Re: Guidance

Matty Sarro wrote:

I understand and agree completely, and I really appreciate the help. My goal isn't so much to keep from re-writing code, but to have a pretty firm foundation to stand on before I really begin. I mean, with c++ or c, all I needed was the language, and that was pretty much it. I could do everything from there. This seems a lot more like its a marriage of a ton of different technologies :) On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 3:32 PM, Daniel Brown <parasane@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Stut <stuttle@gmail.com> wrote:

Maybe it's just me but I usually end up rewriting everything I write at least twice. That's just a fact of life and I've found that I end up with far better code that way than I do by trying to get it right first time. It also tends to be quicker.

[snip!]

In short, learn by doing. It's served me well.

I made it even shorter, Stut. ;-P He's exactly right, Matty. It's a form of evolution called "versioning". No programmer gets everything perfect the first (or usually even second, third, eighth) time. Good, usable, lasting code will be written and rewritten very often. Look at almost any code that's been around and distributed (including the PHP project itself) and you'll notice that there are dozens of versions, because over the years new ideas have come about to make it more productive, more economical, and all-around better. -- </Dan> Daniel P. Brown Senior Unix Geek <? while(1) { $me = $mind--; sleep(86400); } ?>

My suggestion is to write a throw-away app. That way you can learn everything you need to, but it doesn't matter if it's not perfect. I did the same thing just recently while learning C#. I made an XML editor just so I could learn the nuances of the language. Also, don't forget CSS. It comes in really handy. I still use w3cschools to look up the property names I can't remember, but it's got a lot of great resources to point you in the right direction. http://www.w3schools.com/ -- Ray Hauge www.primateapplications.com