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[HarryHengst]

Hey guys. I kinda wanted to do some programming as a hobby. I know absolutely nothing atm. Is there somewhere I should start? I did a couple of codecademy lessons though. Should I move onto somewhere else or stick with it?

Codecademy is pretty bad as all it does it teach you some basic syntax and you can do pretty much fuck all after finishing a course. I know because i did it as well.

Find a good book for the language you want to learn (probably Python if you have no idea what language you want to learn), type every single example yourself and play with it, do all the assignments.

 

[Water]

Hey guys. I kinda wanted to do some programming as a hobby. I know absolutely nothing atm. Is there somewhere I should start? I did a couple of codecademy lessons though. Should I move onto somewhere else or stick with it?

Coursera and Udacity introductory programming courses would probably serve you well.

 

[Weiss]

This is going to sound insane, but I'm considering going to college for programming even though I have no idea how to do it, and previously never had any interest. I'm attracted by the good wages and I like working on a computer, but am I making a mistake doing this? How do you guys feel about your jobs?

 

[Atruvius]

This is going to sound insane, but I'm considering going to college for programming even though I have no idea how to do it, and previously never had any interest. I'm attracted by the good wages and I like working on a computer, but am I making a mistake doing this? How do you guys feel about your jobs?

If it's the good wages you're interested then I'd say that don't bother. If you're not having fun while learning with what you're doing then good pay isn't going to keep you motivated. If you're actually interested in programming then go for it. I am a second year programming student and when I started my first year at my uni I had zero experience in programming but you learn quickly, and coding stuff is really interesting, hours just fly.

 

[Water]

This is going to sound insane, but I'm considering going to college for programming even though I have no idea how to do it, and previously never had any interest. I'm attracted by the good wages and I like working on a computer, but am I making a mistake doing this? How do you guys feel about your jobs?

"Working at the computer" covers a lot of activities that are nothing like programming. And there are very different kinds of programming.

Do you like solving logical puzzles? Are you decent at math? Do you often find yourself thinking about how things around you - human interactions, bureaucracy, steps of a task, tools - could be tweaked to work better? Do you take things apart (physically or mentally) to figure out what makes them tick? These would be indicators that programming might be for you.

I don't think good wages are a valid reason to get into programming. You can't be good at programming without liking it, and if you aren't good, your wages won't be either. Law, medicine, finance all have better salary expectations.

On the other hand, a suitable combination of programming and something else, like specific kinds of finance and statistics know-how, could be very lucrative without having to be a top notch programmer.

Fortunately, with all the free info, courses and tools available, it has never been easier to try programming on your free time. If you don't have fun with it, don't make it your job.

 

[Weiss]

If it's the good wages you're interested then I'd say that don't bother. If you're not having fun while learning with what you're doing then good pay isn't going to keep you motivated. If you're actually interested in programming then go for it. I am a second year programming student and when I started my first year at my uni I had zero experience in programming but you learn quickly, and coding stuff is really interesting, hours just fly.

Well, I am interested in learning it, I wouldn't bother if I wasn't. I'm just concerned that a complete lack of experience will be a serious detriment when I start school. Programming is the first thing I've been able to say "I am interested in this" about since I left college to figure things out.

"Working at the computer" covers a lot of activities that are nothing like programming. And there are very different kinds of programming.

Do you like solving logical puzzles? Are you decent at math? Do you often find yourself thinking about how things around you - human interactions, bureaucracy, steps of a task, tools - could be tweaked to work better? Do you take things apart (physically or mentally) to figure out what makes them tick? These would be indicators that programming might be for you.

I don't think good wages are a valid reason to get into programming. You can't be good at programming without liking it, and if you aren't good, your wages won't be either. Law, medicine, finance all have better salary expectations.

On the other hand, a suitable combination of programming and something else, like specific kinds of finance and statistics know-how, could be very lucrative without having to be a top notch programmer.

Fortunately, with all the free info, courses and tools available, it has never been easier to try programming on your free time. If you don't have fun with it, don't make it your job.

Those are things I do like to do, actually. When it comes to problems, I've always been interested in breaking them apart in order to find what makes them tick.

By "working at a computer" I meant that I had taken a computer course in college while pursuing something else and found that I (and I'm having a hard time adequately describing this without it sounding really stupid) liked the atmosphere of it. I like working in a computer setting like that. I like having a set goal, a problem to solve. Work like that just appeals to me.

I'm sorry that I'm being so terribly vague about this, and thank you both for your responses.

 

[usea]

Most CS graduates didn't know anything about programming when they started their degree.

 

[Zoe]

Most CS graduates didn't know anything about programming when they finished their degree.

Fixed.

 

[PetriP-TNT]

Fixed.

True, true.

 

[Randolph Freelander]

Most professional programmers still don't know a thing about programming.

 

[usea]

Let's just go all the way.

Most CS freshmen don't know anything about programming.
Most CS graduates don't know anything about programming.
Most people don't know anything about programming.
Most people don't know anything.
No one knows anything.
No one knows.
No one exists.
Nothing.

 

[Tamanon]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005O9OFWQ/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Anybody ever used this book? I know it's for Python 3, but I'm really looking for some more in-depth stuff about Object Oriented to expand my meager Python knowledge. I'm tempted to learn the concepts and stuff in Java or C# since there's a lot more material on it, but I also want to stay as language focused as possible for now. It seems OOP is pretty important on the web side of things for Python.

After transferring to a 4-year school in the Spring, I'm contemplating making the switch from Information Security to Computer Science. I know it'd be another 2 and a half or 3 years as opposed to 2 years for my original degree, but it seems there's much more opportunity. And I'm enjoying some of the stuff I'm cooking up.

 

[smokeandmirrors]

Let's just go all the way.

Most CS freshmen don't know anything about programming.
Most CS graduates don't know anything about programming.
Most people don't know anything about programming.
Most people don't know anything.
No one knows anything.
No one knows.
No one exists.
Nothing.

cogito ergo sum

 

[iapetus]

cogito ergo sum

Makes too many assumptions. "There is thought, therefore there is existence" makes fewer.

 

[HarryHengst]

"Working at the computer" covers a lot of activities that are nothing like programming. And there are very different kinds of programming.

Do you like solving logical puzzles? Are you decent at math? Do you often find yourself thinking about how things around you - human interactions, bureaucracy, steps of a task, tools - could be tweaked to work better? Do you take things apart (physically or mentally) to figure out what makes them tick? These would be indicators that programming might be for you.

I don't think good wages are a valid reason to get into programming. You can't be good at programming without liking it, and if you aren't good, your wages won't be either. Law, medicine, finance all have better salary expectations.

On the other hand, a suitable combination of programming and something else, like specific kinds of finance and statistics know-how, could be very lucrative without having to be a top notch programmer.

Fortunately, with all the free info, courses and tools available, it has never been easier to try programming on your free time. If you don't have fun with it, don't make it your job.

While i agree with this, dont go into law if you want a job which allows you to pay off your debt and buy food.

 

[Lasthope106]

Let's just go all the way.

Most CS freshmen don't know anything about programming.
Most CS graduates don't know anything about programming.
Most people don't know anything about programming.
Most people don't know anything.
No one knows anything.
No one knows.
No one exists.
Nothing.

I like you.

 

[Iph]

Most professional programmers still don't know a thing about programming.

What types of professions know the most about it, IYHO? I've taken a bit of programming on and off since public school. I know very little.

 

[AbortedWalrusFetus]

I have to give credit to the high school I went to, because they actually gave a decent chunk of programming options. They weren't good, and they were very basic, but it at least got me into programming.

In middle school I took a class on QBASIC and that's when I really caught the bug. I had just gotten my first computer like a year or two before that. I started dabbling in HTML that same year. This was in like... 1996 or 1997. Anyway, in high school they offered Visual Basic and C++ programming, and I took both. The C++ we got into wasn't really in depth, and we never even covered OO concepts or memory management, but it did cover a lot of concepts like functions, boolean logic, basic data structures, and a few other things.

My school required us to do a large project with a 10 minute oral presentation on it when you were a senior and I decided to do a programming project. I made this really garbage console poker game. But, I did teach myself some of the basics of OO design (I had a card class, a deck class, etc). It was a great learning experience. There were a lot of guys in the school who were into it. A guy I learned a lot from in HS now works at Google.

Anyway, by the time I got to college I was pretty sure I wanted to study computer science. I also felt like I knew more than most people who were coming into the program, but I didn't know enough to be like one of the uber nerds that were also in the program.

 

[Exuro]

So I've started a new programming class. Originally it was in the ECE department but it was dropped and I'm taking hte CS variant. They've apparently done different things so I'm trying to over this week/weekend get up with snuff on what's going on. We're beginning/reviewing with bitwise operators, "masks, casts, bitfields(no idea what these are) and that sort. One of the first things tripping me up is that I haven't really dealt with hexadecimal values and I'm kind of confused by how they're displayed. For example you have the value 0xFFFFFFFF and also 0xFFFF being the same value. I need a little help understanding why these are the same. I tried googling but I don't think I was searching correctly as I'm not sure what this is or if there's a word for it.

 

[usea]

So I've started a new programming class. Originally it was in the ECE department but it was dropped and I'm taking hte CS variant. They've apparently done different things so I'm trying to over this week/weekend get up with snuff on what's going on. We're beginning/reviewing with bitwise operators, "masks, casts, bitfields(no idea what these are) and that sort. One of the first things tripping me up is that I haven't really dealt with hexadecimal values and I'm kind of confused by how they're displayed. For example you have the value 0xFFFFFFFF and also 0xFFFF being the same value. I need a little help understanding why these are the same. I tried googling but I don't think I was searching correctly as I'm not sure what this is or if there's a word for it.

Those are not the same value at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal

Hexadecimal is just like binary or decimal. Each place is worth a power of the base. In decimal, the places are worth (from right-to-left): 1, 10, 100, 1000 (10^0, 10^1, 10^2, 10^3). In hex, they're worth 1, 16, 256, 4096 (16^0, 16^1, 16^2, 16^3).

If you're on Windows, you can just use the windows calculator to look at hex and binary (no idea about osx). Open calc and go to the View menu; select Programmer. Now there's a radio button for choosing hex, decimal, octal, or binary. Select Hex and type FFFF. Then select decimal, and it changes to 65535. That's because F is 15, and 15*1 + 15*16 + 15*256 + 15*4096 = 65535.

0xFFFF = 65535
0xFFFFFFFF = 4294967295

0x is just a prefix that says "this number is hex." It's a convention.

Now, both numbers in binary will be all 1s, but they'll be a different amount of 1s. The value doesn't change when you convert bases. If you convert them to binary and then decimal, you'll still get the numbers I mentioned above.

 

[Kinitari]

I feel like I am in the process of learning everything javascript that was ever made. Right now on my plate is angular, node, mongo(fuck you, it counts as more javascript to learn!), d3 and jasmine.

Some of it is obviously simpler than other stuff, d3 is surprisingly complex but intelligently designed. I'm surprised it's not a bigger deal. Their contextual reuse of functions is really well done.

But ontop of that, my boss (a great mentor so far) has given me two books to read, he thinks will really help me grasp some core concepts of javascript better. I think I'll have some functional and really cool looking d3 based graphs for one of our clients by the middle of next week, as long as I keep studying and working hard - fuck it's a lot to learn.

Today is my fourth day.

 

[Lasthope106]

Web programming doesn't interest me at all. The idea of working with javascript, php, html, css, and all these web frameworks bores me to tears. I rather be on the desktop. Hell, give me an embedded device and I'm in heaven.

 

[NotBacon]

Web programming is kinda scary to me actually haha.

I'm pretty comfy with Java, C, and Python. Now i'm looking towards web development because I feel like that would be good to have under my belt, but sweet jesus at all the acronyms and frameworks and i'm just confused as fu......

 

[Slavik81]

Those are not the same value at all.

Not as a normal hexadecimal number, no, but he may be studying one or two's complement, where the number is transformed before it is interpreted as a value.

With two's complement, for example, 0xFFFF is like -0001 and 0xFFFFFFFF is -00000001, assuming the former is a 2-byte integer and the latter is a 4-byte integer. After transforming, those extra Fs become leading zeroes, and are thus meaningless .

 

[usea]

Not as a normal hexadecimal number, no, but he may be studying one or two's complement, where the number is transformed before it is interpreted as a value.

With two's complement, for example, 0xFFFF is like -0001 and 0xFFFFFFFF is -00000001, assuming the former is a 2-byte integer and the latter is a 4-byte integer. After transforming, those extra Fs become leading zeroes, and are thus meaningless .

Ah, so that's what he meant.

 

[smokeandmirrors]

I have to give credit to the high school I went to, because they actually gave a decent chunk of programming options. They weren't good, and they were very basic, but it at least got me into programming.

In middle school I took a class on QBASIC and that's when I really caught the bug. I had just gotten my first computer like a year or two before that. I started dabbling in HTML that same year. This was in like... 1996 or 1997. Anyway, in high school they offered Visual Basic and C++ programming, and I took both. The C++ we got into wasn't really in depth, and we never even covered OO concepts or memory management, but it did cover a lot of concepts like functions, boolean logic, basic data structures, and a few other things.

My school required us to do a large project with a 10 minute oral presentation on it when you were a senior and I decided to do a programming project. I made this really garbage console poker game. But, I did teach myself some of the basics of OO design (I had a card class, a deck class, etc). It was a great learning experience. There were a lot of guys in the school who were into it. A guy I learned a lot from in HS now works at Google.

Anyway, by the time I got to college I was pretty sure I wanted to study computer science. I also felt like I knew more than most people who were coming into the program, but I didn't know enough to be like one of the uber nerds that were also in the program.

I wish my high school did this. where I went, it was all about business. I would've loved to have some programming under my belt by the time college rolled around.

 

[Anustart]

Anyone care to help an idiot? For the life of me I cannot find my solutions in Visual Studio 2012 TFS. Where the hell are they?

Nevermind.

 

[AbortedWalrusFetus]

I wish my high school did this. where I went, it was all about business. I would've loved to have some programming under my belt by the time college rolled around.

Apparently after my class graduated most of the interest in the programs was lost so they were dropped. Sucks. I forgot to mention, I actually won the award for best project related to Business for my program. Got a $100 savings bond for it. Woo woo.

 

[AbortedWalrusFetus]

Anyone ever bought a domain from a squatter? There's a domain I want for a project that I am planning, and the domain is already registered, but there is no evidence that there has ever been a site on the domain for the 8 years it's been registered, and right now it simply leads to an error page.

I was thinking about using a broker service like they offer at domain tools. Anyone have experience with that? I'm assuming the domain isn't worth very much because none of the variant .org/.net/.* have been taken, and it's not a real word. Is it better to just try to get in contact with the owner directly and ask if it's for sale than use a broker?

 

[caffeware]

This is more math than programming, but anyways...

Let's say 3 freshman students want to rent a house. The landlord sets the price to $30.

The rent will be split equally among the students. So each student will pay $10.

After a while, the landlord decides the rent is too high. He sets the new price to $25 and gives the extra $5 to John and gives orders to return the money to the students.

Now, John doesn't have change, so he decides to keep $2 and gives $1 to each of the students.

So now the students each had paid $9 as rent for the house, and John kept $2 for himself.

So:

    3 x 9 = 27
   27 + 2 = 29

Where is the extra dollar to complete the $30?

 

[Tamanon]

This is more math than programming, but anyways...

Let's say 3 freshman students want to rent a house. The landlord sets the price to $30.

The rent will be split equally among the students. So each student will pay $10.

After a while, the landlord decides the rent is too high. He sets the new price to $25 and gives the extra $5 to John and gives orders to return the money to the students.

Now, John doesn't have change, so he decides to keep $2 and gives $1 to each of the students.

So now the students each had paid $9 as rent for the house, and John kept $2 for himself.

So:

    3 x 9 = 27
   27 + 2 = 29

Where is the extra dollar to complete the $30?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_dollar_riddle

 

[Leonsito]

I have more a Math than Programming doubt too, I have to round a decimal number to the lowest 5, like this:

14.5 to 14.5
14.9 to 14.5
14.4 to 14.0
14.1 to 14.0

I know how to round to the nearest 5, but not to lowest 5, halp please.

 

[Leezard]

I have more a Math than Programming doubt too, I have to round a decimal number to the lowest 5, like this:

14.5 to 14.5
14.9 to 14.5
14.4 to 14.0
14.1 to 14.0

I know how to round to the nearest 5, but not to lowest 5, halp please.

How about doubling the number, flooring it to the nearest integer, then taking half of that number?

 

[Fisico]

How about doubling the number, flooring it to the nearest integer, then taking half of that number?

More like truncate no ?

EDIT : nvm both work

 

[Leonsito]

How about doubling the number, flooring it to the nearest integer, then taking half of that number?

Thank you! Not only works great, it also helped me understand how it works

 

[Kinitari]

So far so good at work! Last week today was my first week, and holy fuck have I improved in that time frame.

Shit like promises and dependancy injection were things that were tripping me up, and now I am starting to get them (C# REALLY helped me in this respect), now I'm reasonably comfortable with them. I've started to wrap my head around D3, although looking at some of the code snippets online for graphs is fucking crazy. I already have core functionality for some graphs ready, and am just waiting on the client to provide me with some data to start testing it out. I was honestly expecting it to take until next week. I'm also grasping more and more of node, angular and mongo.

My boss is going on vacation this next week, and I'll be mostly alone in the office - this is basically a startup, although it's been around for half a year, he only just started hiring other people because he has too many clients to handle the work on his own - and also he got some pretty good funding by promising to hire more people in the city. He's still looking for a few junior/intermediate devs, but he's hired two seniors that should be starting soon.

It's honestly all pretty exciting, it's pretty clear so far that this company is off to a good start, my boss really knows what he is doing business side and development side, and he's an absolutely great teacher, with very realistic expectations of me.

I really want to impress him when he gets back after next week, so I'll be studying like crazy. I've never wanted to succeed so much at a job. It's great!

 

[AbortedWalrusFetus]

So far so good at work! Last week today was my first week, and holy fuck have I improved in that time frame.

Shit like promises and dependancy injection were things that were tripping me up, and now I am starting to get them (C# REALLY helped me in this respect), now I'm reasonably comfortable with them. I've started to wrap my head around D3, although looking at some of the code snippets online for graphs is fucking crazy. I already have core functionality for some graphs ready, and am just waiting on the client to provide me with some data to start testing it out. I was honestly expecting it to take until next week. I'm also grasping more and more of node, angular and mongo.

My boss is going on vacation this next week, and I'll be mostly alone in the office - this is basically a startup, although it's been around for half a year, he only just started hiring other people because he has too many clients to handle the work on his own - and also he got some pretty good funding by promising to hire more people in the city. He's still looking for a few junior/intermediate devs, but he's hired two seniors that should be starting soon.

It's honestly all pretty exciting, it's pretty clear so far that this company is off to a good start, my boss really knows what he is doing business side and development side, and he's an absolutely great teacher, with very realistic expectations of me.

I really want to impress him when he gets back after next week, so I'll be studying like crazy. I've never wanted to succeed so much at a job. It's great!

Man, the first year of my job in my career so exciting and awesome. I loved when I started my career.

Then you get jaded.

 

[PlayDat]

Have any of you guys experienced issues with Code Academy? Logged in today for the first time in weeks and started the Python tutorial from the beginning, but the console didn't work at all after the first lesson where all you have to do is click "Save & Continue". Wasn't a big deal at first since I could get through the rest of part 1 no problem. I'm stuck at part 2 where it asks you to type answers to some questions into the console. I click on it to type my name and nothing happens. The page looks like this for me.

Looked around on their website and it seems like others are similar issues. Someone posted about this over a year ago and either a similar problem now exists or it was never fixed in the first place. Are they usually this bad when it comes to support issues? I'll probably start looking for an alternative pretty soon.

 

[Jokab]

Have any of you guys experienced issues with Code Academy? Logged in today for the first time in weeks and started the Python tutorial from the beginning, but the console didn't work at all after the first lesson where all you have to do is click "Save & Continue". Wasn't a big deal at first since I could get through the rest of part 1 no problem. I'm stuck at part 2 where it asks you to type answers to some questions into the console. I click on it to type my name and nothing happens. The page looks like this for me.



Looked around on their website and it seems like others are similar issues. Someone posted about this over a year ago and either a similar problem now exists or it was never fixed in the first place. Are they usually this bad when it comes to support issues? I'll probably start looking for an alternative pretty soon.

Honestly, you're probably better off without it. Codeacademy pretty much only teaches you syntax, not concepts like OOP or why things are done as they are or how anything works. Stanford's (or is it MIT?) introduction to computer science uses Python and is a better alternative for a beginner programmer (which I'm just assuming you are). If you're not, then Learn python the hard way is great.

 

[smokeandmirrors]

Web programming doesn't interest me at all. The idea of working with javascript, php, html, css, and all these web frameworks bores me to tears. I rather be on the desktop. Hell, give me an embedded device and I'm in heaven.

I've been working with a bit of HTML/CSS for my own website, and I agree, it kinda actually sucks. I'm sure working with it a bit more will make it a little less sucky, but still.

don't have too much work with javascript yet, so I won't pass judgement on it yet.

 

[Zoe]

All I do is web development, and I barely spend any time on the front-end client-side stuff.

(gonna have to do some research on Monday though on how to iPadify one of my web apps)

 

[PlayDat]

Honestly, you're probably better off without it. Codeacademy pretty much only teaches you syntax, not concepts like OOP or why things are done as they are or how anything works. Stanford's (or is it MIT?) introduction to computer science uses Python and is a better alternative for a beginner programmer (which I'm just assuming you are). If you're not, then Learn python the hard way is great.

Thanks. I've taken a couple courses already and thought it'd be good to start learning a new language over the summer. This links seems like it'll be more my speed.

 

[Slavik81]

Man, the first year of my job in my career so exciting and awesome. I loved when I started my career.

Then you get jaded.

This soothes my soul a little:

New Google employees (we call “Nooglers”) often ask me what makes me effective at what I do. I tell them only half-jokingly that it’s very simple: I do the Right Thing for Google and the world, and then I sit back and wait to get fired. If I don’t get fired, I’ve done the Right Thing for everyone. If I do get fired, this is the wrong employer to work for in the first place. So, either way, I win. That is my career strategy. (source)

 

[Anustart]

LINQ question:

var cars =
                        from car in carList
                        where car.TicketNum == tempNum
                        select car.TicketNum;

                    if (cars.Any())
                    {
                        isUsed = true;
                    }

Just wanting to make sure my code is correct in that querying the carList, it will only select it if the numbers match, and the cars.Any() will only return true if it matched earlier.

 

[ColtraineGF]

LINQ question:

var cars =
                        from car in carList
                        where car.TicketNum == tempNum
                        select car.TicketNum;

                    if (cars.Any())
                    {
                        isUsed = true;
                    }

Just wanting to make sure my code is correct in that querying the carList, it will only select it if the numbers match, and the cars.Any() will only return true if it matched earlier.

Looks good to me.

 

[hateradio]

LINQ question:

var cars =
                        from car in carList
                        where car.TicketNum == tempNum
                        select car.TicketNum;

                    if (cars.Any())
                    {
                        isUsed = true;
                    }

Just wanting to make sure my code is correct in that querying the carList, it will only select it if the numbers match, and the cars.Any() will only return true if it matched earlier.

Do you really need the isUsed flag? If cars.Any() returns a boolean, then just use that. That's what OO is all about, unless it's not a cached value and you want to store it as such: isUsed = cars.Any().

 

[PetriP-TNT]

Honestly, you're probably better off without it. Codeacademy pretty much only teaches you syntax, not concepts like OOP or why things are done as they are or how anything works. Stanford's (or is it MIT?) introduction to computer science uses Python and is a better alternative for a beginner programmer (which I'm just assuming you are). If you're not, then Learn python the hard way is great.

I have been doing Flex/AS3 stuff for the past 2 years and job market from them in Finland is pretty much nil (I didn't choose them, they were kinda assigned to me as our school already had projects for companies that required them) so I was thinking either diving deeper into JavaScript (I know all the basics concepts and I am familiar with the quirks) or maybe learning something like Python.

The Python jobmarket isn't exactly glowing here either, but it seems simplistic enough to learn (pretty much everything at Learn Python The Hard Way I could do blindfolded coming from OOP background and the syntax seems easy enough). Webdev market is there, but I guess the competition there is also 10 times stronger.

Then again I could do something with C#, maybe a mobile project, but I am drawing short on ideas.

 

[Jackben]

Mini-rant:

I'm currently enrolled in a community college C++ object-oriented programming class after coming out of programming fundamentals.The textbook for both is C++ Programming: From Problem Analysis to Program Design by DS Malik.

I seriously hate this textbook. Chapters are very long and a lot of the passages are extremely dense. Every other word feels like jargon and so much is wrapped up in saying. "...which will be explained later in the chapter" or requires direct understanding of something just explained two sentences ago.

Maybe just fall semester blues combined with whining but I feel like I learn maybe 10% tops from reading the chapters with 90% understanding and learning coming from the actual assignments spent messing around on Visual Studio and looking up shit online. Is it just me? I don't have a problem learning from textbooks in other classes but reading through this one feels like trying to draw blood from a stone.

 

[_Isaac]

LINQ question:

var cars =
                        from car in carList
                        where car.TicketNum == tempNum
                        select car.TicketNum;

                    if (cars.Any())
                    {
                        isUsed = true;
                    }

Just wanting to make sure my code is correct in that querying the carList, it will only select it if the numbers match, and the cars.Any() will only return true if it matched earlier.

It looks right, but if you like lambda notation LINQ (and I do), you can really shorten that down to something like

var isUsed = carList.Any(car => car.TicketNum == tempNum);

and you immediately get a boolean indicating if there are any entries in carList whose TicketNum matches tempNum.

 

[ntropy]

Mini-rant:

I'm currently enrolled in a community college C++ object-oriented programming class after coming out of programming fundamentals.The textbook for both is C++ Programming: From Problem Analysis to Program Design by DS Malik.

I seriously hate this textbook. Chapters are very long and a lot of the passages are extremely dense. Every other word feels like jargon and so much is wrapped up in saying. "...which will be explained later in the chapter" or requires direct understanding of something just explained two sentences ago.

Maybe just fall semester blues combined with whining but I feel like I learn maybe 10% tops from reading the chapters with 90% understanding and learning coming from the actual assignments spent messing around on Visual Studio and looking up shit online. Is it just me? I don't have a problem learning from textbooks in other classes but reading through this one feels like trying to draw blood from a stone.

try this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321776402/?tag=neogaf0e-20