Dreamincode.net



  • Now, I know I shouldn't be making fun of newbies, especially since I probably made equally naive mistakes just a few years ago.

    But I can't help it. I came across dreamincode.net on the SoftwareByRob blog. It's a large forum for a variety of programming topics.

    Here are a few samples:

    -------------------------------------------------

    Guy 1: [posts some broken code using gotos and labels]
    Guy 2: Also, I'll have to caution strongly against the use of the goto statement and labels...
    Guy 1: whats wrong with goto's? what do u suggest

    -------------------------------------------------

    Okay after burning midnight and daytime oil I finally finished my code. It's working like a charm.
    I just have a question though.
    How does the boolean work?

    -------------------------------------------------

    I am (hopefully) connecting to a Postgresql database using php embedded in a html file, using a selected form value as the basis of a select statements so
    $a = pg_connect("select x from tablename where y = 'document.form.formname.option.selected';")
    I am then trying to assign the value $a to a text field within the same form.

    When I assign the value to a text field say
    < input name="x" value="< ? php echo$a; ? >" >
    the php code is visible in the text field

    -------------------------------------------------


    Now, my question is, what developer forums would you recommend?


  • Your question reminds me the Groucho Marx dilemma ( recently highlighted by Jeff Atwood from coding horror ) : "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member". Here is the webforum variation : you don't want to be advised by someone who has enough time to advise you. Forums are more about serendipity. Too many newbees expect too much from forums, posting their problem and just waiting for an answer, while what they really need is to be able to search by themselves. But alright, it's ok to hang around some forum to exchange tips, but never expect too much. It's more about feeling supported by other people, so, pick one where you feel welcome, better than some L337 forum.



  • Excelent point.


    Although I like to believe that there are people out there who are passionate enough about what they do that they are willing to take some time to help others pursue their passion.



  • @cheesy said:

    Now, my question is, what developer forums would you recommend?

    "Coding Related  Help & Questions" in this forum.



  • That is an amazing website. E.g., someone posted a bizarre piece of code that is supposed to do this: This Program will help in situations where you don't know the base
    equivalant of a number and you want to reverse base equivalant of the
    number.
    It apparently converts a number you type in and then prints it the other way around. Or something like that. From the comment:

     * This mean if you enter binary 110 and reversing it for base 16 then 
    * answer will be 6 and not 4, because we reverse it for base 16 and not
    * for base 2. for base 2 it will show 011. For values like 10010 reverse
    * in hex would be 21 as number in hex for 10010 is 12.
    Can you understand it? Well, the forum is filled with gems like this. I wish I had found it before. That would have save me so much time programming...



  • @cheesy said:


    Now, my question is, what developer forums would you recommend?

    Sun's Java forums are pretty good for all levels of experience.  For newbie questions, it seems most users are willing to lead them to the right way of thinking without just giving them the answer (even for those who post obvious homework questions). 



  • Duh. I didn't even look at that website but you just poked(*) at my curiousness. I've looked at 4-5 entries and my conclusion is : run away screaming !

    It's alright to wonder how boolean works but ... it shows one sure thing : don't ever expect to learn it on a forum.

    Secondly, it shows how "code snippets" can be evil. Alright, when posted as a question, it easily shows how much the rest of the program must be bad. But code snippets as answers is the highway to copy-paste programming. People never learn. And they never question about their code design. That "I don't want to touch code that works" culture is one of our worst enemies ( that's something close to soft coding from today's articles ). Professionals should all know about refactoring, and amateurs should at least have heard of it. I mean, the real problem is that "I'm afraid to change more lines that the strict minimum" culture, not the actual effort it requires. As we all know, this barely postpones the effort needed to worse times.
     

    (*)  obviously English is not my native language. To my great surprise, while using mac's dictionary, looking up "poke", it showed several meanings including ... the BASIC instruction ! :D



  • @aikii said:

    Duh. I didn't even look at that website but you just poked() at my curiousness. ()  obviously English is not my native language.


    I think the expression you're looking for is something like "piqued my curiosity". 'Piqued' is a fancy old-fashioned word, though, that nobody really uses except in a phrase like "piqued my [curiosity|interest]".


    My thoughts: you're doing fine with the language; that you're not a native speaker is not at all obvious. However, if you want one tip to help your typing fit in: don't put a space after the ( and before the ) in your parentheses (use them real close, like this) or before the exclamation mark (keep it attached! like the period! or something like that). This is the accepted style of most printed matter in English-speaking countries.

    The real WTF? English, one of the few languages more ad-hoc and thrown-together than PHP, with even more conflicting conventions and exceptions. This does, however, leave the language a bit more compact than, say, some of the Romance languages. And it lends itself well to poetic expression.



  • @cheesy said:

    Now, my question is, what developer forums would you recommend?

    I'm really rather fond of http://www.tek-tips.com/

    I don't know if they give out full answers to things (leading to copying/pasting and not learning) as I usually post questions after I've done my research and need a bit of help getting a few bugs out, or I'm trying to do something overtly complicated and my brain decides to say "nuh uh! I'm not twisting in circles to figure this out right!" and I need some guidance on how to piece it together.  But generally it's a great place to get answers from... a lot of great people on there, very helpful, and seem to have good heads on their shoulders.

    Seejay



  • English: The bastard child of Norman soldiers and Saxon barmaids.  :-)  I forget where I heard that.



  • Well thank you, I think there's one other reason why I use spaces between parenthesis : depending on the font used, it's often ugly (by the way, parenthesis are already semantically ugly) (<- look how fast I learn)

    I could as well use non-breakable spaces, but if I remember well, they tend to break for whatever reason; I think it's a bug in firefox textarea and wysiwyg implementations. I tested it some time ago, can't be sure.



  • @cheesy said:

    Excelent

    Brillant. 



  • Well my favorite code help forum is thescripts.net. But I hardly ever go there because I'm not a noob.



  • I'll second [url]http://www.tek-tips.com[/url], which has a forum for just about every language I could think of, and of course [url]http://www.perlmonks.org[/url] for Perl.

    EDIT: And of course the forum will happily make links with no href attribute.

    @fennec said:

    The real WTF? English, one of the few languages more ad-hoc and thrown-together than PHP


    That's just a slang_real_curse_word() exaggeration.



  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    I'll second [url]http://www.tek-tips.com[/url], which has a forum for just about every language I could think of, and of course [url]http://www.perlmonks.org[/url] for Perl.

    EDIT: And of course the forum will happily make links with no href attribute.

    @fennec said:
    The real WTF? English, one of the few languages more ad-hoc and thrown-together than PHP


    That's just a slang_real_curse_word() exaggeration.

    Haha! Gotcha! You wanted slangrealcurseword(), not slang_real_curse_word(). Boy, you'll never live that one down.



  • Sorry to dig up an old(ish) thread, but I wanted to say thanks for the feedback in a round about sort of way. I'm the owner of Dream.In.Code and I completely agree with everything you've said. Unfortunately we've been a victim of our own success. Because the site ranks well in google, we get a TON of newbie traffic. It's actually our policy not to provide code to anyone unless they've shown us what they've done so far, but inevitably we still get the fly-by-night newbie that just wants us to do his/her homework.

    Many of our "experts" are actually programmers for fortune 500 companies, large telecoms, microsoft, accenture, and more. We just have a passion for helping guide students and those new to the industry in the right direction, however, this does not always happen as you have pointed out in this thread.

    I can only ask that you look beyond the noob questions as I think you'll find a close knit community of geeks who enjoy code... even if we spend most of our time helping the tragically unfortunate noob.


     

     

     



  • The Programmer's Symposium at ArsTechnica is pretty good. There's at least 1 member of MS's development staff there, and most advice tends to be quite good.

     

     

     

    Annnnnd.. look at that. Didn't realize this thread was so old. Oh well, still a sound suggestion. 



  • @skyhawk133 said:

    Many of our "experts" are actually programmers for fortune 500 companies, large telecoms, microsoft, accenture, and more.

    In other words, the kind of crackheads that generate much of the primary content for this site. (Except accenture - they wouldn't be caught dead creating anything)



  • Nah, they're not hot shots like you guys, just code lackeys that get bored and don't mind helping out every now and then.

     
    My point was the site isn't all noobs. Most of the regulars are actually gainfully employed programmers who practice what they preach. It's the fly-by-night members that post once and have no clue what a for loop is.
     


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