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Guy Lecky-Thompson's BlogPosted by Guy Lecky-Thompson Programming isn't hard. It used to be - back in the days when everything was fresh and new. I'm not even talking about 50 years ago, either. I started in the 80s, and even then, there was a sense of newness about programming. And so, there was little in the way of book-learning. That is, we read the manuals, and the programming language primers, but in the early days there were no tutorials (there was no Internet, either!), and very few of these ubiquitous 'Teach Yourself' books. How did we learn? By example. By doing. By trying out stuff. These days, we can put a modern spin on the basic premise. In a recent book, I introduced the concept of glue code, and was pretty impressed when IBM picked up on it. You can, if you're interested, pick up the article at the folling url: www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0702_shields/0702_shields.html Glue code is a great learning metholdogy, too. It will help you to learn how to program, save time, and teach valuable mashup skills. One example area is in the use of AHK (AutoHotKey : windows-programming.suite101.com/article.cfm/autohotkey_windows_macro_scripting) and JavaScript together to provide a solution whereby Web page interaction can be automated. That's the power of mashup at work. At some point I'll write it up, but in the meantime remember that the Internet is full of little snippets that you can use - be they tools or source code - to create your own projects. And the learning experience will be great! Posted by Guy Lecky-Thompson I've discovered a few things writing my recent book 'Just Enough Web Programming'. That's one of the nice side-effects of being a constant author : the research throws up some great opportunities. Face it - the more one can spin out of a single product in marketing terms, the better. For programmers, especially, now is a very exciting time. Web 2.0 is not going away. Tag and ping, as well as blog and ping remains a good way to spike traffic. But everyone knows abotu these by now, and the search engines are starting to catch on. To stay ahead, you need to do one of two things : work harder, or smarter. We're programmers, and so we can work smarter than any non-programmer. Now, if you're a non-programmer reading this, then you've come to the right place. Right now, if you are marketing online, there are two powerful methods you need to know about: And, if you don't want to create the code yourself - head on over to: (It'll set you up for finding a whole bunch of happy coders who can help you out!) The best thing to do, though, is learn how to do it yourself. Welcome to programming... Guy Posted by Guy Lecky-Thompson December 2007 was Batch Programming Month. As such, I created a whole mini-site of articles dedicated to batch file programming using the built-in Windows command line scripting language. Now, I've yet to group the content into a coherent web, but until I do, the whole list can be accessed at the following URL: http://command-line-programming.suite101.com/articles.cfm. January 2008 is Web Programming Month (as I'm currently working on my new book Just Enough Web Programming), and I'm starting with JavaScript tutorials. The first two articles are now up, and give you a sneak preview of what's to come: As always, if there's anything else you want me to cover - just drop me a line : computerprogramming(at)suite101.com Happy New Year! Guy |
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