Program writing

Ruby
21

On Monday 22 May 2006 05:04 pm, corey konrad wrote:

of experience and alot of people working many hours. Like i said i think
my expectations of programming were unrealistic

Don’t give up (at least not yet–I mean, it’s possible that you’re not
cut out
for programming, but)–unrealistic expectations are (can be) a good
thing.
Maybe you can help figure out how to write a paint program (with new
features) in very short order. Maybe Ruby (or some new libraries in
Ruby)
would be the key. Maybe some other language (or approach) would be the
key.

Randy K.

PS: Just following up on my previous post, one of my projects is, in
some
sense, a translation. It is implementing some functionality that exists
on
Windows but does not exist on Linux. (Or, at least, did not exist when
I
conceived the project. It still doesn’t exist on Linux, but more
workarounds
are available. I still think what I want to build will be better, but I
was
wrong once before. (I thought I was wrong once, but it turned out I
was
wrong about that :wink:

22

On Monday 22 May 2006 04:26 pm, corey konrad wrote:

i think i understand the basic syntax of ruby, now what do i do with it?
I open up my text editor and draw a blank. How do i get ideas and
actually start programming?

That is (could be) a good question. :wink:

I think that in most cases, programmers program something to accomplish
something. If you work for someone, you program to accomplish something
they
want. If you’re not working for someone, you can program to accomplish
something you want, or participate in a free / open source project.

As far as pure creativity, I guess you can do things like create
computer
generated art (e.g., Mandelbrot? curves) or music.

Or create some new program to achieve some new purpose that no one has
ever
achieved.

The real purpose of my response is to say that if you really can’t think
of
anything, you could work on one of my projects (which, in general, I’d
plan
to release under an open source license, although I might do some
legal/ethical “tricks” in an attempt to make money (for example, do
something
like keep my code proprietary but then when releasing a new version (or
after
x years), re-release the old version as open source)).

One of those projects involves “driving” various web browsers (or HTML
“widgets”) (first on my list is tkHTML, 2nd is kHTML, eventually all or
most
browsers/widgets) from a Ruby program (which would also be set up as a
server
(I think that’s the right word–I want it to stay “memory resident” so
there
is no startup time when updates come from the source (initially nedit).

I don’t want to completely describe the project(s) at this time,
partially in
hopes of eventually finding a way to make some money with them, but if
you
(or anyone else) is interested, among the first things to do are:

  • learn how to create a “server” in Ruby
  • learn how to “drive” tkHTML and then kHTML via Ruby (and/or other
    browsers / HTML “widgets”)

Its alot of different than poetry or art
where i can basically start anywhere and just go wild with creativity. I
guess i just dont understand the creative side of programming.

I’m more of a utilitarian type person, but even so, aside from things
like
computer generated art or music, I’m not sure you can have the “just go
wild”
style of creativity.

In most cases (maybe all, when I think about it) a programmer has a
goal. The
creativity comes in choosing the path to that goal.

I also
dont understand why when i look at o ther peoples code i have no idea
what is going on. its like i learned the syntax from the book and yet i
cant read source code and understand what is happening. Its kind of
frustrating. I thought when i learned the keywords and syntax of a
computer language that it would open up a new door of creativity but i
just have no idea what to do with it.

I suspect that you are fairly new to programming and Ruby. One thing I
think
you need is more experience. Even if you have your own ideas for goals
to
accomplish via programming, you may do well to spend time on some other
projects to get more experience. (Maybe my projects are not the best
choice
for that–I’m looking for help for things I can’t (rather, so far
haven’t
been able to) do–I can’t offer much guidance on how to get them
done–on
other projects you may be able to get more guidance.

Randy K.