Programming for fun, how to choose a language II

 My quest is to find a programming language to continue my programming endeavors in, as you can read here I don’t have much experience programming up till now, but always had some interest! This search has already lasted a long time so I have already have some idea of what to look for in a programming language, a lot of ideas of what to code and ways of accomplishing these tasks in code.  
 
A list of some of my criteria: 

• modern language
  
• marketable
  
• good books/documentation
  
• good community
  
• future proof
  
• OO

I want to write web services as well as desktop programs. So GUI programming tools are a must. Also a IDE would be nice. Furthermore I want to be able to use API's in my programming, for example I would like to be able to do some desktop publishing to my blog, this will be one of my first projects to perform in the chosen language.

I have always said that programming is not a hard thing to learn, if you understand computers and how computers work and process data it looks to be easy to learn how to work a programming language. It seems to me that there are certain key programming processes which you can use in every language, just the syntax differs per language. So I am actually planning to learn more languages in one go and make a comparison between those while learning how to work with them. Lets see how far I get...

//Z

Mammut stickers

Early this morning, when I got on my bike to go to work, I found some Mammut stickers on my doorstep. It must have been lost by someone who came by since it was just on the sidewalk. Immediatly I knew where I would be using them, on my new wiki/intranet server I had called Media last week and which will be renamed to Mammut soon.

Pics to follow (forgot my camera at home).

Update: Camera emptied:


//Z

Very interesting, Nasa unveils Hubble's successor.

The US space agency Nasa has unveiled a model of a space telescope that scientists say will be able to see to the farthest reaches of the Universe.



It will be placed on the Lagrange Point number 2.
This look like very interesting news, I am wondering if they will make the named targetdeadline of june 2013. 
My guess is they will not make it by then, but not by more then a 
year later.

//Z

Update: Found more information

Nuclear spill in Tenessee, 14 months ago...

"Nobody got hurt. There was no danger to the general public," NRC spokesman David McIntyre said Tuesday. "(But) they were lucky, and we don't like them to be lucky, we like them to be careful."

See Knox News for the whole story, unbelievable that we don't know about this until 14 months after.

//Z

Oh My God! I have readers?

Just for fun I have a Google Analytics account which I use to check this blog, it was just meant to check it out so I knew if it was something for my girlfriend to use on her blog. I deemed it useful after checking it out and never really looked at it again after that. I just noticed that supposedly it got upgraded lately so I decided to check it out for myself just now. Imagine my surprise, I have more readers then just me and the people I have told about it (only friends actually). It seems I have readers from:

• Italy, Casalecchio Di Reno
  
• Spain, La Degolada
  
• United states, Spring Hill
  
• United states, Dallas
  
• United states, New York
  
• Canada, Montreal
  

According to this map on Google Analytics:



I have to admit, I did not expect anyone to find me without me advertising my site, comment on other peoples blogs and maybe even beg for link exchanges. I just write this blog for myself actually, but I have to admit, I like being noticed, a funny thing.

Hi to everyone who happens to come by, never expected you would show up but you are welcome to have a look around, and if you are in the mood or have a question leave a comment and I promise to get back to you soon!

//Z

I have to admit, I can't wait to see the first comment which is not mine on this site...

Project Programming I

I want to expand my programming knowledge and experience. I do have some experience with programming, i started learning how to program in BASIC on my C64. Then in university i had to write in BASIC again for our first year exercises, including a takeoff simulator, then for the rest in Turbo Pascal. I didn't enjoy that very much, didn't like the language and in general was put off with programming for some time because of that. Then later on I got interested in programming again when i started building websites and getting into programming for the MUD i play. Quickly I had a rudimentary knowledge of PHP, and was proficient in html and css, and could work magic with VBScript. Good enough to start building some websites. After some projects, just to learn actually, I got some ideas and would like to start programming some applications, tools and off course websites which mostly involve services where I would greatly profit from knowledge of a more modern, used and user-friendly programming language. Visual Basic was getting too limited for my purposes and I decided I would have to decide on one language, for now, but make sure I not just learn how to program stuff I know already in a new language but also learn new applications and the new wonders of the modern programming languages. After mastering one I will apply my newfound knowledge to learn more languages, lets just focus on the first for now though.

I will consider several languages, I think it would be good to list these and note my reasons for liking and disliking a language. This will be my master list of languages, I think I will have to write a new post for some of these languages where I will list my research and findings per language. I will link these posts from here so I can easily find them again. My criteria at the moment are quite fluent, as I go along and find out more about them I will add to it. At the moment I will consider how easy to learn, how currently used in production environments, how relevant to my work atm, etc.

• Delphi


• BASIC


• PHP


• C


• C++


• Java


• Python


• LISP


• VBScript


• Perl


• C#


• JavaScript


• Ruby


• Smalltalk


• Lisp


• bash

This is atm just a list of links to Wikipedia articles, but will be annotated and linked to articles of my own on these languages when I have read the documentation and reviews of languages.

I can also see a article on my criteria coming up...

//Z 

Project Bag I

Another day, another project. I always wanted to have a bag specifically arranged and made so it would fit my stuff. There are a couple of features I am looking for in a bag, there are bags on the market which do have some of the features but I have not been able to find a bag which combines them all.

The features I am looking for are:

1. I have to be able to carry it on my shoulder comfortably but the bag also has to have straps to be able to carry it on my bag whem I am biking to work.
   
2. It has to hold multiple papersizes (A4 and A5) comfortably.
3. It has to be able to store a laptop, and since i use multiple laptops it has to be adjustable.
4. Store pens, cards, etc.
5. Another idea of mine is to build a usb hub internally and be able to just hook it up to my computer and have a usb harddrive, a usb bluetooth stick, usb webcam,  etc available at every location i have my bag with me.

These are a couple features I have allready thought up, offcourse more will be added when i think of them.

//Z

BBC Timeline

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/timelines/british/index.shtml

Interesting display of information! I have got to check how this is made, it seems like a very interesting system to disply time-related information.

Maybe it would be nice to have a view like this from a to-do administration system, so you can see in time how you have handled your to-do load.

//Z

Dinosaur Workshop

How cool is that! This a a diy project on epic proportions..:)

//Z

Blogging for money

I was reading digg today and among the numerous posts about 'the magic number' there was a link to a writers guide to freelance blogging, a very interesting read if you want to get into blogging for money. 

The article also has a couple of nice links to other sites where you can a load  of information on the subject matter. 

Problogger
BlogHerald
Daily Blog Tips
CopyBlogger

Another site I found on the subject:

ChrisG

//Z

CSS resources

This is a nice listing of CSS tools, have to check these out sometimes...

//Z

Electric bikes

I have been interested in (motor)bike petrol to electrical conversion projects allready for a long time. This one is a very nice implementation of a from scratch trike build.

http://zeept.wordpress.com/

Also this is a very interesting motorbike conversion to electric build.

Further information will follow..:)

//Z

Visiting USA

Let's just say I will not be visiting the US anytime soon, this article in the NZHerald makes it very clear that I am not the only one thinking this way. I cannot believe Americans are not making a big rucus about this, it must affect a big part of the american touristindustry!

//Z

Supersize me follow-up

Remember Supersize me? In Sweden they have done 
this experiment under clinical conditions and have found 
very different results. 

In the Swedisch experiment they found that the body 
might adapt to the amount of calories eaten... interesting.

//Z

Dining in the sky

Anyone up for a dinner in high heaven? I just saw this today, Dinner in the sky! I would love to do this, who wants to come? Let's bring a bag of money though...

//Z