InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Two havles of the same soul."

Envinyatar (envinyatar15) wrote,
@ 2007-09-06 19:33:00

Current music:	12 Stones [In My Head]
Entry tags:	computer-related, job

i'm reaching out without a sound...
First day at the new job today - I'm very exhausted! I didn't have a lot to do, just some internet research that was mainly quite fruitless, some working in MS Excel, some walking through the house and finding my way, but still. New people, new situations and all that - it wasn't easy.

But! I will be allowed to work with HTML/PHP/CSS/what-have-you at one point! I'll just have to read some handbooks on the matter :D Writing the newsletter of the firm and optimising some work processes are also among my tasks.

I just looked at the harddrive of my laptop and realised that it is almost full - 129 GBs are filled, of which the most is episodes of Alias, Angel, Buffy and Heroes. And some music, of course. Meh. Now I will either have to buy some of the shows' seasons on DVD and delete them from my harddrive, or buy an external harddrive, both of which are tempting. I guess I'll buy something on DVD, though - I don't trust harddrives, I've had them crash too many times. Some scars never fade and all that. Hello, first pay cheque, and goodbye again.

*yawns*

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	twilightsorcery 2007-09-07 08:06 pm UTC (link)
	I will be allowed to work with HTML/PHP/CSS/what-have-you at one point! grins Let me know if you need a point at resources. (Reply to this) (Thread)

envinyatar15
2007-09-07 08:11 pm UTC (link)

YES PLEASE! RESOURCES! *squees*

I got this huge book, 1,000 pages about various programming languages (if that's the English term?), which I can read if I want to, but to be honest I think some good tutorials/other stuff online are probably much better - and much more searchable :)

And your drabble is coming; all finished, in fact, I just need to do a word count. For which I need OpenOffice, which still hasn't finished downloading. Meh. I hate MS Office for just having been a test version, and OpenOffice Base for not working the way it's supposed to.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

twilightsorcery
2007-09-07 08:55 pm UTC (link)

(I have a feeling this is going to get long, so I'm dividing up my comments into sections.)

PHP and programming generally:

Beware of PHP programming guides: 90% of what's on the web about how to write PHP is written by people who barely know anything about programming. Get a decent intro to programming book (it's okay if it uses another language) and get the basics down so you can filter out the really awful ones. I liked Learning Perl, but there's lots of other good ones out there.

The best thing you can do is practice: write small things for yourself or for friends while you get the hang of how things work. It's a fact of life that the first few times you program you'll end up with crappy code. Better some silly thing you don't need crashing than your website at work. One of the first things I wrote was a treasure divider for my D&D group. It was very slow, and it didn't work sometimes, but I learned an awful lot from it. These days, I work on LJ client/server code (like the scripts I use to make the

daily_deviant masterlists). It doesn't much matter what it is, as long as it keeps you interested enough to work on it.

You probably already know about the PHP online manual, but it's worth mentioning that you can also add it to the Firefox search bar.

Check out PEAR, especially the MDB2, Validate, and QuickForm packages. You'll find that they come in handy for most kinds of web work.

You can also find a lot of useful things on the Zend Developer Zone tutorials. They're geared toward fairly experienced programmers, so they tend to focus on specific problems, like working with PDFs or using web services.

Web Monkey has some good tutorials as well, although I'm not as familiar with them.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

twilightsorcery
2007-09-07 09:07 pm UTC (link)

Javascript:

Ignore anybody who wants to sell you a script. The best javascript libraries out there are free (Mootools and Scriptaculous are the best-known). There's no need to reinvent the wheel every time you want to make something disappear. :)

PPK is the expert on cross-brower compatibility for javascript and CSS, and he writes excellent, readable articles. I always keep his compatibility tables close at hand.

Unfortunately, my favorite javascript primer is no longer available, but this article is a good intro to the DOM tree.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

twilightsorcery
2007-09-07 09:20 pm UTC (link)

HTML/CSS:

The best thing in the world for learning HTML/CSS is "View Source". Get Firefox, if you don't already have it--it syntax-highlights the source for you, and you can install the Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug extensions. They're great for looking at other people's code, and they're essential for debugging yours.

Practice! Make something for yourself -- draw up a design, scout around to figure out how other people did it, and bang on yours until you get something you like. (You'll want to check it in as many browsers as you can, on as many different OS's as you can: IE and Safari don't always play nice together.)

For CSS tips and tricks, check out A List Apart. They got famous for the Sliding Doors technique: tweaking the background position of an image to show different parts on mouseover. (I never would have thought of it!)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

twilightsorcery
2007-09-07 09:25 pm UTC (link)

One last thing:

Get a copy of Don't Make Me Think. It's got nothing to do with programming, but you need it. Trust me.

Also, if you find there's a lot of computer books you want, but you don't want to spring for all of them, you can get a Safari account--basically a subscription to an online tech books library. (As a general rule, the Head First line of books is good, and most of the animal-cover O'Reilly books are excellent.)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	envinyatar15 2007-09-07 09:46 pm UTC (link)
	blinks ... WOW. SO MANY LINKS!!! THANK YOU!!! I don't even know where to start. This is SO amazing! squees ♥ (Reply to this) (Parent)