I used to be a programmer and unix sysadmin back in the 90's and early 00's. I wrote business software mostly in BBX, which was non-compiled, procedural BASIC. It was all text based when I started, and I only just got into GUI and OOP with ProvideX by the time I got out. I did do some SQL work and understand basic database concepts.
I've continually dabbled since and tried to keep up by running my own Debian web server here at the house, doing little script programs here and there, and most recently learning PHP and Python. But I would like to get versed in the current state of the industry and hopefully make myself employable in it again.
My current learning project is to write a db app that I can use when drag racing to log run data, report based on various combinations of variables, and predict vehicle performance. This should cover IO, data management, and some complex math. I do want to make is sellable, so it has to be in Windows since all other racing software is. My two options now are to write it in MSAccess, which isn't really programming, or to write a front end in Python and use MySQL for the data.
I assume I should go the Python path out of those two, or should I choose a third path that would pay more dividends toward a job? My biggest concern is wasting my time learning pointless stuff. I assume most of the work out there is db related and web based applications, so that would be my ultimate goal. Correct me if I am wrong on that.
Thanks for any input,
Dave
If your goal is to get back into software development, then I recommend that you first ask yourself what type of industry and development setting you'd like to work in. Learn something about the skills those industries are demanding... Then hit Monster and peruse the job qualifications for companies in those industries. Don't limit your view to just language names and broad job descriptions either, but really try to get an idea what sort of developer they're looking for and whether you'd fit in well.
You will be able to find many interesting technologies in lots of different business domains, but what do you really want to be working to help deliver? Python coding, for example, may be interesting, but I'm sure you'd be more interested if it were supporting your motorsport interest in some way versus, say, baby food. When you have the business domains narrowed down, then you can focus on the background required to get jobs in those industries.
You will find an endless set of recommended "hot" techologies if you search for them. I'm sure you can find a list, or post, which will confirm any bias you have on what to learn. But chasing the technology of the day may lead to an unfulfilling day-to-day job if what you're applying it to is not something you find interesting.
I would say that the answer depends on what type of job you want to do. The Fortune 500 company I worked at last summer had everything from mainframe c and cobol, java EE, .net to ruby on rails and python in applications. There are still alot of jobs maintaining legacy desktop applications. But the web atmosphere is obviously the future of business computing, and java EE and .NET are huge players in that arena. As for the project you are describing. I've done QT applications with python and there are python libraries for GTK that I've seen used to run apps in Windows. I've also used java swing and awt to build graphical applications and other than the learning curve for the layout system it works really well for building applications. I wrote a really basic windows application using visual studio and C# one time and that seemed to me to be very easy to write.
Enterprise level Java or .NET involve a fairly steep learning curve, so I would have those as a medium-long term goal rather than try and learn that tech immediately.
It seems to me that learning a high productivity web framework is the best way for you to go. "Ruby on Rails" seems to be a hot ticket at the moment. I've only had a small look at it, but it seems pretty quick and straightforward. Your drag racing app would be a good place to start.
Build a couple of websites for yourself using the tech. Then build a couple of websites for friends for a nominal fee. After that, see if you can find a real client (perhaps a local business). If you have 2 or 3 of those under your belt, then a potential employer will at least take notice.
One warning, though - people expect web sites to look nice. If you don't have good interface design skills yourself, it will be in your best interest to hire a designer to pretty up whatever you produce.
For a Windows desktop application, you can use C# and the various .NET APIs, and store your data in either a Microsoft-provided database, or SQLite, which is a reliable, server-free SQL implementation. (I don't know anything about Microsoft tech, hence the vagueness of my answer.) There is a lot of work available using C# and .NET, and it should be easy to pick up. You'll meet less resistance on the Windows platform with Microsoft's kit than with third-party languages like Python.
Related
I want to build a constantly running forex trading application (even if the web page is not opened),
But I don't know what is the best way to do it, it's a software that should run constantly with constant internet connection, should I write it in Python as a PC application or web application ?, or is there anything better ?
Thank you for your support,
I don't see any point of making a web application in your case. Architecture of algorithmic trading systems is a broad subject but most of the time it's an application which is only connected to a market data provider and a broker. A trading system can be built as a web application for example for browsing portfolio, historical trades or when some external events trigger trades but you should focus on the strategy itself rather than on a time consuming UI.
You should learn some basics from books/online course depending on your programming language but I think that Python is a great choice for rapid prototyping of strategies. You can also try some existing platforms like Quantopian which can give a quick start for strategies testing.
Focus your efforts on thorough testing of the strategy because most of the time they look good on a paper but turn out to be an utter garbage in practice and without a strategy there is no need for an infrastructure.
There are lots of technologies for developing "always on" scanners; I won't scour the internet for you; however, to give you an example, you can use something like Azure Functions -- it can run your scanner on a schedule. It can be built with Python, if that's your language of choice.
Of course, there are a lot of third-party tools to choose from as well.
I have been planning to build a Dentist Application for the use of the Dentist to add patients(with medical profiles...), organize visits, manage balance/fees....etc
I know Java, .NET( C#) (some windows forms), and Python. Do you have any suggestions with the language I should maybe start with and the framework and IDE that will make my life easier (and help me finish in a good amount of time). This program will be connected with a database of at least 1000 patients...
IDE's I am familiar with : eclipse, Netbeans, and Visual Studio.
I want suggestions with reason explanations (why would you favor C# over Java ....compatibility....etc)
Thanks,
It's not the database side, or even the programming environment, that will be the issue for a dental practice.
I consult for a dentist friend of mine, and the opportunity arose to sell him a fully-functional contact/document management application to run his patient database.
In the end, I couldn't in good conscience recommend my own application, because not being designed for the dental sector, it lacks the specialised interfaces with dental imaging systems.
Databases, appointments, invoices, etc, are easy.
But what a dentist needs is something that integrates with the dental records themselves - the X-ray images of teeth. It needs a simple UI, easily usable by the dental nurse while she works with the dentist while he has his hands in the patient's mouth.
We could have written a suitable graphical interface to an image library (imagine a diagrammatic representation of the teeth in their relative positions in the mouth, linked to the images themselves), but it wasn't worth it - especially as there are several highly specialised dental packages around already.
I suggest to start with some research on the subject (the dentist domain) and to make a decent functional design before you start to think about IDE's and languages.
And then try to figure out some other things:
For instance, will you make a SAAS or a windows client, do all your customers have internet access. Iis the sensitive patient data allowed to be stored on the web.
I believe that question is very relative to the person programming. I think as the developer you have to figure out where you would be most successful at or what you want to get out of the project. If you are using this project to make money then do what you are comfortable with. If you are using it to better yourself as a developer then pick a language you are less confident in.
The one thing I want to add, is remember PHI (Protected Health Information). So, you have to have patient privacy in mind when building an app like this.
If it were me... I would write something in .NET and use Visual Studio which works very well for windows forms. Windows forms would work very well in an office environment.
Just my 2 cents.
First introduce yourself to the business knowledge. Healthcare programs aren't written overnight and you have to take into account that you need to have a very secure application and probably also need to keep years of information (the program I was involved in in 2001-2002 had to keep 30 years of patient history due to Belgian law).
Choosing the technology is actually entirely up to you: what are you good at? Can you find already prebuild pieces of code or controls ...
You can write such an application in any of the languages you have mentioned.
Research the features you will need and the support you can expect from each language and the different available libraries.
You need to come up with a good design first (regardless of language/platform), and make sure you have all the requirements - how many people should be supported in the system, how many concurrent users, privacy of data, security features, access patterns etc...
You should probably use the language you are most comfortable with, in particular if the features you require have similar support in the different languages/frameworks.
Let me introduce myself a bit.
I have 7 years of C++ (most MFC) experience, 1 year C#.NET and 2 years Java experience.
I know little about web application, what I did and am doing is Windows desktop applications.
I start to do some (minor) (freelance) side projects in the past half year and uses C# mostly as it's more "rapid" than MFC. But seems there's more web projects in this market than desktop projects. And I do not feel good as long as I do not know web development.
So, should I touch the new web filed for me or just stay focus in desktop application but learn more e.g Python, or Frameworks/Libraries such as Qt or Boost?
My gut feeling is that more and more people/companies are moving their projects to the web. My company, for example, has added numerous web applications since I have been there. Another prime example of this is Microsoft (yes, even them) providing a web-based version of Office, their flagship product.
There will always be a need for desktop applications, but I see more web-based projects in the future. It's always good to learn something new, anyway.
EDIT: Oh, and you don't lose anything by being aware of "desktop-based" processes. You may be doing more server-side programming, even if it is web-based. So, in other words, it doesn't hurt to continue expanding your knowledge in that arena, as well.
There will most likely still be a market for desktop applications for many years to come. However, web development seems to have taken over a large share of the development market from what I can see. I would recommend definitely getting familiar with web development as it definitely can't hurt to increase the number of skills you have even if you never stop writing desktop apps.
Since you have experience with C# you might want to consider doing some ASP.NET work. Or if you feel the need to learn a new technology then maybe consider a framework like Ruby on Rails.
I'd really suggest looking into web development - like you said, there are many more web application projects - and you already know C#.NET and Java, and both of those languages have really good API's / frameworks for web development. ASP.NET for C# and Java Servlets/JSPs.
I'd first suggest learning some really basic HTML to learn how pages are rendered, then try to make dynamic versions using the language of your choice. Then I'd learn some other web technologies like CSS/Javascript/some Javascript libraries - then I'd start looking at frameworks that build on top of the basics in the language of your choice.
Oh, and some further suggestions - there are web frameworks that are component-based rather than request-based - you may be tempted to learn these as a shortcut to web development since most claim that developing in them is similar to desktop development. I really wouldn't suggest this - as in practice you really do need to know how the web works at a lower level to develop custom components, include things that the framework doesn't do, or to debug them when things go wrong even when using these frameworks. If you jump right in you can get lost/confused pretty quickly.
Microsoft Office 2010 will have an online version. To me this is a watershed moment for Web applications. Office apps are an important litmus test as once you can do Office on the Web (which has been the case with Google Documents for some time but Office has important symbolic meaning) you can do most things that most users care about.
Desktop apps won't die but I definitely think they're going to take more and more of a backseat.
I'd highly suggest you read How Microsoft Lost the API War if you haven't already. One of the things that's particularly amazing about this post is that it was written in 2004.
I honestly believe that with maybe the exception of OSs and browsers, everything will be a web app within the next 10 years. Having said that, let me clarify that by everything I mean everything that a) involves a UI of some kind and b) can be guaranteed secure.
User-interfaced apps will always at some point need a backend, which will at some level require code that is not being interfaced by humans and not being executed via HTTP. I am always reminding myself that things like 'cat' in Unix are actually programs that the OS is calling, not just a function built into the OS. MySQL won't be a web app (as far as I know), but app that powers web apps. We may get to a point where these apps are fully developed via a web interface, written, audited, uploaded and called all via a browser, but at some level its still running behind the scenes.
On that second point, about guaranteed security, I can very easily imagine a large corporation or government office running 95 percent of their daily routines via web apps, but mandating that certain high-security operations be done on a machine directly interfaced with some sort of mainframe, after passing through the cool doors with the retinal scans and what not. Or simply because they can't risk moving certain mission-critical apps over to the web, from fear of it breaking our losing data in the process.
But with those two things aside, I honestly believe everything will be web-based. With the advancement of Web Services and XML in general, it will be possible to not only access and interact with our data, but to plug our custom apps into another app and extend that interaction further and in any environment we want.
It's like that Apple ad "There's an app for that." Except once people get the real picture, it won't be an app written for your iPhone, but a URL. "There's a site for that."
I recommend learning the Lift framework. It's as easy to use as Rails, and it's based on a statically-typed language for the JVM, Scala. From the perspective of your background, Scala should be middling to easy to learn, and you'll be more likely to be comfortable with it than with a dynamic language.
In my opinion, you have a good chance of picking it up quickly, learn a lot about good practices in web development, and even expanding your programming horizons a bit.
In my organisation, we have some very inefficient processes around managing requirements, tracking what was actually delivered on what versions, etc, do subsequent releases break previous functionality, etc - its currently all managed manually. The requirements are spread over several documents and issue trackers, and the implementation details is in code in subversion, Jira, TestLink. I'm trying to put together a system that consolidates the requirements info, so that it is sourced from a single, authoritative source, is accessible via standard interfaces - web services, browsers, etc, and can be automatically validated against. The actual domain knowledge is not that complicated but is highly proprietary and non-standard (i.e., not just customers with addresses, emails, etc), and is relational: customers have certain functionalities, features switched on/off, specific datasources hooked up - all on specific versions. So modelling this should be straightforward.
Can anyone advise the best approach for this - I a certain that I can develop a system from scratch that matches exactly the requirements, in say ruby on rails, grails, or some RAD framework. But I'm having difficulty getting management buy-in, they would feel safer with an off the shelf solution.
Can anyone recommend such a system? Or am I better off building it from scratch, as I feel I am? I'm afraid a bought system would take just as long to deploy, and would not meet our requirements.
Thanks for any advice.
I believe that you are describing two different problems. The first is getting everyone to standardize and the second is selecting a good tool for requirements management. I wouldn't worry so much about the tool as I would the process and the people. Having the best tool in the world won't help if your various project managers don't want to share.
So, my suggestion is to start simple. Grab Redmine or Trac and take on the challenge of getting everyone to standardize. Once you have everyone in the right mindset then you can improve the tools you use for storage.
{disclaimer - mentioning my employer's product}
The brief experiments I made with a commercial tool RequisitePro seemed pretty good me. Allowed one to annotate existing Word docs and create a real-time linked database of the identified requisistes then perform lots of analysis and tracking of them.
Sometimes when I see a commercial product I think "Oh, well nice glossy bits but the fundamentals I could knock up in Perl in a weekend." That's not the case with this stuff. I would certainly look at commercial products in this space and exeperiment with a couple (ReqPro has a free trial, I guess the competition will too) before spending time on my own development.
Thanks a mill for the reply. I will take a look at RequisitePro, at least I'll be following the "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" strategy ;) youre right, and I kinda knew it, in these situations, buy is better. It is tempting when I can visualise throwing it together quickly, but theres other tradeoffs and risks with that approach.
Thanks,
Justin
While Requisite Pro enforces a standard and that can certainly help you in your task, I'd certainly second Mark on trying to standardize the input by agreement with personnel and using a more flexible tool like Trac, Redmine (which both have incredibly fast deploy and setup times, especially if you host them from a VM) or even a custom one if you can get the management to endorse your project.
Are there any open source or commercial web programming language that function much like Fog Creek's Wasabi? As in you write your web app in this parent language and it then compiles down to php for Linux hosts and ASP.NET for Windows hosts.
Haxe is the closest I've seen, but it only compiles to PHP (and mod_neko), not to ASP.
Genexus is a commercial development tool that does that. It can generate several other languages. Its oriented toward database apps, it generates database schemas and queries from its internal language.
That said, I have worked with it, and I don't like it. It's quite buggy and its programming language is very archaic.
Before you bother, consider whether it's really worth it.
Supporting one platform with multiple configurations is bad enough; do you really need to support both ASP.NET and PHP? If you're writing an in-house application, then you probably want to stick to as few technologies as possible. If you're writing software to sell, then is it really a problem if your product requires a particular platform?
As far as I know, Fog Creek had to develop Wasabi because there wasn't such a tool. There are a few toolkits trying to be portable, but none that compiled to ASP or PHP that I know of (besides Wasabi, that is).
People act like Joel went mad with Wasabi, but I think it makes perfect sense if you put all the pieces together.
FogBugz was originally written in VB.
Joel hates to throw out working code to start over.
Joel was faced with a server market split between MS and Apache w/PHP servers.
Given the circumstances, it's a rational decision to say, "OK, then, we'll just write a VB to PHP translator."
And once you've taken that step, to say, "Well, since we've essentially have a compiler here, why not extend it with the features we want that Microsoft has never added to VB?"
Thanks to Wasabi, code that would have to be written twice (or more, given some duplicated server/JavaScript code) is written only once.
Multitarget development is pretty common. It's the reality when you can't dictate your target environment.
Pick a real mature application server platform like Java. It runs everywhere...