New coder needs some help

[vorticalbox]

10 hours ago, Dat Guy said:

Snakes are poisonous.

actually snakes are venomous.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

If you're new to programming in general, it doesn't really matter what language you use to learn with. Most popular languages use the same basic principals that carry over when you want to start learning some other languages.

Exavtly, so start with C++ because it’s the best. 

 

Jkjk. Go to the store, get a 6 sided die with the digits 1 through 6 on it. 

Roll the die and correlate the number to the chart below:

1. Learn python

2. Learn java

3. Learn javascript

4. Learn PHP

5. Learn HTML then CSS

6. Learn C++ and buy a pizza. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 hours ago, iHDCool said:

So I was chatting with this software engi friend of mine, and he told me that he started coding by copying other people's code, breaking it down and understanding it and I guess eventually you learn those stuff and you can mix up different lines of code to make your program. I'm guessing thats what @Cruorzy meant? Is that a good way? 

Because I'm either starting with normal beginer tutorials in youtube that go over basic stuff such as decision making structures and repetitive structures or I find code and break it down to understand it.  Out of these two, what do you guys think it's the best way to learn? I'm still making up my mind. 

While this is a good approach, it's also a bad one depending on the complexity of the source.

 

Also it's a good idea to have a development environment that includes a debugger so you can run the program in that, step through the code, and see how the variables change. Static analysis, where you examine the source code without running the app, can only get you so far.

 

47 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

actually snakes are venomous.

And pythons aren't.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

While this is a good approach, it's also a bad one depending on the complexity of the source.

 

Also it's a good idea to have a development environment that includes a debugger so you can run the program in that, step through the code, and see how the variables change. Static analysis, where you examine the source code without running the app, can only get you so far.

Personally I learned a little bit of C from a high school robotics class, then a tonnnnnn of codecademy (it taught me well. I’m a fan of it) then reading a C++ textbook and doing the projects in them. Finally I got better by modifying Unity 3D C# scripts and making my own whilst spamming the programming section saying “it doesn’t workkkkkk!!!!” 

 

4 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

And pythons aren't. 

Pythons with venom lazers strapped rapped to their frikkin heads are. 

[Cruorzy]

16 hours ago, iHDCool said:

Script kiddie..? I don't see how that's related here.... 

I wanted to copy-paste the google definition of script kiddie

"a person who uses existing computer scripts or codes to hack into computers, lacking the expertise to write their own." 

So @Cruorzy you're saying that I should copy other people's code, change some little things, put it all together and try to learn from that? How can you make an application for OS, a web page if you don't know the basics of each language that you want to use. I agree on the fact that nobody will agree that 1 language is the best of all, but I'm guessing that if you learn the languages, one by one, it's better. But hey, I'm just a newbie, and that's just my opinion. 

M.Yurizaki answered it like i would have.

14 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

If you're new to programming in general, it doesn't really matter what language you use to learn with. Most popular languages use the same basic principals that carry over when you want to start learning some other languages.

 

 

11 hours ago, iHDCool said:

So I was chatting with this software engi friend of mine, and he told me that he started coding by copying other people's code, breaking it down and understanding it and I guess eventually you learn those stuff and you can mix up different lines of code to make your program. I'm guessing thats what @Cruorzy meant? Is that a good way? 

Because I'm either starting with normal beginer tutorials in youtube that go over basic stuff such as decision making structures and repetitive structures or I find code and break it down to understand it.  Out of these two, what do you guys think it's the best way to learn? I'm still making up my mind. 

There is not 1 correct approach and it is certainly not mine if there was, this is what i advice mostly since it has worked for me and many others. The definition of script kiddie is a bit different when I think about it, surely it involves copy pasting parts of code but then you wan't to improve it. I started PHP which is a language where you have to care about every inch of security. If i never did something with the registration scripts examples i found back in the day "oy boy" i would have been screwed.

 

I still advice learning from other code like we all do, all hail the mighty stackoverflow..

Then you got a choice what you gonna do, lets say you found a registration example. it includes how to interact with the DB setting up SESSIONS and hashing secure information.

1. Copy paste it and build further.

2. Copy paste and improve.

3. See how it is done, build it yourself from multiple sources.

 

There is no shame in using/reading others code, specially when learning.

This will be a period where you find this fine, when you start to gain more knowledge you will see you build it from scratch without having to lookup some script.

That's when you see improvement.

 

Learning a specific language it useless in my opinion in this state.

I ain't looking for the best ways to optimize PHP or even look through all the release notes, this is bad but i have limited time in my free time I want to dedicate to learning coding. I'm sure i'll step away from PHP too some other language. (sure i do look at release notes but not straight for a few hours, and mostly when i'm not able to code let's say omw to work.)

 

The longer the post gets the more chance someone will disagree with me in a unfriendly way so I try to close it from now.

 

Spend your first months getting small project done, maybe pickup a bigger project (I mostly focus on things that are useful to me) code your free time away like it is nothing and keep active on certain forums follow the questions about your language a bit to see what people encounter. Keep reading other people their code this is a great skill you need, it is not always like reading a book it can be a maze just depends who wrote it.

 

Once you feel able you can "make stuff" try to pickup best practices, maybe even a framework to get idea's to improve the quality of your code. Making good code is the most IMPORTANT thing you can do. Good code also has various definitions. A world for me opened when I for the first time i saw a technique called MVC I noticed I like the way that works and hold certain thing together and don't want to live without anymore. (But that does not mean i will not look further for others to replace it with)

 

Like you probably have noticed there is no simple 3 lines answer on how to start, probably "All roads will lead to Rome."

Get on a path work your way from there, hop over to an other one (if it is a language or the way to learn) it does not really matter, as long you improve yourself you will be on the right track. You make the choices which learning path is the best for you and the only way to know that is by starting already instead of listening to us "coders" on what language you got to pick.

 

I'm not too long in this world but if I want or choose to learn something it is possible without any doubt, making post likes this will help alot 

That was the time i had restrict internet access and tried with the few resources i could access to make something work, it worked and If i never looked at it again implement it in every project as a registration page i would have been laughed at. Even then I knew most things i had to improve but couldn't and in my spare time i did a bit but was much more intro Rocket League at the time.

 

TLDR : Write crappy code or good code but keep improving yourself, that is what i find as a decent start.

[Nuluvius]

On 28/11/2017 at 10:29 PM, iHDCool said:

So what would you recommand for a newbie coder who wants to learn as much as he can on programming that can be useful for software engi or being a cybersecurity engi? 

If it's Software Engineering that interests you, even creating good quality software in general, then you will certainly need the theory. This is something that transcends simply picking a language or languages as it is language agnostic and assists with the inference of knowledge and the orientation of where one is within the architectural landscape. If one has a good, broad understanding of the theory then they can quickly and efficiently assimilate new technologies and languages previously unencountered and become productive in them relatively quickly.

 

If you do want to go down this route then I would strongly encourage you to begin your studies of the theory as early as possible and run them in parallel to playing around in whatever syntax you choose. Any chimp can bang around in a given syntax and produce reams and reams of code but creating good quality, eloquent, robust and extensible software that adheres to good engineering principles and practices is entirely another matter.

 

That's why I said this in relation to Codecademy:

On 28/11/2017 at 10:21 PM, Nuluvius said:

Good in the sense that you'll probably get fair comprehension of basic syntax and flow control from it... and that's about where it ends.

Because you will not be getting exposure to the theory there.

On 28/11/2017 at 10:29 PM, iHDCool said:

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Indeed, I've compiled a list of starting points for you:

 

Principles, Practices and Patterns

• Single Responsibility, Open-Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation and Dependency Inversion (SOLID)
• Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability (ACID)
• Inversion of Control (IoC)
• Dependency Injection
• Design Patterns
  • Model View ViewModel (MVVM)
  • Model View Controller (MVC)
  • Pluralsight Design Patterns Library
  • Source Making Design Patterns Library
  • Game Programming Patterns
• Hexagonal Architecture/Ports and Adaptors
• Don't repeat yourself (DRY)
• Keep it simple, Stupid (KISS)
• Composition over Inheritance
• Information Hiding
• Encapsulation
• Implementation Detail

Methodologies

• Agile Software Development
• Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Behaviour Driven Development (BDD)

Paradigms

• Programming Paradigms
• Comparison of Programming Paradigms

Be Aware of

• Code Smells
• Design Smells
• Software Rot
• Anti-patterns
• Cyclomatic Complexity
• Obfuscation

I hope this may provide you with a bit more of a flavour of what you may be in for if you do decide that this path is of interest to you.

[iHDCool]

5 hours ago, Nuluvius said:

If it's Software Engineering that interests you, even creating good quality software in general, then you will certainly need the theory. This is something that transcends simply picking a language or languages as it is language agnostic and assists with the inference of knowledge and the orientation of where one is within the architectural landscape. If one has a good, broad understanding of the theory then they can quickly and efficiently assimilate new technologies and languages previously unencountered and become productive in them relatively quickly.

 

If you do want to go down this route then I would strongly encourage you to begin your studies of the theory as early as possible and run them in parallel to playing around in whatever syntax you choose. Any chimp can bang around in a given syntax and produce reams and reams of code but creating good quality, eloquent, robust and extensible software that adheres to good engineering principles and practices is entirely another matter.

 

That's why I said this in relation to Codecademy:

Because you will not be getting exposure to the theory there.

Indeed, I've compiled a list of starting points for you:

 

Principles, Practices and Patterns

• Single Responsibility, Open-Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation and Dependency Inversion (SOLID)
• Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability (ACID)
• Inversion of Control (IoC)
• Dependency Injection
• Design Patterns
  • Model View ViewModel (MVVM)
  • Model View Controller (MVC)
  • Pluralsight Design Patterns Library
  • Source Making Design Patterns Library
  • Game Programming Patterns
• Hexagonal Architecture/Ports and Adaptors
• Don't repeat yourself (DRY)
• Keep it simple, Stupid (KISS)
• Composition over Inheritance
• Information Hiding
• Encapsulation
• Implementation Detail

Methodologies

• Agile Software Development
• Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Behaviour Driven Development (BDD)

Paradigms

• Programming Paradigms
• Comparison of Programming Paradigms

Be Aware of

• Code Smells
• Design Smells
• Software Rot
• Anti-patterns
• Cyclomatic Complexity
• Obfuscation

I hope this may provide you with a bit more of a flavour of what you may be in for if you do decide that this path is of interest to you.

Holy shiet .-.  That's a lot of theory lol, and all that is needed? 

[Nuluvius]

41 minutes ago, iHDCool said:

Holy shiet .-.  That's a lot of theory lol, and all that is needed? 

Of course and it represents some of whats needed...

[LtStaffel]

56 minutes ago, iHDCool said:

Holy shiet .-.  That's a lot of theory lol, and all that is needed? 

That post represents a gaping cavity in my programming knowledge, and is probably the reason some of my projects are not nearly as good as I want them to be. I'll be copying @Nuluvius' post.

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 hours ago, iHDCool said:

Holy shiet .-.  That's a lot of theory lol, and all that is needed? 

I'd argue that some of this is better to be aware of than actually dive deep into, depending on the breadth of your project and what's available to you.

[King_of_Oz]

On 2017-11-28 at 4:25 PM, iHDCool said:

Codeacademy is good but as you can see, I'm 16, so something that's free would be appreciated thanks 

Codecademy is free. There is a paid version, but the free version is fine.

[iHDCool]

4 hours ago, King_of_Oz said:

Codecademy is free. There is a paid version, but the free version is fine.

I've started Python lessons in Codeacademy and it seems good, I'm learning new stuff I didn't know in python, it's not bad for a paid version. I'm also learning C# from youtube tuts. Using VS 2017 for that (although kinda slow cuz i only got 4 gigs of ram) but it's a good start. 

[Nuluvius]

8 minutes ago, iHDCool said:

I've started Python lessons

When you feel like you want to start moving further and beyond and need an IDE you should consider PyCharm for that and certainly start learning about Virtual Environments.

7 minutes ago, iHDCool said:

although kinda slow cuz i only got 4 gigs of ram

You should probably look at your hard drive specifications.

[iHDCool]

3 hours ago, Nuluvius said:

When you feel like you want to start moving further and beyond and need an IDE you should consider PyCharm for that and certainly start learning about Virtual Environments.

You should probably look at your hard drive specifications.

I'll look into that.

My HDD is a WD 7200 rpm currently running on SATA II but has SATA III supported (people told me that with such a common hdd, changing the sata wouldnt make such a difference, + im not sure wich of the ports is sata III) 250 gb. 

[Nuluvius]

54 minutes ago, iHDCool said:

I'll look into that.

My HDD is a WD 7200 rpm currently running on SATA II but has SATA III supported (people told me that with such a common hdd, changing the sata wouldnt make such a difference, + im not sure wich of the ports is sata III) 250 gb. 

You should really consider an SSD.

[iHDCool]

17 hours ago, Nuluvius said:

You should really consider an SSD.

I'm considering my options, the prob is that SSDs are kinda expensive and I really need more RAM too wich is soo expensive atm... 

[vorticalbox]

22 minutes ago, iHDCool said:

I'm considering my options, the prob is that SSDs are kinda expensive and I really need more RAM too wich is soo expensive atm... 

My laptop at work has 4 gb of ram and runs just find developing 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Unless the project you're working on is really large, you don't really need an SSD for development.

[Nuluvius]

15 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Unless the project you're working on is really large, you don't really need an SSD for development.

Well if one is using text editors and consoles then sure but as OP said:

On 03/12/2017 at 5:52 PM, iHDCool said:

Using VS 2017 for that (although kinda slow cuz i only got 4 gigs of ram) but it's a good start. 

On 03/12/2017 at 9:48 PM, iHDCool said:

My HDD is a WD 7200 rpm currently running on SATA II

When one starts using full IDEs then IO on platter drives starts to become a tangible frustration. SSD as standard when doing that, unless you like sitting there for decades waiting for things to start up of course (and again for large compiles).

[iHDCool]

4 hours ago, Nuluvius said:

Well if one is using text editors and consoles then sure but as OP said:

When one starts using full IDEs then IO on platter drives starts to become a tangible frustration. SSD as standard when doing that, unless you like sitting there for decades waiting for things to start up of course (and again for large compiles).

I installed this decompiler, I swear it hit my pc like a truck lol... disk usage at 100% and memory at 80

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

6 hours ago, Nuluvius said:

Well if one is using text editors and consoles then sure but as OP said:

When one starts using full IDEs then IO on platter drives starts to become a tangible frustration. SSD as standard when doing that, unless you like sitting there for decades waiting for things to start up of course (and again for large compiles).

I've used full IDEs on HDDs before and the only smidgen of frustration I may have is waiting for the darn thing to load... which still takes under a minute.

 

I'd also wager compile time is more dependent on how good your CPU is than how fast your storage is for most scenarios.

 

And really, this is a new coder. They're not going to be messing with large projects to begin with.

 

EDIT: As some measure of proof:

The author did make a comment that if you use more processors, eventually you'll be I/O bound. However, looking at some Linux kernel compile times on Phoronix with Ryzen R7 and Threadripper, Threadripper is still showing almost linear improvements with core count vs. compile time.

[Nuluvius]

4 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I've used full IDEs on HDDs before and the only smidgen of frustration I may have is waiting for the darn thing to load... which still takes under a minute.

I've been consistently frustrated with SATA III 7200RPM drives with relatively large caches... Even when working on quite small stuff, and it gets much worse as the size and number of the task(s) at hand increase. Personally I'd never choose to go back, I can't afford to be sitting on my hands doing nothing for minutes while the thing spins up or compiles; besides finding it frustrating I also find it quite disruptive.

4 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I'd also wager compile time is more dependent on how good your CPU is than how fast your storage is for most scenarios.

It really depends on the sort of things going on. I've noticed it in the past although not as significantly, this is definitely more of a CPU related factor.

5 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

And really, this is a new coder. They're not going to be messing with large projects to begin with.

Sure, but why not address the problem at its source while providing a solid foundation moving forwards (inline with that argument)?

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, Nuluvius said:

Sure, but why not address the problem at its source while providing a solid foundation moving forwards (inline with that argument)?

And an SSD is a "nice to have", not necessarily a "need to have."

 

Until they actually feel like they have a need for it, whatever they think that need is, there's nothing wrong with sticking to the basics. You might not like waiting around for things to load or compile, but someone else may not care. I have friends who scoff at the idea of putting an SSD in their computers because they see everyone else as too damn impatient. I mean, I'm not going to argue with their logic. If they don't mind waiting an extra 20% on loading, then that's fine.

[Nuluvius]

9 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

And an SSD is a "nice to have", not necessarily a "need to have."

I think that we might be digressing a little. Sure you could choose to see it that way but don't forget that the complaint was that things were slow:

On 03/12/2017 at 5:52 PM, iHDCool said:

although kinda slow

Therefore I think that it was a valid suggestion, one that seems to be very much inline with that argument that you just fielded:

9 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Until they actually feel like they have a need for it, whatever they think that need is, there's nothing wrong with sticking to the basics. You might not like waiting around for things to load or compile, but someone else may not care. I have friends who scoff at the idea of putting an SSD in their computers because they see everyone else as too damn impatient. I mean, I'm not going to argue with their logic. If they don't mind waiting an extra 20% on loading, then that's fine.

No? Or am I missing something there? 

 

Moreover:

9 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

You might not like waiting around for things to load or compile, but someone else may not care.

It's not so much that I don't like waiting around, it's that I can't afford to be waiting around when there's work to be done and money to be made  In any event, near enough every corporate machine I've used in the last decade has been equipped with an SSD or better.

 

Out of interest @iHDCool what's the rest of your spec?

[iHDCool]

17 hours ago, Nuluvius said:

I think that we might be digressing a little. Sure you could choose to see it that way but don't forget that the complaint was that things were slow:

Therefore I think that it was a valid suggestion, one that seems to be very much inline with that argument that you just fielded:

No? Or am I missing something there? 

 

Moreover:

It's not so much that I don't like waiting around, it's that I can't afford to be waiting around when there's work to be done and money to be made  In any event, near enough every corporate machine I've used in the last decade has been equipped with an SSD or better.

 

Out of interest @iHDCool what's the rest of your spec?

CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9650 @3ghz     

GPU: GTX 1050 Ti MSI 4GB 

Mobo: HP 3646h (xu1 processor) 775 lga socket

HDD as  I stated above (WD 7200 RPM SATA II currently but SATA III supported)

RAM: 4GB DDR3 1333mhz (Elpida/Samsung) it's 2x2gb

It's ehm, nothing special. I want to upgrade the RAM and then HDD/SSD. Can't really upgrade the CPU because then I'll need to upgrade the mobo and to do that I need to upgrade the case (it's a small form factor pc, really small xd) and if i do that I'll need to upgrade the PSU too. PSU is 240w btw. 

It's a cheap pc. It came with a gt 210 1gb and I paid 150 euros for it. Then I bought the new GPU.