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bigfoot5415

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So I am looking for a hobby to partake in while on the road for work, and I decided I would like to learn the basics of coding and potentially develop some sort of app for fun. I brought my PS4 for some entertainment, but I need something more interactive.

I have no idea where to begin. There are quite a few different languages, and I am not sure which one to choose. Let alone what is a good resource for learning.

Im a pretty smart guy that often plays dumb for entertainment. So if anyone out there has any experience, or advice, please help; I'm up for the challenge.
 
So I am looking for a hobby to partake in while on the road for work, and I decided I would like to learn the basics of coding and potentially develop some sort of app for fun. I brought my PS4 for some entertainment, but I need something more interactive.

I have no idea where to begin. There are quite a few different languages, and I am not sure which one to choose. Let alone what is a good resource for learning.

Im a pretty smart guy that often plays dumb for entertainment. So if anyone out there has any experience, or advice, please help; I'm up for the challenge.

FORTRAN is all you'll ever need. I've got 3000+ punch cards so you can turn your room sized computer into a calculator.
 
I'm a professional developer; I own a development and consulting studio.

What kind of coding do you want to do?

If this is just for a hobby, are you looking to code games? If so, I'd recommend learning JavaScript or Lua. Games can be made for tablets/mobiles in both languages, and Lua is used throughout the game industry for consoles as well (for game logic, not game engine coding).

If you're more interesting in hacking, I'd recommend learning C and Ruby and Python.

If you're interested in a career in business applications, I'd recommend C#.

If you're interested in web development, or you want the broadest overlap in "computing domains," again, JavaScript (with HTML5, CSS, which aren't programming languages per se) and Ruby (on Rails).

Languages to avoid: C++ (too complex), Delphi (limited market), Java (too verbose), Haskell / F# (not for beginners), D (very limited market), Perl (just, no.), Objective-C (deprecated).

I like almost all of these languages, except Obj-C, but they are not where you should begin.
 
I'm a professional developer; I own a development and consulting studio.

What kind of coding do you want to do?

If this is just for a hobby, are you looking to code games? If so, I'd recommend learning JavaScript or Lua. Games can be made for tablets/mobiles in both languages, and Lua is used throughout the game industry for consoles as well (for game logic, not game engine coding).

If you're more interesting in hacking, I'd recommend learning C and Ruby and Python.

If you're interested in a career in business applications, I'd recommend C#.

If you're interested in web development, or you want the broadest overlap in "computing domains," again, JavaScript (with HTML5, CSS, which aren't programming languages per se) and Ruby (on Rails).

Languages to avoid: C++ (too complex), Delphi (limited market), Java (too verbose), Haskell / F# (not for beginners), D (very limited market), Perl (just, no.), Objective-C (deprecated).

I like almost all of these languages, except Obj-C, but they are not where you should begin.

How is it possible for someone to know this stuff and also know about pussy?

C #
 
FORTRAN is all you'll ever need. I've got 3000+ punch cards so you can turn your room sized computer into a calculator.

I actually use Fortan quite frequently. Let's face it... Fortran is really really fast at basic arithmetic. Since the discritized form of most engineering problems (CFD, FEM) is simple arithmetic, its silly to use anything else. When you're performing millions upon millions of basic floating point operations... Speed is king.

BASH - GNUplot - Fortran 90/2003 can get mostly anything done in terms of computational analysis.
 
In answering the OP. A good place to start is your environment. A good terminal interface speeds up productivity a lot.

If you have Linux/Mac learn the Unix terminal. Being able to script, edit and jump around from the command line is very important.

Cygwin is an Unix terminal emulator for windows systems.

Also, It might be useful to think about version control as well. That may be out of the scope of your current goals, but tools like GIT and the Eclipse environment can be very useful for non-linear code development.
 
Take up an easy language so you can build some confidence and actually enjoy what you're doing. In my experience, web development is the most enjoyable and it's pretty beginner-friendly.

In terms of learning tools, codeacademy.com is great for web development languages. They go over like 7 or 8 different languages there, I think.

Also, check out thenewboston. He has his own website with hundreds of tutorials covering a wide variety of languages and topics, and those are also very beginner-friendly. Some tutorials are better than others, but it's mostly good stuff.

Like @gourimoko said, C or Python are great if you want to get into hacking. I myself am going over the finer points of C right now for that very reason.

Stay away from Obj-C. I took it for school when I was doing an iOS development course and I can say without a doubt it is ugly as fuck, as far as programming languages go. On top of that, Apple has already released Swift for iOS development.

C++ sucks, too. Don't use it. I had to use it for school, but as soon as I was able, I broke away and learned other languages and never looked back.
 
thanks for posting up the help guys, I too am looking to learn some code. I basically need Python to be competitive with my master's and surprise, surprise, my university wont let non-CS majors take programming courses (without taking a ton of pre-req's and aintnobodygottimeforthat.jpeg)

Ive tried Codeacademy a while ago, but I wasn't consistent with it. I bought some Udemy courses for super cheap on a charity sale, which i liked more. I'm checking out thenewboston now!
 
Thanks all of you. When I get back home, I will be sure to go through everything and come back with any questions.
 
Anyone ever use MATLAB? I have never coded in any language before, but a lot of things at my job are manual that would save a ton of time if automated, and there has been a big push to move towards MATLAB at my company so I am trying to learn with MATLAB.

I have an intro book, but like I said, I have no experience with coding. Is MATLAB a good tool for what I want to do, or is something else better?
 
Anyone ever use MATLAB? I have never coded in any language before, but a lot of things at my job are manual that would save a ton of time if automated, and there has been a big push to move towards MATLAB at my company so I am trying to learn with MATLAB.

I have an intro book, but like I said, I have no experience with coding. Is MATLAB a good tool for what I want to do, or is something else better?

I have a great deal of experience with MATLAB.

What are you trying to accomplish?

In a general case; MATLAB should be used for basic calculation and prototyping calculations. For large scale work, and highly complex calculations; I would recommend moving to a different platform. C++ will work just fine, again, for most general cases.
 
I have a great deal of experience with MATLAB.

What are you trying to accomplish?

In a general case; MATLAB should be used for basic calculation and prototyping calculations. For large scale work, and highly complex calculations; I would recommend moving to a different platform. C++ will work just fine, again, for most general cases.
I'm incredibly naive with programming to the point where I don't even know the capabilities of what can be done, so sorry in advance if these questions are out there...

A lot of what we do is in excel and there are macros set up that reference other worksheets in excel to extract data. I know the same can be done in MATLAB, but can data be extracted (via a script) in MATLAB from a website? For example I need the US treasury rates bi-weekly. Can I get MATLAB to go to this site, take the numbers that I usually copy and paste from there, and then apply them to numerous formulas?

Also what you said about MATLAB sounds like it can be done in excel as well, besides the non-crashing part what does MATLAB offer over excel?

Can MATLAB or another program go into other programs and utilize them? IE I use an economic scenario generating software for my work where I have to go in and manually enter bond prices/volatility rates/ect and then run the stochastic generator. Could a script that I write in MATLAB or another software go into this software and automatically perform the tasks I usually do manually?
 
I'm incredibly naive with programming to the point where I don't even know the capabilities of what can be done, so sorry in advance if these questions are out there...

A lot of what we do is in excel and there are macros set up that reference other worksheets in excel to extract data. I know the same can be done in MATLAB, but can data be extracted (via a script) in MATLAB from a website? For example I need the US treasury rates bi-weekly. Can I get MATLAB to go to this site, take the numbers that I usually copy and paste from there, and then apply them to numerous formulas?

Also what you said about MATLAB sounds like it can be done in excel as well, besides the non-crashing part what does MATLAB offer over excel?

You wouldn't use MATLAB or Excel for this.

You'd want to use C#. You could also use phantomJS or any number of automation tools but I'll go over the .NET approach here.

You'll use HTMLAgilityPack from Nuget, you'll then grab the URL for the data you want, you'll then use HTMLAgilityPack (HAP) to navigate the DOM tree to extract the data you want.

From there you'll validate the data is in the correct format, and then you'll do whatever operations you need to perform against the data (maybe in C#, maybe not - depends on the operation and how complex it is).

At that point you'll do one of two things. You'll use NPOI or OpenXML to export your data to your Excel file, or, you'll use Microsoft.Interop.Excel to push the data through COM and into Excel itself. You can automate every function of Excel with the Microsoft.Interop library; although, I recommend against this for most tasks.

Now, if you don't know C#, or any other programming language, then you're likely better off with AutoIT.

https://www.autoitscript.com/site/

You can compartmentalize the entire process into a virtual appliance that can be tucked away and simply queried for reporting.

Can MATLAB or another program go into other programs and utilize them? IE I use an economic scenario generating software for my work where I have to go in and manually enter bond prices/volatility rates/ect and then run the stochastic generator. Could a script that I write in MATLAB or another software go into this software and automatically perform the tasks I usually do manually?

Not MATLAB, but you can do this in C# using 3 different methods.

AutoIT Scripts/Macros: This is simplest. You'd write AutoIT scripts that would take you input values (your web scrapped values), and plug them into your application. This is easy as fuck.

Old School: Direct WinAPI hooks. This would hook your applications interface and plug values directly into it either by accessing it's memory or hooking the keyboard. I wouldn't do this if I could avoid it.

Modern Way: .NET WPF UI Automation. This is the best approach for programmatic access via the .NET Framework (C#, etc), and is also well documented. There's no nasty crash-prone hooks, and it should work across frameworks and platforms on any machine running Windows XP SP3 or better. .NET Framework 4.5 needs to be installed on the machine though, AFAIK.

Unless MATLAB is somehow already in the process/workflow and I'm not understanding where, then you've no reason to introduce it as an additional complexity. Unless you're looking to replace the software you're already using for calculation; but it sounds more like you simply want to automate the tasks.
 

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