Programming thread

I'm not in PhD and I'm not even in CS lul
 
Apparently Slack has been down for a lot of people today. If only there were some sort of non-proprietary, distributed chat system computer users could use to communicate. Bonus points if you don't need some heavy-ass Electron app to use it. This really seems like a problem that should have been solved decades ago.

Oh wait, it was. It's called IRC and it's how I learned about Slack being down for some people.
 
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Least Concern said:
Apparently Slack has been down for a lot of people today. If only there were some sort of non-proprietary, distributed chat system computer users could use to communicate. Bonus points if you don't need some heavy-ass Electron app to use it. This really seems like a problem that should have been solved decades ago.

Oh wait, it was. It's called IRC and it's how I learned about Slack being down for some people.
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Yeah but Slack has newlines and reactions. And you can put your pronouns in your display name so your coworkers can see how woke you are.
 
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I'm getting into Forth programming on a 68k Mac. It's surprisingly painless. Since I started doing Forth again the first time in decades some months ago, I'm seeking it out on older systems and always find a few implementations, some quite nice, some quite buggy. Of course you can't really do a whole lot compared to modern computers and it is sometimes a bit painful to set it all up, but hey. I was also really impressed by JForth for the Amiga.

Sadly, at least on my experiments on the Amiga, it's not really worthwhile to use seriously. On one hand JForth (Forth in general, really) is still low level enough to be complicated to do when poking the hardware directly (68k Assembler isn't that bad) and the compiler adds a bit of noticeable overhead when you look at what it produces when disassembling. Not per se slow or super inefficient or anything, but not great either when you run on a 68k 7 Mhz CPU.

I was always intrigued by Forth but never really found a good use for it where another language wouldn't have been faster or easier to use, or frankly, both. Anyone ever felt similar about a language?
 
Spasticus Autisticus said:
Yeah but Slack has newlines and reactions. And you can put your pronouns in your display name so your coworkers can see how woke you are.
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Least Concern said:
Apparently Slack has been down for a lot of people today. If only there were some sort of non-proprietary, distributed chat system computer users could use to communicate. Bonus points if you don't need some heavy-ass Electron app to use it. This really seems like a problem that should have been solved decades ago.

Oh wait, it was. It's called IRC and it's how I learned about Slack being down for some people.
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Zulip is actually a decent alternative. Hope it'll catch steam.
In the meanwhile, Slack is being an old church lady and chides me every time I use "blacklist"
 
Hello all. I'm currently learning how to code in my spare time (I dedicate at least an hour a day) and I am 1/3 done with the course on Python I am taking. Despite initially starting because I wanted a hobby, I am finding myself enjoying programming and don't see myself hating this a few years down the line. The course I am taking recommends that upon completion I have two paths ahead of me. The first option recommends learning OOP and an industry standard language followed by learning High-level object design with design patterns and principles. The second option is pointing me towards browser-based web development. I would like to know which would be a better path as I want a career in programming. Also if any of you can entertain me, how does one get a job in these fields? Is a diploma required? Thank you for your time.
 
Jan Karol Swit said:
Hello all. I'm currently learning how to code in my spare time (I dedicate at least an hour a day) and I am 1/3 done with the course on Python I am taking. Despite initially starting because I wanted a hobby, I am finding myself enjoying programming and don't see myself hating this a few years down the line. The course I am taking recommends that upon completion I have two paths ahead of me. The first option recommends learning OOP and an industry standard language followed by learning High-level object design with design patterns and principles. The second option is pointing me towards browser-based web development. I would like to know which would be a better path as I want a career in programming. Also if any of you can entertain me, how does one get a job in these fields? Is a diploma required? Thank you for your time.
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As a web developer, I recommend looking at other types of development. Maybe web dev jobs are easy to find, but you're likely to make more money doing application or system development if you know how to.

That said, why not learn both? Maybe you'l find that web dev appeals to you more regardless of my warnings about income.

Also, as someone without an IT degree, I recommend getting an IT degree. :) There are some companies which will hire you without one if you can show you have a decent amount of experience, but for someone just starting out in the field, that piece of paper will show to prospective employments that you at least have a baseline level of competence. (In my case I got lucky because I found an employer early in my career who hired me despite my lack of professional experience at the time, but he also started out paying me less per hour than I make in a handful of minutes at my current freelance rate.) And, of course, you'll learn a broad range of various skills in the process of getting that degree. Even if some of that learning is rather shallow, it at least gives you a baseline to build upon later in your career.
 
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Least Concern said:
Also, as someone without an IT degree, I recommend getting an IT degree. :)
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And as someone with a CS degree, I also recommend getting an IT degree alongside it. CS mostly goes hard in on theory and 'text side' of it all. It does very little to teach you about the actual infrastructure of modern systems. Understanding that is vital for applying real solutions to real problems (fast!) rather than dicking around on paper trying to extrapolate a solution out from something uselessly abstract.
 
me in a few years after going into CS

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Least Concern said:
Also, as someone without an IT degree, I recommend getting an IT degree. :) There are some companies which will hire you without one if you can show you have a decent amount of experience, but for someone just starting out in the field, that piece of paper will show to prospective employments that you at least have a baseline level of competence. (In my case I got lucky because I found an employer early in my career who hired me despite my lack of professional experience at the time, but he also started out paying me less per hour than I make in a handful of minutes at my current freelance rate.) And, of course, you'll learn a broad range of various skills in the process of getting that degree. Even if some of that learning is rather shallow, it at least gives you a baseline to build upon later in your career.
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From your employment experience in the sector, do you have any observations on employment opportunities based on coding bootcamps compared to self-taught and compared to an IT degree? Currently I'm considering retraining (literally I am thinking of the "learn 2 code" meme, given my previous sector of work), but a big thing for me would be the amount of time required to get a useful qualification (i.e. one that would help me get a job quickly), and whether I should focus on a full-time bootcamp for a couple of months, or look for longer time period part-time options while retaining full time employment in previous sector.
 
soulless guarantee said:
From your employment experience in the sector, do you have any observations on employment opportunities based on coding bootcamps compared to self-taught and compared to an IT degree? Currently I'm considering retraining (literally I am thinking of the "learn 2 code" meme, given my previous sector of work), but a big thing for me would be the amount of time required to get a useful qualification (i.e. one that would help me get a job quickly), and whether I should focus on a full-time bootcamp for a couple of months, or look for longer time period part-time options while retaining full time employment in previous sector.
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Bootcamps are shite and a grift.

Sincerely,
your local friendly programming bootcamp instructor
 
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Rusty Crab said:
And as someone with a CS degree, I also recommend getting an IT degree alongside it. CS mostly goes hard in on theory and 'text side' of it all. It does very little to teach you about the actual infrastructure of modern systems. Understanding that is vital for applying real solutions to real problems (fast!) rather than dicking around on paper trying to extrapolate a solution out from something uselessly abstract.
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Yes but no. Unless you spent all your youth going to parties and having sex IT degrees are the epitome of that scene in Good Will Hunting where "you dropped 60 grand on a degree you could have got for a buck fifty in library late fees". Bullshit certifications are a much quicker and more cost-effective way to show to HR drones that you know how to turn it off and on again.
 
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soulless guarantee said:
From your employment experience in the sector, do you have any observations on employment opportunities based on coding bootcamps compared to self-taught and compared to an IT degree? Currently I'm considering retraining (literally I am thinking of the "learn 2 code" meme, given my previous sector of work), but a big thing for me would be the amount of time required to get a useful qualification (i.e. one that would help me get a job quickly), and whether I should focus on a full-time bootcamp for a couple of months, or look for longer time period part-time options while retaining full time employment in previous sector.
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It depends. If someone had something on their resume saying only that they attended a boot camp on topic X, I would consider that they only had a very elementary level of experience with topic X. But if they attended a boot camp about X and also did something like maintained an OSS project using X for the last few months,, I could take it a bit more seriously.

I guess in short, I wouldn't place bets on only attending a boot camp on a topic impressing HR people very much. But IANA HR person.
 
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Lads, I started reading Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein, and I'm already getting fucking filtered by the loop invariant explanation. Am I retarded?
 
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BLEACHED.COM said:
Lads, I started reading Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein, and I'm already getting fucking filtered by the loop invariant explanation. Am I retarded?
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No, you're in fact in realm of pure, abstract mathematics at this point. These formalisms are a dense piece of logic (in the mathematical sense) for a reason. If you're not in a CS course, you don't need to perfectly undestand every part of it. You won't be doing formal proofs of correctness when writing the code (unless you work at NASA I guess), you just need a general understanding of what your preconditions and assumptions are before the loop starts and after each iteration.

Treat CLRS more like a lexicon, less like a book that you need to read entirely from start to finish. Pick and choose what you need and what does interest you.
 
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PuffyGroundCloud said:
So I'm going back to school for Master in EE and I need suggestion for good C programming book.
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I've been working my way through Modern C by Jens Gustedt. You can get it in PDF from the author's website for free, or if you want the print version, you can buy it from the publisher, Manning (never buy a Manning book full price, they run sales all the time).
 
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