Coding Languages

My only advice to you all is this:

Do not let anyone convince you to learn PeopleCode/PeopleSoft. I don't care if they offer to give you a goose that craps diamonds the size of beach balls. Run away. Far away.
 
Z A C K

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I've been thinking about why my SQL class just seems annoying, yet I'm doing very well with Javascript.

It seems like certain technology subjects have the material presented Out of Context which is ridiculous to me because SQL or MySQL fit into LAMP or WAMP servers in the big picture.

It might partly have to do with how I learn things, but if I knew PHP and was able to create a Database as part of a website and interact with it through the Website, I think Databasing would be a much more engaging topic. Or even if the course pre-created the Web Front End and all we did was build and tweak the Database in the back end if that makes sense.

Maybe I feel this way because the Website is familiar to us because we use it all the time, so why not start with what is familiar and build off it? Learn HTML-CSS then branch off that with Javascript, PHP, then SQL while applying all of them to a website? I dunno, just my random thoughts on learning this stuff and what to me seems like very strange approaches to teaching it.
 
I'm not up on any of the latest web languages, but teaching IT is always tough.

It also doesn't help that too many "IT teachers" are washed up hacks who couldn't make it in the real world. I hate to say that, but that has been my experience. Too few of them actually wanted to end up teachers.

It is also the most frustrating thing to teach/learn.
 
The worst is when IT professors just use the same notes/material every year. Especially bad when the notes were originally written in 2005.
 
Z A C K said:
The worst is when IT professors just use the same notes/material every year. Especially bad when the notes were originally written in 2005.
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I had a Java class in the late 90s when it was "cutting edge". The class was once a week on Friday from 2pm to 5 (yeah you can see where this is going). The "textbook" was one of those "Teach yourself X in 21 days" things. The class involved him putting code samples directly from the book on an overhead and discussing them. Needless to say my attendance for that class was not exactly excellent. :laugh: Yeah, I can read the book myself in the morning and go party later.

Seriously, if you are horribly confused and you think maybe your teacher has no clue, you may be right.

That's not to badmouth teachers, because in other fields most are great. IT is different though. It is rare that you find one who's really passionate about teaching and knowledgeable. I was lucky enough to have a great programming 101 teacher for C++ to get me started.
 
Kerosene31 said:
Seriously, if you are horribly confused and you think maybe your teacher has no clue, you may be right.

That's not to badmouth teachers, because in other fields most are great. IT is different though. It is rare that you find one who's really passionate about teaching and knowledgeable. I was lucky enough to have a great programming 101 teacher for C++ to get me started.
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I put a lot of blame on programming book publishers. I think my SQL book is awful and I'm not alone:
Amazon product


It's possible even a hack can teach if they're working from good curriculum material that the student can easily reference and not find massively confusing. Good publishers will also include supplemental online material.


Ultimately, I get the feeling that teaching programming from books is kind of absurd and slow. Books are probably better as a reference for experienced people who know specifically what they're looking for in one of those In A Nutshell O'reilly tomes.

I remember when I did my remedial Algebra for college and refreshed on a computer based system called MyMathLab. Something like that would be a big help to people learning this stuff. Code Academy sort of does it, but I feel their system is more for testing than teaching or reference.
 
SQL is just the worst to teach. All that "6 normal forms" or whatever (are there even 6 still?). I write SQL every day but couldn't tell you anything about any of that crap. They taught it the same way 20 years ago and it was just as confusing.

The frustrating thing about learning programming is you basically bang your head against the wall until a lightbulb goes off. Nobody writes these horribly complex classroom queries in the real world. We'd use views or something else. The difference between an ok sql coder and a great one is optimization.

There was a guy who I worked with who was a tuning wizard. He'd take anything I wrote and would cut the runtime in half.
 
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Videodrome said:
I put a lot of blame on programming book publishers. I think my SQL book is awful and I'm not alone:
Amazon product


It's possible even a hack can teach if they're working from good curriculum material that the student can easily reference and not find massively confusing. Good publishers will also include supplemental online material.


Ultimately, I get the feeling that teaching programming from books is kind of absurd and slow. Books are probably better as a reference for experienced people who know specifically what they're looking for in one of those In A Nutshell O'reilly tomes.

I remember when I did my remedial Algebra for college and refreshed on a computer based system called MyMathLab. Something like that would be a big help to people learning this stuff. Code Academy sort of does it, but I feel their system is more for testing than teaching or reference.
Click to expand...

In my experience professors/schools just choose horrible books to base their classes off. There are so many good programming/Computer Science books out there and you don't see those in schools (not in my school at least). It's like professors figure out what their class is based off, search for books about it on Amazon, and purposely choose the book with a 2-star rating.
 
Videodrome said:
Getting through my Javascript project. I'm learning to appreciate how much cool free s*** there is from jQuery Plugins.
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Yep. off the top of my head free stuff I really like: Jquery, Bootstrap, Bootstrap datetimepicker, jquery UI, moment js, chart js.

People that did this stuff for nothing are awesome.
 
I love the difference in making an HTML form with no styling. Like, hey, this looks like s***.
Throw some Bootstrap in there and, hey, I am an expert.
 
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Dmega007 said:
To say that one would want to get into coding. How does one go about that?
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It depends on what you want to do and picking a language.

I would suggest learning Website stuff because it's probably the fastest way to feel like you're actually creating something. This would mostly involve HTML to create the page and CSS to make it look nice. After that, learn Javascript to really learn programming and apply features to a Website. After learning some Javascript, look into jQuery. jQuery was created by someone to make Javascript syntax more simple.

It also helps to have a good IDE or integrated development environment. If you wanted to be a writer, you'd probably not want to use a pos like Notepad, you'd want a good environment like Microsoft Word. Similarly, it would help to have a good application to write your programs or even websites in. Two decent ones I've used are ATOM and Aptana.

That's basically where I'm at and I've been taking college courses for it. If I wasn't in college, I might consider Lynda.com. They seem to have some quality video instructors.

Last thought, I would advise against Python. I hear it preached often as a good beginner language, but I don't think it's that useful for a beginner and the main IDEs don't seem that well developed.
 
For real, I still have a SQL Final Project do tomorrow and I'm trying to build this s*** while have some Jack & Coke and streaming Pandora. s*** is so tedious.



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