Coding

[Happenstance]

Do we have any coders on the forum?

It's something I've always been interested in learning and have had a few false starts in over the years but if anyone here knows how to code I'd love to pick your brains. 

I've always heard that Python was probably the easiest to start learning but C# was probably more helpful.

[drahkon]

2 hours ago, Happenstance said:

t's something I've always been interested in learning and have had a few false starts in over the years 

Same  

I've recently started a part time job in QA in a software development company. Asked around what a good introduction to learning was and a colleague (she studies business informatics) recommended Sololearn.

I have only done three lessons in "Python for Beginners" so I can't comment on its effectiveness, yet, but I gotta say: Python seems to be very beginner friendly. 

There's also CS50’s Introduction to Computer Science, a free course from Harvard. It's supposed to be a really good introduction to get you into the "coding mindset". Haven't given it a go, yet.

[MindFreak]

I code. I am a software engineer in the pension industry and have been coding professionally for the past 8 years. I started with some Mainframe coding in PL/1 and COBOL but moved tl Java 4 years ago and have now started a new job with C#. The transition from PL/1 (a C++ ish language) to Java was rough but I'm a fast learner and I didn't have to build stuff from the ground up. 

Most people are taught to program in Java or C# as they are both widely used and are relatively easy to start out with. I've never used Python so can't compare that. I find that the greatest barrier for getting started is to find the right tools and set up the computer to actually compile (build) whatever code you've been doing but I think that has been made easier over the years. 

[Happenstance]

I want to start messing around with stuff today but I can't bring myself to turn on my PC or even my cooler laptop to do it in this heat. Maybe in a few days 🥵😆

[Ashley]

So my (current) day job is that kind of thing but its for very specific education software built on its own bespoke language (although vague similarities to Python it turns out) and then the web-based stuff is that layered with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

In my spare time I have dabbled with C# for gaming, Dart for apps and then various frameworks such as React, Vue and (moons ago) Angular.

[bob]

I wrote some stuff in Fortran and Matlab for my PhD, but since then, i've mainly used VBA. I've never sat down and learned any of them though. I tend to just cobble together something that works, and then cannibalise that code for when I want to do something similar. 

[Ashley]

1 hour ago, bob said:

 I tend to just cobble together something that works, and then cannibalise that code for when I want to do something similar. 

That is coding. 

[Ike]

9 minutes ago, Ashley said:

That is coding. 

And copying the solution from Stackoverflow.

[Ashley]

6 minutes ago, Ike said:

And copying the solution from Stackoverflow.

And adding

//I don't know how this works

[MindFreak]

True stories! 

[drahkon]

2 hours ago, Ike said:

And copying the solution from Stackoverflow.

I assume Stackoverflow is a coding community?  

Completed the first two chapters of "Python for Beginners". Learnt about simple operations, strings, integers, floats, escape character and more.
Also set up Visual Studio 2022 with Python so I can dabble with what I've learnt. 

Baby steps  

[Ashley]

8 hours ago, drahkon said:

I assume Stackoverflow is a coding community?  

Forum/knowledge repository/place to ask questions

Although be sure you thoroughly search beforehand because some people can be very snarky when it comes to repeated questions

[drahkon]

So here's a quick and dirty question about Python:

This is what I've written in order to convert Celsius to Kelvin:

Celsius = int(input())

Kelvin = Celsius + 273,15

print(Kelvin)

The thing is, when I input a number I get a mathematically correct result, however it's being output (can you say it like that?) in parentheses. Why?  

[Shorty]

I don't know any Python, but I'm guessing that European-style comma isn't going to cut it for a decimal place. So I think what you've done there is make "Kelvin" into an array where the first part is your sum, and the second part is just the number 15

[drahkon]

6 minutes ago, Shorty said:

I don't know any Python, but I'm guessing that European-style comma isn't going to cut it for a decimal place. So I think what you've done there is make "Kelvin" into an array where the first part is your sum, and the second part is just the number 15

Thank you so much. Such a simple solution.  

[Shorty]

No worries! I've been building websites for 20 years, you get used to accepting that everything has to be the American way....

So I suppose that should be my contribution to this thread Picked it up as a hobby as a teenager, dabbled a lot (often with some old names from these forums) in learning to build websites for bands and video games in the past. At one point, even built an N-Europe competitor! I also built the current iteration of N-Europe and its predecessor. Back then I used to do design as well, but I'm strictly code now. (I know, the site desperately needs a refresh, but it's funny how much less viable that becomes when it's your day job).

I've been doing it professionally now for... 13 years-ish. Since the day I made a thread on these very forums complaining about the horrors of going 9-5 (hey, at least I got the WFH part from the third paragraph, thanks Covid!). I'm a senior full stack developer, I work mostly with PHP (don't believe the bad rep it gets! It's come leaps and bounds in the last couple of versions), Laravel, Javascript, Sass, Vue, SQL & Docker... to name a few.

I'm transitioning more towards management now though, tomorrow I'll be doing my first job interview from the other side of the table.

 

[drahkon]

43 minutes ago, Shorty said:

you get used to accepting that everything has to be the American way....

Stupid Americans  

Been going through the lessons I did on Sololearn again and added the commands and what they do to a file that I can always look at (and run) if need be. Makes it easier for me to look up stuff as it's a bit iffy on Sololearn.

Spoiler

print()

#sends a specified message to the screen (or other display device)

 

print("Radi is the coolest")

print(42)

print("42")

# "" denotes a string, necessary to output a text

# whole numbers (without "") are called integers

# numbers in "" will be output as a string, not an integer

 

print(10/2)

#using a single / results in decimal (also called float)

 

print(20//3)

#floor division; will output 6 because 3 goes into 20 six times

 

print(20%3)

#remainder of a division; will output 2 (3*6 = 18 ; 20-18=2)

 

print(2**4)

#two asterisks ** used to raise a number to the power of another (exponetiation)

 

print(2**2**3)

#when dealing with exponents, always start from the right (output of above command is 256; 2^3 = 8 then 2^8)

 

print("He said: \"The dog is cute.\"")

# \ is an escape character

 

print("First line \nsecond line \ttab")

# \n creates a new line

# \t creates a tab

 

print("""First line

second line

third line""")

#easier way to make new lines

 

print("Radi" + "1337")

print('42'+'42')

print("Radi"*3)

#concatenation; "adds" strings; also possible to multiply

Now to figure out how to "run" the file outside of the program "Visual Studio Code"  
Edit: YouTube to the rescue. It wasn't too difficult.

Edited July 21, 2022 by drahkon

[bob]

See this is one of the few things I agree with the Americans on. When punctuating a sentence, you put a comma in the places where you pause but not stop, to help with legibility - and then a period at the end, to differentiate from the next sentence.

When writing a number, I like to put commas in the number to help with legibility (1,000,000), and then a period at the end to differentiate from the decimal part of the number (1,000,000.000).

[Julius]

21 minutes ago, bob said:

See this is one of the few things I agree with the Americans on. When punctuating a sentence, you put a comma in the places where you pause but not stop, to help with legibility - and then a period at the end, to differentiate from the next sentence.

When writing a number, I like to put commas in the number to help with legibility (1,000,000), and then a period at the end to differentiate from the decimal part of the number (1,000,000.000).

Is that an American thing? I feel like I plaster commas all over the place based on how I was taught to write growing up by teachers over here (for pauses), and because I like to write sentences with a lot of clauses and pause a lot, I use them pretty liberally. I mean, I also just like throwing in loads of punctuation because it's fun; case in point: that semicolon 

For writing numbers it would depend on the situation for me: in a more casual setting I tend to use commas for legibility, but in a more formal setting (such as in a Maths class or STEM subject exam), I would rarely use commas outside of lists. 

Edited July 22, 2022 by Julius

[Ashley]

From what I know various European countries use , whereas in the UK/America we'd use . for things like prices. I think Shorty was talking more broadly when it comes to things like "color" because most tech things come from America and thus after a while your brain gets used to that syntax. Or even their pronunciation of "route" when watching tutorials. 

@Shorty didn't know you used Vue. Everyone seems to love React but I've never really gelled with it and much prefer Vue myself. 

[Ike]

25 minutes ago, Ashley said:

 

@Shorty didn't know you used Vue. Everyone seems to love React but I've never really gelled with it and much prefer Vue myself. 

We started using React at work. I don't like it myself, it's bit of a pain. But 1 guy said we should use it and now we are. 

[Ashley]

I know that feeling well. Someone at work tried to get everyone to use slack because he liked it and ultimately ended up being the only one using it, which just meant if you wanted to ask him something you had to use slack. 

But there's just something about JSX that feels wrong. 

[Mr_Odwin]

I did a bit of MatLab at uni, dabbled in VB.NET around that time (if you google "FAVC DVD" I wrote that!), but for the last 16 years I've been using a stats package at work called Stata that uses a simple scripting language you can write "programs" in that Stata can interpret. I found transitioning from one package to another okay back then but now my brain is old and brittle so I'd probably struggle. In stats the popular software packages are SAS (big industry - rubbish syntax), R (opensource, supported in academia, not very intuitive language) and Python (hot in data science, but I've not used it).

The "color" thing is pretty prevalent for me as I'm always having to change colours in charts/figures.

[Happenstance]

23 minutes ago, Ashley said:

I know that feeling well. Someone at work tried to get everyone to use slack because he liked it and ultimately ended up being the only one using it, which just meant if you wanted to ask him something you had to use slack. 

But there's just something about JSX that feels wrong. 

I feel like I always see Americans going on about using Slack but rarely anyone over here.

[bob]

Is that an American thing? I feel like I plaster commas all over the place based on how I was taught to write growing up by teachers over here (for pauses), and because I like to write sentences with a lot of clauses and pause a lot, I use them pretty liberally. I mean, I also just like throwing in loads of punctuation because it's fun; case in point: that semicolon [emoji14]
For writing numbers it would depend on the situation for me: in a more casual setting I tend to use commas for legibility, but in a more formal setting (such as in a Maths class or STEM subject exam), I would rarely use commas outside of lists. 

Sorry, the American way of doing numbers is what I agree with.

Using commas in punctuation is not specifically American, I just worded it weirdly.