Hey everyone, this is my first post up on StackOverflow! WOO! Anyhow, onto my question...
I'm a computer science major in my sophomore year in college, and I'm taking a Web Expressions class since I thought it would be an easy 'A', and I'm already pretty proficient in (X)HTML and CSS. My professor is having us use Dreamweaver for all of our labs, so I thought I'd get my hands on one of the school copies. I've never used Dreamweaver before in my life, always typing out the code by hand.
Basically, I'm asking if there are any well-written, free resources for learning my way around Dreamweaver. If there's already a source on the site here, I apologize for not searching it out. I did a cursory glance around and couldn't really find anything, however I admit that I didn't look incredibly hard.
Adobe has some tutorials here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/
Since you are an experienced web developer already, using Dreamweaver should be very easy for you. It does some code verification and such which will make your life easier. Like someone else said, stick with the code mode and use Dreamweaver like an advanced HTML editor.
Related
I know this question may be a bit involved, but I would like to know the basic skeleton of how to make a desktop text editor that one can use for coding. Very generally speaking, what tools should I use to display text to a window (how to display that window), and how to handle text (I think this is with a split buffer).
Not looking for any details, just a very broad and general skeleton of how this is done. I am thinking about working in Java or C++. Thanks!
I'm sorry people downvoted you without explaining why you deserve them. I'm guessing people think your question isn't educated enough? But in any case, I'll try to get you started. I am not educated enough to answer your question, but I can show you how you can answer it yourself and probably learn a lot more than you would have gotten from here.
https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/src/README.txt -The readme for the vim source code, which is all written in C. Not exactly C++, but the better you are at C, the better you are at certain facets of C++. And if you look at the list of source files in the readme along with their short descriptions, you do kind of get a skeleton.
Notepad++ actually is written in C++, but I suspect the GUI overhead would make it significantly harder to trace. Still, if you want, https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/tree/master/PowerEditor/src
I really appreciate community efforts for sharing knowledge via reference documentes but I'd like to know if there exist really good material for JSX scripting learning.
Adobe has very well organized reference docs but the examples are poor. XTools has good examples, but it´s desorganized and incomplete.
I wonder if there exist any reference book designed by good educators or, at list, people with a great common sense related to educational material design.
I feel your pain. I was in a similar position when I first started out Photoshop scripting
I got my hands on a book called Adobe Scripting which has lots of examples, which I found useful. It's old, but still useful as most of it is still relevant. Various aspects of newer versions of Photoshop have made things easier. But avoid The Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic as it wasn't so useful and only mentions actions.
For doing UI stuff then I strongly recommend Script UI as without it doing any user interface code is major headache.
Stick with it. Ask questions here, or on the Adobe Photopshop Scripting Forums.
Illegitimi non carborundum
I recently came across this website on http://nkwiatek.com/ and it totally blew my mind. How does someone begin to program something like that smokey/fluid effect? Another thing that I can't even begin to conceptualize is a visualizer for a music program.
I only have two years of programming experience on my back but I believe I can see (well, at least I think I can) the vague ideas behind code that goes into various programs and what those programs require. However, programs that create abstract visual renderings (for lack of better words), such as the site I linked to or visualizers, completely baffle me when I try to think of how something like that is done.
For an answer, I'm looking for a pretty high level definition of the program, but low enough that it includes coding concepts and ideas that I can further research.
Because this question isn't exactly as 'concrete' as some of the other questions on this site, an appropriate answer might include:
Thought process of the coder (what you imagine is happening in abstract visual code/high level definition of the code)
API's
Psuedocode
Source code
Links to content that explains topics similar to this
However, these are just guidelines to the type of answer I'm looking for. Just keep in mind, I am not interested in that site alone, but more of the coding ideas and concepts behind the abstract visual programs. I hope I made sense of what I am confused/interested in. I will gladly clarify if anyone has questions on what I am asking. Thank you in advance for your replies!
Edit: To further define the ideas that I am interested in, here is an article on an interesting visual rendering: http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/warp/warp.htm
For the nkwiatek.com example, I would start like that:
Create some JavaScript function that makes characters follow the mouse. It could be for example a simple shape like that at first:
OOO
OOOOO
OOOOO
OOO
Once this is working, make it leave a trail and keep a reference to each characters that's been added to the screen (will be needed later)
Now make each generated character semi-random and use the previously mentioned reference to constantly update the characters on screen. The further away a character is from the mouse, the smaller it should look. i.e. characters near the mouse could be "big" like AMHIJKL, etc. characters further away could be smaller like -~=, etc. and ., etc. for the most further away.
This should already make a nice animation. After that, I think there's some function that makes everything move in a kind of wave. It seems to be based on the velocity of the mouse. Maybe there's some research paper on how to generate such an effect.
That is one amazing background.
How to start? Go to the web page and hit Ctrl+U. It's Javascript, so the source is right there. From that... study. The guy's code looks pretty clear, but of course what he's DOING is complicated so it will take some time. Time well spent, I'd think.
Higher-level things like what the guy was thinking... you'll know that after studying the code.
The title may seem slightly self-contradictory, and I accept that you can't really learn a language quickly. However, an experienced programmer that already has knowledge of a few languagues and different styles (functional, OO, imperative etc.) often wants to get started quickly. I've seen a few websites doing effective "translations" in the form of "just show me syntax equivalence". I can't remember the sites now, but for related languages (e.g. Perl/PHP) it's quite common.
Is there a better resource that covers more languages? Is there a resource that covers idioms as well as syntax? I think this would be incredibly useful for doing small amounts of work on existing code bases where you are not familiar with the language. Looking at the existing code, as we know, is not always a good indicator of quality. Likewise, for "learn by doing" weekend project I always have the urge to write reasonably idiomatic, clean code from the start. Such a resource could also link to known good example projects of varying sizes for those that prefer to learn by reading. Reading a well-written medium sized code base can also be much more practical when access to development environments might be limited.
I think it's possible to find tutorials and summaries for individual languages that provide some of this functionality in disparate web locations but I'm hoping there is a good, centralised, comparative place that the busy programmer can turn to.
You generally have two main things to overcome:
Syntax
Reference
Syntax you can pick up fairly quickly with a language tutorial and a stack of samplecode.
Reference (library/API calls) you need to find a proper guide to; perhaps the language reference, or perhaps google...
With those two in place, following a walkthrough (to get you used to using the development environment) will have you pretty much ready - you'll be able to look up what you want to say (reference), and know how to say it (syntax).
This, of course, applies principally to procedural/oop languages; languages that require a paradigm switch (ML/Haskell) you should go to lectures for ;)
(and for the weirder moments, there's SO!)
In the past my favour was "learning by doing". So e.g. I know a little bit of C++ and a lot of C#.Net but I must write a FTP Tool in Python.
So I sit for an hour and so the syntax differences by a tutorial, than I develop the form itself and look at the generated code. Then I search a open source Python FTP Client and get pieces of code (Not copy and paste, write it self to see, feel and remember the code!)
After a few hours I get it.
So: The mix is the best. A book, a piece of good code, the willing to learn and a free night with much coffee.
At the risk of sounding cheesy, I would start with the language's website tutorial and/or FAQ, followed by asking more specific questions here. SO is my centralized location for programming knowledge.
I remember when I learned Perl. I was asked to modify some Perl code at work and I'd never seen the language before. I had experience with several other languages, however, so it wasn't hard to figure out the syntax with the online Perl docs in one window and the code in another, side-by-side. I don't know that solely reading existing code is necessarily the best way to learn. In my case, I didn't know Perl but I could tell that the person who originally wrote the code didn't know Perl either. I'm not sure I could've distinguished between good Perl and really confusing Perl. It would've been nice to be able to ask questions here at the time.
Language isn't important. What is important is learning your ways around designing algorithms and the proper application of design patterns. Focus on the technique, not the language that implements a certain technique. Once you understand the proper development techniques, any programming language will just become real easy, no matter how obscure they are...
When you put a focus on a language, you're restricting your own knowledge.
http://devcheatsheet.com/ seems to be a step in the right direction: it aggregates cheat sheets/quick references and they are (somewhat) manually reviewed. It's also wide-ranging. It still comes up short a bit in terms of "idiomatic" quick reference: for example, the page on Ruby doesn't mention yield.
Rosetta Code appears to be an excellent resource that includes hints on coding idiomatically and moves from simple (like for-loops) to things like drawing. I haven't checked out how comprehensive it is, but there are a large number of languages and tasks listed. The drawbacks re: original question are:
Some of the linking is not accurate
(navigating Python->ForLoop will
take you to the top of the ForLoop
page, not the Python section). It's a
wiki, this can be improved.
Ideally you could "slice" the wiki
however you chose to see e.g. the top
20 tasks for two languages
side-by-side.
http://hyperpolyglot.org/ seems to be an almost perfect match for what I was looking for. The quality is not always there, or idiom can be lacking, but it has the same intention and is pretty comprehensive.
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I have always been astonished by Wine. Sometimes I want to hack on it, fix little things and generally understand how it works. So, I download the Wine source code and right after that I feel overwhelmed. The codebase is huge and - unlike the Linux Kernel - there are almost no guides about the code.
What are the best-practices for understanding such a huge codebase?
With a complex code base the biggest mistake you can make is trying to be a computer. Get the computer to run the code, and use a debugger to help find out what is going on.
Figure out how to compile, install and run your own version of Wine from the existing source code.
Learn how debug (e.g. use gdb) on a running instance of your version of Wine.
Run Wine under the debugger and make cause it to demonstrate the undesired behaviour.
The fun part: find where the code execution path goes and start learning how it all goes together.
Yes, reading lots and lots of code will help, but the compiler/debugger/computer can run code a lot faster than you.
A professor once told us to compare such a situation with climbing a mountain. You might be listening to someone who did this and tells you what it's like to look out into the country. And you believe without hesitation that that's a spectacular sight.
However, you have to start climbing yourself for real understanding what the view from the top is like.
And it's not that important to climb all the way to the top. It might be perfectly suficient just to reach a fair height above ground level.
But don't ever be afraid of start climbing. The view is always worth any efforts.
This has always been a nice analogy for me. I know this question was more about specific tips on how to efficiently deal with code bases once you started climbing. But nevertheless it instantly reminded me of our physics classes way back then.
(This is an answer I posted to a question a while back. I modified it a bit to fit this question.)
Experience has shown me that there are 3 major goals you have when learning a legacy system:
Learn what the code is supposed to do.
Learn how it does them.
(crucially) Learn why it does them the way it does.
All three of those parts are very important, and there's a few tricks to help you get started.
First, resist the temptation to just ctrl-click (or whatever your IDE uses) your way around the code to understand everything. You probably won't be able to keep everything in perspective in your mind this way, especially when each line forces you to look at multiple other classes in order to understand what it is, so you need to be able to hold several levels of the stack in your head.
Read documentation where possible; it usually helps you quickly gain a mental framework upon which to build everything that follows.
Run test cases where possible.
Don't be afraid to ask someone who knows if you have a question. Granted, you shouldn't waste others' time with inane queries, but if there's something that you simply don't understand (this is especially true with more conceptual questions like, "Wouldn't it make much more sense to implement this as a ___" or something), it's probably worth finding out the answer before you mess something up and don't know why.
When you do finally get down to reading the code, start at a logical "main" place and go from there. Don't just read the code top to bottom, or in alphabetical order, or anything (this is probably obvious).
The best way to get acquainted with a large codebase is to dive in. Many projects have a list of easy tasks that need to be done, and they're usually reserved to help ease people in. You should find and work on some of these; you'll learn a lot about the general code outline and structure, contribute to the project, and get an easy payoff that will help encourage you to take on larger tasks.
Like most projects, WINE has good resources available to its developers; IRC, wiki, mailing list, and guides/overviews. With most daunting codebases, it's not so scary after the first few fixes. WINE is truly large, and much like the kernel, I doubt there's any expert in all systems; don't feel like you need to be either. Start working on something that matters to you and take it from there.
I've started a few patches to WINE myself, and it's a good community and good structure. There's lots of very helpful debug messages, and it's a really cool project to work on, so that helps you hit it longer too.
We all appreciate your valor and willingness to help with WINE (it needs it). Thanks, and good luck.
Dig in. Think of a question you'd like to have answered, and try to find the answer. When you get tired of reading code, go read the dev mailing list, the developer's guide, or the wiki.
Unfortunately, there's no royal road to understanding a large code base. If you enjoy that sort of thing (I do) you're in for some fun. If not, guide books won't really help, so you aren't really that much worse off.
Look for one peculiar feature you are interested to improve. Search for its implementation. Once you found it, pull on that straw and all the rest will follow.
The best way is through comments.
I'm being ironic, as you understand tiny bits of the beast add comments so you can follow your trail.
The other developers will also enjoy it if you add the missing guides in the code.
Try to implement some tiny little change in the code, something that will be visible to you. That might be figuring out a workable way to output debugging statements (and figuring out where the output appears), it might be changing the default size of windows or desktop color, or something. Once you can make something happen in the codebase, you've scratched the surface of understanding and can begin to move on toward more complicated things. At that point, select a goal of something slightly more useful that you'd like the code to do, and implement that. Or check out the project's bug tracker and look for something small to start with.
Document as you go, and write unit tests as you go, and refactor as you go. When you figure out what a routine does, comment it!!
As others have suggested, dig in! Read all the available documentation you can absorb. Then see if you can find other people who are interested or knowledgeable and learn with/from them. It helps to have people to bounce ideas off of and ask questions.
For C source code, once you get a feel for what areas of the code you'd like to work on, generate ctags and cscope databases for that code. These tools make it a lot easier to jump around and understand the code. Many text editors (one example is gvim) have support for ctags and cscope so you can jump around easily.
(warning: shameless marketing ahead)
For Java developers using Eclipse, there's nWire. It is an Eclipse plugin for navigating and visualizing large codebases.
A good way to understand a large system is to break it down into it's constituent parts and focus on a specific paths through the application.
Your debugger is your friend here, set a breakpoint in the thread you want to investigate then step through it line by line looking at which each part does... hope that helps...