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The structure of a FiM++ program requires that it end with the closing of a letter and the code author's name in a specific manner.
Dear Princess Celestia and Stack Exchange and String: A Sample:
...
Your faithful student, Southpaw Hare!
According to the language specification, the keyword "Your faithful student," (including the comma but not the following space) is used as an end tag for class definitions, and the following name is a comment with no syntactical effect.
The fact that the author is automatically included (if not strictly required) in every file makes me wonder if it can be used as a form of interpretable documentation akin to Java Docs. In other words, that other programs or editors would be able to parse out this name and use it in some manner.
What is the requirement of such internal comment-based documentation? Is there anything in this particular type of syntax that would cause problems?
Is the keyword sufficient to fit with the theme? It occurs to me that the lack of ability to use "Your faithful students," for a plural form (or possibly "Yours faithful," or "Yours truly," for an ambiguous version) would make listing multiple authors look awkward and unnatural (and looking like a natural human-written letter is one of the core design paradigms).
If creating a Java Docs methodology was considered, then what other features should be included? For one, a date seems common. Including some form of date comment at the top of the letter would probably look natural and not defy the design paradigm.
Since the language is new, unfamiliar to most, and honestly quite silly, here are a few resources to consider:
Original Release Announcement
October Followup
Sorry no one's given this any concern before me!
I'm heading development of the language, so I think I have a good grasp on the answer, here.
What is the requirement of such internal comment-based
documentation? Is there anything in this particular type
of syntax that would cause problems?
I've never considered an auto documentation technique like Javadoc, so there is no formal syntax for that. The compiler I'm working on completely discards comments, so it won't support it, but I'm sure it wouldn't be terribly hard.
Is the keyword sufficient to fit with the theme? It occurs to me
that the lack of ability to use "Your faithful students," for a
plural form (or possibly "Yours faithful," or "Yours truly," for an
ambiguous version) would make listing multiple authors look awkward
and unnatural (and looking like a natural pony-written letter is one
of the core design paradigms).
The idea of the author name on the last line was intended for the foremost author of the report, so multiple authors was never suggested before now. However, Your faithful students, would work nicely!
If creating a Java Docs methodology was considered, then what other
features should be included? For one, a date seems common. Including
some form of date comment at the top of the letter would probably
look natural and not defy the design paradigm.
Indeed! Perhaps something at the bottom of the report, like
(Written 2013-04-11)
Hope this help you. You have some great ideas, here, too! You should join the team!
I am using the Haxe multi-platform programming tool (http://haxe.org) which, among other things, can generate JavaScript output. I would like to know if anyone has already done a "wrapper" library to interface Haxe with SlickGrid.
Doesn't look like one exists yet... sorry!
Unless someone has made one but just not shared it. Could be worth asking on the haxe mailing list / google group? You'll get a wider audience than on stack overflow.
If it looks like no one has done it, you can write your own... it's probably quite do-able. And not too hard either. I'd be happy to help you figure it out as you go... cause I might want to use it one day too :)
If you do decide to take that route I think the best option is to post on the mailing list, and we can help you out from there. There's also a document on the wiki with some instructions:
http://haxe.org/doc/js/extern_libraries
This stuff is always a bit daunting when you first get started, but don't be afraid to ask for help and hopefully you'll be up and running in no time.
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I've been wanting to help out with an open source project for some time now. I want to do this for two main reasons. I am a strong supporter of foss and I want to gain experience.
I've struggled to find a project that I thought I would want to help with. There are many I would like to help with, but they are far to complex for what I would want to start with. However, I recently found a browser, uzbl, which seems like it is complex enough for me to be able to learn from, however simple enough for me to be able to wrap my head around.
It is a simple lightweight browser which uses webkit and gtk.
Now that you are familiar with my positon, here is my question.
What is the best way to go about understanding the code base?
Now I realize this is a subjective question. However, I feel if I have the suggestions of more experienced developers, I may be able to cut down on the wrong turns I make.
Should I familiarize myself with the libraries used first? Or should I look through the core code and concern myself with what goes in under the hood after I have a basic understanding of the global picture?
How do you guys go about understanding the code base of a new project?
Thank you for your time and effort.
First, compile and run it. With many projects, simply accomplishing that task will give you some understanding :-)
Second, it's good to have some problem to solve. Some small task, like fix a minor bug somewhere. Just debug, search for the bug origin, try to fix it. Then run unit tests (if any), see what else you broke with your fix. Investigate that, too.
Then repeat. A dozen of bugs, preferably in different areas, give some better understanding of the codebase.
After that, I usually start wondering around the product, just looking how it works and playing with it. Natural curiosity takes over sooner or later, and I find a feature that interests me. In a "wow, I wonder how it works" kind of way. Then I try to sketch a high-level design for that feature myself. Along the lines of "what would I do if I had to create this feature? Very briefly, just in my mind, no fancy diagrams and whatnot.
In doing so, I inevitably find myself in need to know more about the system: after all, you can't design a fully isolated feature, can you? You'll have to interact with the rest of the system, and you need to know how. So I go into code and find out.
Then, a moment may come when I realize that I really don't know how to design this little part of that feature. I think, and I think, and I think, and I just don't know. So then comes the sweetest part: I go into the code and look how is it designed in the first place. Sometimes I would be disappointed in the project. But more often, I would be disappointed in myself. But that's exactly what's precious: that's how I learn.
I have found two things (in addition to the answer by Fyodor Soikin) that really help. One is getting doxygen to do document everything for me. It makes it a lot easier when I can go through the function declarations, and click the data structure which is supposed to be passed in so I can see all the members it contains (if there is no current documentation you can just set EXTRACT_ALL = YES). I also find it very useful to compile the project with debuggin symbols then run it in gdb so that you can follow it from start to finish.
I would look for their tests first, and look at those. If there aren't tests, I probably wouldn't bother with the project. If there are tests, they should be instructive as to how the software works. Step through the tests in the debugger to understand how the high level components fit together.
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I am charging SEO of my company's SEO, which I really hate. I believe a web site with decent web design and semantic code(structure), spiced up with attractive content is the best thing we should do. Yet, we are still far from there, in me case especially. So usually I take a very close look at other sites, their design, code, etc. And I suspect I got paranoid on this.
Today, I find a highly respected site which is using absolute internal links while we are using relative links. As far as I know, it does not matter, but I can not help asking you guys to make sure about this.
If this is a ridiculous question, then I am sorry. As I said I become a paranoia.
Taken from the Search Engine Optimisation FAQ at the SitePoint Forums:
Should I use relative links or absolute links?
Absolute links. It is recommended by Google as it is possible for crawlers to miss some relative links.
If I can find the link that Google states this I'll update this post.
EDIT: This might be what the post is referring to, but I've stated my reasons as to why this might be correct in the comments.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35156
I never heard or seen anything that indicates it matters. All you're likely to do is complicate your development. The "highly respected" site is getting good ranking because it's popular, that's all.
It's pretty well a given that search engines store the full path at some point, it's unlikely they wouldn't perform this conversion during the crawl process to remove duplicates.
I don't really follow your logic anyway. You know good structure, relevant content and popularity are the key to ranking so what makes you think you'll gain anything by spending even a minute on random optimisations like this?
I highly doubt Google will be missing any relative links. Apparently the latest version of their Crawler will even execute some javascript. Don't bother with absolute links, instead, great a good sitemap and submit it to google through webmaster tools. Yahoo and Microsoft also allow you to submit your sitemap so it might be worthwhile to look into that too - google it.
I don't think there is an answer to this question, but I will weigh in anyways. Personally,
I think that using absolute URLs is the best. The web is full of crappy content scrapers. Many of the people who wrote these scrapers forget to change the original URLs (in absolute links) before they post the content onto their own page. So, in that regard, absolute URLs can turn into a really dodgy way to get a couple extra links.
If I follow that, it seems logical that absolute links would also be a great indicator of duplicate content caused by content scrapers.
A couple of years ago, I did some research into what happens to a page's search rankings when you dramatically change content/navigation (ie - in the case of a dramatic re-design). At that point, I found that having absolute URLs seemed to spook Google a little less. But, there were some problems with my research:
a) The 'absolute URL bonus' was barely quantifiable (an average of less than two positions of difference)
b) The 'absolute URL bonus' only lasted a few weeks before Google settled down and started treating both pages the same
c) The research is two years old and the Google algorithm has changed dramatically in that time
When I add a and b together, I'm left with a very unsettled feeling. Google gets a little weird from time to time, so the bonus may have been a fluke that I attributed to absolute URLs. Good old experimental bias.....Either way though, the difference was so slight and lasted for such a short time that I don't think it is worth spending a whole lot of extra time making absolutes!
Best of luck with your site
Greg
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Lately I've been job hunting, and for the most part, they would ask me what type of IDE I like to use.
Now, I usually answer with;
Well it all depends on what language I'm developing it in. If it's Java then it would be Eclipse, if AS3 then either Flash CS4 or Flex Builder 3. For HTML, CSS, PHP, and Javascript, I prefer to use PsPad. (almost identical to Notepad+ or textmage).
Now why is it that they always seem to become immediately disgusted with the fact that I said PSPad? Truth be told, I don't like to use DreamWeaver because I feel like it's bloated. I mean to each his own I guess ... but I've tried using it and I honestly work faster with PSPad.
Should I start using Dreamweaver just to put in my resume?
Theoretical Advice
It's quite reasonable not to like IDE's, though you do need to acknowledge their usefulness, and everyone has their own most efficient ways of working, which makes sense.
Practical Advice
You can't deal with recruitment agents logically, I'm afraid. You need to check their checkboxes, and get past them, to talk to someone real.
Once you get into a real interview with a programmer, be honest about everything, about why you don't like IDE's (especially DreamWeaver) and then you can just hope for the appropriate outcome.
But with recruitment agents you need to appreciate that they don't understand anything about our industry; and you typically need to give them the answers they want.
I'd say your are "familiar" with DreamWeaver and leave it at that.
Maybe they don't know what PSPad is - I didn't. As for Dreamweaver, I would actually look down on somebody who uses Dreamweaver. It's much better to be able to code from scratch.
And to answer your question - it's definitely not wrong to not prefer a single IDE for everything. You should use whatever tools you feel comfortable with, and if it's different for each language, then so be it.
No, just like it's not wrong to prefer:
Horses over cars;
Kerosene lamps over electrical lighting;
Aqueducts over water pipes;
Storing food in a cold cellar instead of an "icebox";
Punch cards over keyboards and visual displays;
and so on.
Sucks that we have to go through people who care not about the programmer but the programs we use!
I mean I think I lost a few chances just by trying to explain that I am decent with HTML and CSS but don't use Dreamweaver (because I cant afford it).
Though I am not that worried, I did eventually stumble across a person who does understand these things and love working for him. So no it's not wrong, you're just unlucky to have come across wrong recruiters.
Good luck finding a job though!
PS It doesn't take more than 10 minutes to get familiar with an IDE, so always a plus to try out some (so you're not completely lost later).
One way to spin such answers is to make yourself the expert. So you could say something like, "I'm familiar with Dreamweaver, but once I got really good at coding HTML, CSS etc. I found it more efficient to just use a really fast and simple text editor like PSPad."
I used the same trick after I worked in C++ and was applying for a Java job. In that case, it went like this, "Well, the nice thing about having started in C++ is that it's such a rich and low level language that once you've done that, Java seems really easy by comparison."
The recruiter doesn't know what DreamWeaver is -- they just know what a commission is. Show them you'll make them one by selling yourself to their principle and they'll send you out to interview more often than not.
Look: when you're job hunting the person who is looking at your resume is either a:
Human Resource person (Needs a person to fill a position or just interview)
Head Hunter (Needs a body to fill a job so they can get their placement pay)
IT Manager (Needs a qualified soul for the best price).
Depending on the person interviewing you over the phone or in person they are just trying to get the best candidate for a position. Sometimes they have prepared questions to see how much you know, how you think and do you match up to your resume.
I went to a .NET code camp once and a head hunter was asked how one goes about showing the interviewer their experience. The head hunter said show them your work:
Bring a laptop with samples of your work.
Print out code sample.
Direct the interview to a website with samples of your work.
Things like this get you past the IDE question real quick.
As silky alluded to above, it's probably a simple mechanism in use by the HR agency to filter out candidates. If you're not using an IDE on the selected list, you're filtered.
For me, when interviewing, I would find somebody who says they use VIM or Emacs as their IDE to be a more advanced developer than perhaps somebody using Notepad.
Last time a CTO asked me what I use, I immediately said "Emacs, of course". He said, "OK, now I'm interested!". I've been working there since.
(I don't know why PSPad would be any worse than Dreamweaver or Eclipse. I find all IDEs hard to really customize. Everybody I work with has gobs of elisp, much of it shared, to make it much more productive for our project.)
Maybe you're talking to the wrong people for the kind of job you want. Where are you finding these "they" who ask you this?
It's certainly not worse than depending on one.
I use EMACS as my primary programming environment. It has a few big advantages:
It's available practically everywhere.
You can use it without having a window system installed.
You can use it over SSH.
It lets you edit multiple files at the same time.
It understands most programming languages.
You can run subshells.
Oh, you can read your email from within it, too.
This question has no good answer. It depends on the culture of the place you're interviewing for. At my current job, I play up my Unix experience and can impress other folks that also enjoy non IDE toolsets. vi, one liner scripts, etc. At my former gig, people were enamored with Visual Basic, and thought the command line was horrific. I'll bet if you were interviewing for the company that develops PSPad you would not have had the same result. ;-)