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Does anybody have a guide to this, containing code samples, tips and an outline of the different IO approaches?
I have checked out the the API documentation. There are also some basic examples with scala.io.Source in Programming in Scala.
There are some pretty basic questions already answered here on SO.
I'm looking for something more in depth.
Alternatively, any tips on exactly which bits of the API documentation to focus on and which Java libraries? I'm familiar with System.IO in .NET land, but not so much Java.
Scala's standard library is currently pretty limited for I/O, so you'll probably want to dig into Java's libraries. Oracle's Basic I/O tutorial, covering java.nio, looks like a reasonable starting point.
A while ago there was some discussion about a community driven redesign of Scala I/O called scala-io, but I'm not sure the official status. The mailing list hasn't seen much recent activity, but the code in Github is being actively developed (incubator mailing list and Github project). In his answer, hishadow gave a link to scala-io documentation.
My tip is to look also at tools Path,File and Directory.
They have little sugar (that everyone has in their little utils library) like:
val writer = File("/my/file").bufferedWriter
File.closeQuietly(writer)
Directory("myDir").walk
Then have a look at Process like here
There is an in-development IO library with documentation available at http://jesseeichar.github.com/scala-io/. Included are examples for different usages.
The source repository is at https://github.com/jesseeichar/scala-io.
I recommend looking at java.nio.
Due to technical limitations of the underlying Java platform implementing IO in Scala wasn't a good idea.
This has changed with Java 7, which provides good Java APIs for everything related to file management.
There are some thoughts about an IO library for Scala, but no decision about that yet.
The author of scala-IO, Jesse Eichar, has recently began a series of articles about using Scala-IO on his blog: here's the 'getting started' entry.
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I've been lurking around for several weeks and have been totally blown away by the amount of information and how the community quickly responds. I have noticed that questions like this typically receive sarcastic remarks and sometimes get down voted. Please bear with me as I attempt my first post :)
I little background..
I work at a tiny software company as the "QA department". Our application has a MS SQL back to store customer data and short term loan information for financial service companies. I started working here 6 years ago as a gernal technician to provide support for their call center, so I've been overly exposed to SQL and have become fairly familiar with working with it. You probably wouldn't pay me to develop a enterprise level database, but at this point I've become familiar enough to do most things in SQL.
Why I'm asking my question..
I want to develop an application to store and track our software issues and new dev. I've done research on this website along with asking around and I still feel sort of lost as to which direction I should take. I want the core of the application to be pretty basic at first, to provide various screens between my entities/modules and to create reports to show their various relationships. In the future I want it to be more complex, to provide a web portal of some sort and to start getting into various complex QA software concepts. I've read around and it sounds like I might want some variation of C/VB for the windows portion, but all of the topics have sort of overwhelmed me. Do I want to start with a more basic one that was created 20 or 30 years ago? (I think that's C and C++, right?) or a more recent one like C#? Will I be able to develop a web portal with both of these? (by web portal I'm thinking it would provide access to our database of defects and have username/password sign-in). I've seen that the various .NET languages lean more towards web development, should I start with one of these?
I am at the very beginning of this and I fully understand that I'm jumping into some deep waters here. I want to make sure I don't end up spinning my wheels and that I focus my energy on something that won't end up being a bad idea in 1 or 2 years after I start. So far I've found this website very helpful, if I can pick a direction I know I won't have any problems finding what the next step is. It might help to know that I have no formal or informal programming background (if it wasn't obvious). I'm a 27yo techie who is starting his first venture into programming, go easy on me! Thanks for taking the time to read this :)
I won't recommend that you go to C, C++, or VB. C and C++ are used mainly for developement of system software, compilers, etc. VB is deprecated by now; there is a .net version VB.NET, but my preference is C#.
Looks like you are a Microsoft shop. Steer youself towards using C#. Visual Studio provides great support for development of Web Applications with support for holding state in entities backed by MS SQL.
I would start with a simple example as given in MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd410597.aspx.
This example uses an Model View Controller based framework that is fairly easy to configure and use. They have great examples.
There is a free framework that also supports MS SQL Entity store http://www.coderun.com/ide/
Enjoy
Don't write a line of code. There are literally hundreds of open source and commercial software packages that already do what you want to do. You'd be better of spending time researching them and finding the package that most closely meets your requirements. A good solution will also be extensible enough that you'll be able to modify it to meet all of your requirements.
Since you work for a small company I can guarantee you that using your limited development hours "writing your own" will be counterproductive. You'd be better off adopting something off the shelf and becoming proficient at it. You'll learn more about developing systems like this once you've become intimately familiar with one of them.
Check out JIRA or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems for some other ideas.
For the benefit of your company I would recommend to use an existing
solution. But if you want to learn and build something of your own, I
would suggest that you check out some popular web application
frameworks, like:
Django
Ruby On Rails
Zend
Good Luck with your project!
Given that your intent is to learn and create something yourself I think you should consider a LAMP stack and PHP with one of the PHP frameworks on top (Cake PHP, code-igniter or the like).
The C++ route is a long hard way (C++ is my language of choice) to learn; as a learning experience I think you will get quicker and more satisfying results with PHP.
I also think that this is a realistic project for someone of your skills over a period of a 6 to 12 months - start with a simple requirement and then build it up to have all the features you need.
If you just want a bug tracking system obviously there are many options that won't demand any development.
How much experience do you have with things like installing Linux, Apache, Mysql, etc? If you are completely new to this, then this will be a much tougher task, because there are many layers you'll have to learn before you can even get to the point of writing an end-to-end application.
I would avoid C/C++/C# because there are a lot of things you would need to learn about basic programming before you even got to the stage where you could make database calls.
On the assumption that you don't have experience with LAMP (Linux/Apache/Mysql/(Perl/Python/PHP)), my suggestion would be to start simply, by using a scripting language like Python or Perl. You can very easily get a database connection, and start writing queries, and extracting data from there. If you are used to Windows, I would install ActivePerl or ActivePython, and start from there. You can start building a command line program that does what you want, and then from there, you can move on to creating a web application that can do something similar.
Building a web application would likely be much easier than writing a Windows application, so after you have gotten comfortable with the scripting language, that's the direction I would go afterwards.
Good luck!
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I'm very new to programming, and I'd like to write a Windows Application. So far I've read Teach Yourself C in 24 Hours, what should I do (tutorial to read) next to accomplish my goal? Thanks
When I first started developing applications for Windows (about 15 years ago) I recall reading some very useful stuff by Charles Petzold. His more recent books are about C#, but his older books are still relevant because the Win32 API has not changed that much when it comes to the basics.
Hello, World!
Write the famous "Hello, World" program (Google it if unsure):
To output text to the console.
To output text to a dialog window.
To make the dialog appear after selecting a menu item.
Then, if you are still keen:
Write a program that allows a person to type in text into a text field. Display that text in a dialog window after clicking a button.
Save the text to a file.
Write a program to read the file and display its contents in a window.
That should get you started learning the fundamentals of what is happening when writing a Windows application.
Also, read all the links that people recommend you read, in this thread and others.
Old vs. New
Advice for learning .NET, C#, and C++ is great. Those technologies hide a lot of the boring "grunt" work for you. I still feel it is good to have an understanding of what is happening at a lower level for various reasons, including:
Learning C is applicable to more than Windows-based applications (some would argue .NET and C# are portable, which is true in theory, whereas ANSI C and Java are portable in practice).
Understanding what is hidden will allow you to avoid technical blunders and diagnose deep technical issues.
At this point it really depends on your goals. If all you want to do is write a Windows application, then use modern technologies that are better suited to such a task. If you want to write a Windows application with an understanding of how to write applications in general (not necessarily just for Windows), then keep pursuing the C path for now, and branch into other technologies as you expand your knowledge.
Depends on the application. But what you need now is to familiarize yourself with an API. APIs are basically premade functions that you use as tools to do... whatever it is the API was designed to help you do. You're looking for a graphical user interface API. Windows has its own but I recommend you use something crossplatform so your application will work on multiple platforms.
Look these up on wikipedia:
GTK+
Trolltech's QT4
They can pretty much do anything the windows API can do with the added benefit of working on multiple platforms like windows, linux, mac, etc.
http://winprog.org/tutorial/
These are pretty good for learning Win32. Charles Petzold is good resource if you can get your hands on a copy but The Forger's are free and you can have them in your hot little hands right now.
In general though you should spend some time just writting C/C++ apps that use the standard libraries first. Opening files, writing output, writing files, reading/writing stdio and get a good handle on the basics of the language first.
Looking up books on data structures, and analysis of algorithms are fundemental to any type of programming you want to do as well.
Read this.
Are you suggesting that you'd like to write a Windows desktop app in C? That's reaching back a long way. You're back in 2002, according to this.
Most people writing on Windows are using .NET, which means C++ or C#.
If you need some GUI or complex features,
You need some oriented object programming skills...
You can read some of this book serie : Head first... from O'Reilly
Head first Object-Oriented Analysis and Design
Head First Software Development
Head first C# or Java (It doesn't matter which language...)
Trolltech Qt4, it's a must, too ! Thanks CptAJ
They are very nice books for beginners... and advanced programmers too ;-)
Nice reading !
I disagree with a lot of the answers here... learning from the ground up is not a bad thing.
I wouldn't go out and make a whole app in C, but certainly making a little app in C is a good way to both learn the language and to appreciate (or more likely, detest) the win32 API.
Besides, you can't really appreciate what the newer languages/frameworks do for you if you don't experience the old painful way of doing things.
That said, recognize that there are newer languages and frameworks out there and learn them as well; particularly if you're trying to land a job.
I highly recommend theForger's Win32 API Programming Tutorial. It's very concise and easy to follow, and it's free.
While I won't say you've wasted your time learning some C, I'm guessing it's not where you're going to end up either.
If you really want to get rolling, without too much trouble, I'd highly suggest getting:
Visual Studio C# Express (it's free, and it's a great development environment)
A book on C#...Petzold is great, so a book like Programming Microsoft Windows with C# is perfect.
This should get you pretty much exactly what you want. You'll have everything you need, and Petzold starts you out very simply, and ramps you up to making interesting apps without losing you.
(You may wonder why I, and many other people are directing you to C# or other languages after you specifically said that you've already read and learned about C. This is because programming in windows using the old Win32 API is much more tedious. It is easy to quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of extra chaff that has to go into it.)
At Microsoft, we have been working hard to come up with some great resources for simply creating Windows applications. Our page, Start Programming with Windows 7, will be sourced with tons of new resources for intermediate and advanced programmers.
There are two really important new learning series that we have been working on:
The Hilo Project: An application built from the ground up to show how you can develop programs that are specifically taylored to Windows 7 features using the most modern programming and application design methodologies.
The Learn to Program for Windows Module: An introduction to Windows programming written by a developer education expert at Microsoft. This module sounds more like what you are looking for, I recommend you check it out.
We're working on ways to surface learning resources as best we can on the Windows Developer Center - a collection of developer learning resources for people new to developing Windows or new to developing using the latest Windows features.
Additional guidance is coming through the new Home and Hub resources for client / Desktop applications on the MSDN homepage.
Try Ramp Up's Developer Basics, a microsoft learning road that shows stpe by stpe how to start windows programming. You can use the Visual C# Express version of Visual Studio as a development enviroment.
Read this book, Learn to Program with C#.
Then, make small projects in WPF; the best WPF book is Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed; try that after reading the C# / beginning-programming book.
C#, the .NET Framework and WPF were created to move beyond the C Win32 API, to make it easier to create Windows applications.
If you want to make a standard Windows application, follow that path.
I would suggest using VB rather than C#. The syntax is a little friendlier, and it has all equivalent features and performance.
Why not follow the MSDN tutorials? If you don't like them try googling "VB tutorial".
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/hewcw458.aspx
Either VB or C# has a zillion examples of everything that can be googled. I would stick to either of these languages, if only for the "google support" alone.
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As a big fan of Charles Petzold's books Code and The Annotated Turing I came across his book Programming Windows which teaches Win32 programming in C. I am a freshman computer science student who learned C first, but I use C# and .NET for Windows programming now, so I was wondering if Win32 is still relevant to professional Windows programs. Would it be worth it to me, as a student who wants to program Windows applications, to learn the Win32 API to the depth that the book covers?
It really depends on the kinds of applications you want to develop. For most purposes these days, C# and .NET are completely suitable. However, there are certain kinds of applications that need as few dependencies as possible (shell extensions come to mind) that are not practical to do as .NET applications. For those you would need Win32.
As always, it pays to have at least a basic understanding of Win32 even if you're using .NET for most of your work.
I completely agree with what Joel Spolsky writes in one of his many great articles. I think it is crucial to know the lower layers of the machine not only to be able to write quality code but to be able to solve problems that will inevitably appear.
So, YES, it is important to at least know the basics of WIN32 API maybe not in depths but at least to know it's there, at the base of everything you will code.
It's very relevant if you are writing C# on Windows. Not all the features of the Win32 have been exposed via the .Net libraries. A concrete example of this is the WM_SETREDRAW message technique I describe here: WM_SETREDRAW. It's also needed at other times for control focus issues.
Also, understanding how Win32 and Windows work will give you a better understanding of various aspects of C#/.Net such as:
What does Control.Invoke() actually do?
What is the difference between Control.BeginInvoke and Control.Invoke?
What actually causes my control's events to fire, e.g. OnClick etc and how can I debug that.
That said, WPF changes all this and if you are only writing .Net 3/3.5 code then my argument loses some its relevance.
In my opinion, no. I learned it a long time ago, so you wouldn't have to!
I think it's great that you learned C first, and I'd keep writing C programs now and then, but I don't see why the win32 API would be useful to dig into. Honestly, it was a big mess.
I think it's important to learn the basics. If you learned just enough to display a window with some fields, some buttons, and a menu. Maybe draw something in a separate window. It would help you learn the fundamentals of how Windows is really working. I believe understanding the message loop and the realization that almost everything you see is a window are fundamental things that everyone should know. My eyes were really opened the first time I realized that a button was it's own window. It then helps you understand that features of things can be turned on and off by sending these windows messages. Subclassing windows let's you get access to features not exposed to you in things like .NET or VB Classic and let's you enhance the window's functionality.
Definitely learn the basics as AlexDrenea mentions. Whilst .NET shields you from a lot of Win32 API Calls. Win32 API is so enormous you're bound to run into situations where .NET hasn't wrapped it for you.
A real life common situation sort arrows on ListViewColumns
I don't really think "learning Win32 API" is realistic for anyone. The APIs (yeah, there's more than one) are huge, and you will hardly ever need to know all of them in detail. I would recommend reading up on some basics (i.e. Window creation, window messaging, window procedures, maybe some GDI, etc.) and using MSDN to look up the rest whenever you need it.
As per Greg's comment, it is to some extent domain dependent. I do a lot of Windows CE / mobile programming, where .NET is too hoggish for many devices and other frameworks such as MFC aren't fully implemented. In this context, much of Win32 is still very relevent.
That said, I wouldn't go learning it all upfront, I'd simply go through the basics, and dig out the rest as and when I needed it. The documentation and examples out there are good enough for this approach, as is the online help available from communities such as this.
Unless you need some functionality that is not in the .NET Framework (such as getting detailed info on printer drivers), no. That's about 99% (of course, an arbitrary value I just made up) of what you'll do.
Even if you were using Win32 and not .NET, is there really a need to learn the same depth as the book? Browse thru the sections, learn that if you encounter some problem in the future you know where to look for it. Then stop. Go in depth when you need it or have the free time.
I think it's already been answered but if you do .NET 2.0 development or anything winforms in .NET, you're bound to run into a lot of problems with how some parts of the framework is wrapping win32 and mfc and you'll need to dig into that to actually get stuff working as intended.
If you're trying to solve Business Problems, then there's better tools out there than C for programming Win32 systems. Clarion. Delphi. And others I have no doubt.
But I guess for learning how things work you're in good stead with C.
Some stuff can not be done without win api calls but with each version of .net those things become less and less so no i would not learn the win api if i where you..
You have to know it exists, since most of the native functions of more "advanced" managed language end up calling them.
Plus it can be encapsulated in script languages like Autoit with DllCall
I'm still earning part of my money using it. We do have a C IDE which is based on the WinAPI. It's now around for 15 years or so, and still running ;-). The complete download of it is around 5 MB for that you do not get anything in the .NET world. So for us it's still a valuable thing....
This has been discussed many times on Professional Win32 api Newsgroup (
news://comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32)
(by the greatest gurus and best-sellers authors (Petzold, Russinovich, etc) in the world...)
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Second Life is fun to play with, and some developers are creating content there, but I was wondering what useful resources (if any) are available in Second Life for professional software developers.
Discussion groups
Education/training
Vendor support
Development-related presentations or demos
Professional contacts
To clarify: I'm not really looking for information on developing stuff for use in Second Life (although those answers are welcome). I am looking for pointers to stuff in SL that programmers would find useful for their real-life work.
They have a site about some of these uses: http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/api/
and some pages on the language they kind of grew: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal
Like you I find playing around with SL pretty interesting for recreational coding. One of the experiences that made me think there was something to it was trying to code a working clock in a sandbox (a general building area in SL). Other avatars would walk past and make suggestions and as there's a fair few coders around it soon turned into an interesting collaborative effort. If only it was that simple in RL. Some things just work really neatly in SL - I once implemented a swarming algorithm using a flock of 'birds' as the objects (which gives a whole new take on oops).
As to resources - assuming you're beyond basic coding level then you should be able to figure most things out from the LSL Wiki - http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal.
There's an ebook - "Scripting Recipes for Second Life" by Jeff Heaton which covers the basics in a reasonably well laid out way. It's only a few dollars but probably only worth it if you've not done a great deal of coding elsewhere. There's also regular classes held in-world, but I believe most of these are at a pretty basic level.
For groups I've always found the Scripters of Second Life group very helpful with a lot of people generally on it. There's one called simply Scripts which is quite active too.
A couple of words of warning, LSL, whilst Turing-complete is pretty broken in several areas, lacks modern program constructs (and some older ones - like arrays!) and much of the 'black-art' of LSL is knowing how to work around the limitations, With the advent of Mono though this is likely to be a decreasing issue.
Also there does seem to be an assumption by the Lindens that if you want to do any 'heavy-lifting' code you'll do it on a server off-world and call and return results to/from SL. This isn't helped by the XMP-RPC implementation being very broken, although HTTP works fine (and generally better than might be expected).
I vaguely remember Dr Dobbs running some sort of ongoing "Programmer's Island" thingy in SL, but I can't find the reference right now.
Apparently some sort of "virtual conference" for software developers.
As far I'm concerned, I'm trying to contribute to the OpenSim project which is a OpenSource clone of the SecondLife server infrastructure, written in C# and Mono.
OpenSim is SL like, enhanced with many additional script commands, open grid protocols, with customized modules and plugins. It definitely worth a look if you dont already heard about it.
ControlBreak suggested this in a comment (I'm promoting it to an answer):
You can visit Microsoft Island. Presentations of new products are done regularly - http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/?p=663#more-663
IBM, Microsoft and Sun are pretty active in Second Life and sometimes there are interesting presentations/demos to see. Some of those are great for networking and meeting people from those companies which work on products you're interested in.
There are several groups for Java, PHP and several other programming languages apart from LSL, however IMO they're not as good resource as other non-SL resources. You can get your questions answered more quickly on StackOverflow or IRC.
IBM held several interesting programming competitions - there was something with robots finding a way out of the maze by IBM, there are also robot wars and some other programming competitions in SL, however they are all LSL-oriented.
I think I saw a beginner PHP class once, so if you're interested in learning programming language from start, try searching events and you might find something; however those are pretty rare in my experience.
Look & Feel team Scripting, it's mine. Common 3D trouble is confusing camera center between camera or actor. A designer may think camera center is world when it should be actor.