. But I wouldn't learn Grails now because its future is uncertain. Ruby is a better candidate, but I don't know this language at all.
IMHO Javascript is a must. If you know it well, I guess you can use it both for client side and server side (Node.js). And I think JS will be use much more in the future, so learning it is a good start.
In conclusion, I recommend Javascript.
Cheers,
Lojza
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Closed 10 years ago.
I am preparing my first course on Numerical Methods for Electrical Engineering and would like to collect feedback from colleagues with experience in the subject, about which language or environment has generated more positive results in relation to student learning. MATLAB / Octave?, Python? C / C++? It would be interesting to use the R? Sorry if the question is outside the scope of the site.
Thanks for the feedback
Octave
Gentle learning curve-- easier to start using, than C, FORTRAN or even Python. Allows you to focus your curriculum on the concepts and not the minutiae.
Uses an interpreted programming model-- students receive feedback quickly. No compile/link. Rapid feedback also encourages students to explore concepts freely.
It works very well with the command line interface. Simple is good.
Runs on many operating systems.
Many, many scripts available freely.
Large community that supports MATLAB and Octave. Help is never far away.
Installation is very simple.
Many high-level numerical function are built-in, so to speak. You can choose to let your students use them, or not. It will depend on the curriculum.
Octave is free and works very well.
The only thing I miss is IDE integration with a debugger.
Check with the other faculty. They might have an opinion about what tool sets are appropriate for the class.
Environments with a Read-Execute-Print-Loop are far, far better than anything which requires a compiler. C and C++ (and Java for that matter) impose some intellectual overheads that may not be helpful.
In all cases (Matlab, Python, R) the basic rules of Floating Point arithmetic are absolutely essential.
It seems like (almost) every week someone posts yet another question here on why
>>> 555*(1/.555)
999.9999999999999
happens in Python (or Java or C).
Please don't allow your students to ask this question here.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I want to make really good websites.
Pet projects do really help in exploring blank spots and consciously mastering aspects you want to acquire.
I'm happy with the process and the result but what to do next with this product?
Users start to use it and I don't want to support them because I want to continue building my skills, not end user products. Hosting for all these web apps cost some money too.
Should I just code it till I find it interesting and technically challenging and then just junk it and move to another one? Or release everything as Open Source and don't care about support?
The reason why I don't want to do support is because I want to specialize. There is too wide topic already so I don't want to wide it even further.
I heard about the idea that you shouldn't care a lot about what you working on during your early years in development because pretty much everything will be junk. So just try more. Is it the way I should follow?
What is more effective?
You don't say how technical your websites will be - are you looking to build pure HTML, more dynamic DHTML or web applications with server scripts?
Regardless, you should look at taking on pet projects that challenge you in a variety of areas. As you get more experienced with web projects, you'll find that you end up doing many tasks over and over for different projects.
A good start would be to take on pet projects to tackle 'common' problems (layouts, styling, user logins/sessions, persisting data etc) and then look to abstract your work to a series of components that you can reuse in future projects. This way you will build up a library of reusable 'widgets' that means you don't have to scrap everything and start again each time.
As you get more experienced, set yourself tougher challenges, and before long you'll have a considerable arsenal of sample code, if architected well it will be mostly reusable, and at the same time you'll expand your experience.
Good luck!
I wouldn't say your early years are junk. Let's not think about the obvious intangible gains, like experience, insight, pattern recognition..etc....one tangible gain to think about is the development and organization of your own method libraries. My early years were in ASP so having my own set of includes was invaluable to my overall success and efficiency. I'd carry over a set of utilities and databasing methods that I had previously developed so new projects got easier and easier because the bare bones stuff had already been vetted.
It may not be important as it was 10 years ago because class libraries are getting so robust ...but you'll still find that as you develop new projects it'll be very useful to have utilities that you've already developed and organized into your very own class libraries.
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Closed 9 years ago.
No matter how proficient you are at programming C or Java, you should consider adding multi-threaded programming to your set of skills.
This is NOT something you should try to learn on your own. It is MUCH harder to learn than sequential programming. If you are a Technical Manager, you SHOULD invest in retraining your key staff in multi-threaded programming. You might also monitor the research activities in concurrent programming languages (like those listed above). You can be sure that your competitors will.
This is a quote from this article. I imagine most of us here are very proficient in teaching ourselves different languages, data structures, algorithms, etc, and I do recognize the mental shift that needs to occur to do parallel programming right.
I reject the idea that one cannot learn parallel programming "right" on their own. So what's the most responsible way to teach oneself parallel programming? What books and other resources are recommended?
Edit: Here are some more details. I would be mostly applying these to scientific computing, but I was looking for general, language-agnostic material/advice. I am also looking for a heathy dose of practical theory. Imagine you have an excellent developer who loves math and computer science, but never took a course on parallel programming. Now imagine he has a deadline for a problem (say 1 year), and you have to give him the materials to figure out whether parallelization would be helpful, and how to implement it right. What resources would you give him? That is how I (and I hope other developers) would be interested in learning parallelization/multi-threading.
If you pitched up in my workplace and asked that question I'd throw a couple of books at you:
Introduction to Parallel Computing and Parallel Scientific Computing
Your response may well be 'that's not what I want to learn about !' so come back and be a bit more specific in your question and we'll be able to be a bit more specific in our answers.
But the most 'responsible' way to teach yourself this stuff is the same as the most responsible way to teach yourself any programming stuff: get a problem, get a toolbag, get a deadline, and get cracking.
For Microsoft technology, there is a wealth of information at the MSDN Parallel Computing portal here. You could start out with the Getting Started links.
That article is basically an advertisement for training services. You should treat a salesman's opinion of the value of his own products with a degree of circumspection.
I've no idea how you learned everything else you already know about computers, but if that worked for you I'd stick with the same approach for the next thing you want to learn.
I can't recommend any language/platform agnostic books - I suspect they'd be very academic anyway. If you're actually on .NET, then Jeff Richter writes a lot of good stuff about threading, and I believe the 3rd edition of his C#/CLR book (earlier editions were excellent) has a great deal about parallel programming.
if you read everything Google finds for the stuff below, you'll have a pretty good start. Assuming general IT background, etc. These are not language or OS specific:
Peterson's algorithm
atomic test-and-set
critical section
rendezvous
memory barriers
lock-free algorithms
The mathematical background of this is probably Petri net.
Read Dijkstra.
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Closed 10 years ago.
When do you feel that it's appropriate/necessary to take deeper dives into the source code of open source tools to gain an understanding of the toolsets that you use? (nHibernate, StructureMap, Rhino Mocks, etc.)
When it doesn't work the way I expect or I need to implement something that isn't described very well in the documentation or with examples. Usually, it's a response to doing something that I think should work, but not understanding why it doesn't. FWIW, this also applies whenever I can access the source code, regardless of how "open" it is.
I would say there are two scenarios for that:
When the OpenSource product is part of your core business (your company depends on it).
When you want to start contributing to it.
I start diving into the source code anytime I need to know: what does this do? Or why does this not work how I think it should. This comes usually after reading documentation, googling, etc.
Also if it's a framework I've used for a while - it's in my best interest to know the source code a little bit as a reference point to know how it works.
If you want to know how any framework works, you always have to start with: "What would this IoC/ORM framework have to do in order to perform this function." I find thinking from the inside out helps sometimes with frameworks.
You may need to do this if the toolset you are using does not provide functionality that you need, or if there are bugs in your tools.
For example, recently I was using a JavaScript grid library that did not support sorting a column by certain date/time formats - so I had to go into their code and understand how it works so I could come up with a workaround. In the end I had to implement this myself, and contributed the code back to their project.
I think in general, if you are doing something that requires deep diving, then you are probably doing something you shouldn't be doing. When you need to know things at a level where you aren't doing standard things, you need to think really carefully about whether you are doing the right thing or not.
The exception to this is when you are building something where the library is in the realm of your company's core competency. If you are building an online build system, you probably want to know way too much about the underlying build systems (Maven or whatever), and you should probably deep dive on those until you know them well.