Category Archives: programming

Reviewing Perl with a baby is no easy task

For a week or two now, I have been trying to get back to programming, starting with a language I once used back in 1999: Perl. I started watching this Lea Verou video of reg-ex and then referred to this tutorial to trigger some memories and get back to the basic Perl syntax. Normally, I can complete this in a few hours and then do some practice apps and I would have the syntax down after a few more days or a week of practice.

This time it was challenging and I still didn’t finish the video or tutorial after 2 or so weeks! Why? Because there is a baby in the room! I wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me this prior to this year but it is nearly impossible to do any kind of work that requires deep mental concentration and focus when there is an infant present. People say babies sleep all the time — so not true! They sleep in 10-15 min intervals …. maybe 30 mins if you are lucky! Who can get any good learning or programming done in blocks of 10-15 mins?!

I am going to have to table this review for another time. I’ve had these 2 link tabs opened forever on my machine and just not getting the time to dive it. I have my perl program started but it has not gotten too far.

$userstring =~ /baby!/

Video: Stop calling them girls

Interesting article from Lea Verou (seasoned tech expert) on the Women in Technology (WiT) movement and whether that’s helping or harming women.  Here’s a video Lea refers to about how women are diminished when women or men use “girls” to describe women in the workplace.

Here’s the video Lea referenced in her article about using a male picture and seeing what response she would get – double standards out there in tech?


 

Online courses from top colleges

So over the past year, I have read articles about various start-ups offering college-level courses from top colleges like MIT, Princeton, Standford, etc. I’ve looked at Udacity and Khan’s Academy and then I came across this article in Fast Company about a new service, Coursera. Recently, I had been thinking of taking classes after work, maybe a foreign language course or a programming course or literature course — just wanted something that would challenge me differently from the day to day job duties.

But actually enrolling in a class and having to physically go there after work or on the weekend just seemed terribly difficult to me: taking the time off to go get my ID, or attend the open house, or register and pay in person if they are picky about that, and then there is the issue of making sure I leave work on time to make it to class and doing the homework and studying for the tests.  And the cost of these classes! (I’m sure my firm will not pay for literature or language or most tech classes since my job isn’t really in those areas.) Well, maybe these are all excuses I’m making to avoid taking a class for real, even though I keep saying that’s what I want to do.

In the end, I decided that I should at least sign up for one of these free online courses and see if I can stick to that. I’m going to give coursera a shot and will write more about it in the future!

Hello world!

This is the default title set by WordPress. Why “Hello World”, you ask?  Every programmer’s first assignment is to write a “Hello World” program. It is the easiest and uses the most basic function in any given language: the print statement. It’s a way of saying, “Hi!”

In Ruby, it is puts "Hello World!";
In PHP, it is echo "Hello World!";
In VisualBasic, it is Console.WriteLine ("hello world!")
In SQL, I suppose it may be SELECT "Hello World!" from TABLE
In Javascript, it is document.write("<b>hello world!</b>");
In ColdFusion, it is <cfoutput>Hello World!</cfoutput>
In Perl, it is print "Hello World. n";
In Java, it is System.out.println ("hello world!");
In C, it is printf ("hello world! n");
In Pascal, it is writeln("Hello World!");
In Turing, it is put "Hello World"

(A long while back, I used to write code for work.  This is in order of the latest language learned to the earliest language learned. Regrettably, I do not remember most of the syntax of any of these languages though I have a fondness for Pascal and can still do some JS.  I learned Ruby for an interview last summer and funny enough, I actually passed the tech interview and landed the job for a Ruby developer/tech lead role.  But I didn’t take it — I don’t see myself programming fulltime anymore. I leave that to the passionate hackers and experts out there.)