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Someone on our Lockergnome site recently asked which full programming language is “the best.” That is a good question – but impossible to answer, really.

Each language was developed for a specific purpose. What works for one type of application may not work for another. Therefore, you can’t really chose “the best.” It would be better to ask which was the best for what you are trying to DO at any given time.

Everything from WordPress to moveable type uses something different. It’s impossible, therefore, to try and figure out any one language to name as the be-all and end-all of language types. The most useful programming language, ultimately, is the one that will best serve your needs.

No one language will or can do everything. If you want to be a general programmer, you’re going to have to learn many different types. If you want to be specialized, then sure – focus on one or two that you will need in your career or hobby.

What do you think? I’m sure you have your favorite language… but do you truly believe any one is better or more important than everything else out there?

Which Programming Language Do You Prefer?

I’m launching a new conference with the folks over at Seattle 2.0 called Deploy – Today’s Technology for Tomorrow’s Apps. It will be held Monday, November 8th from 9AM – 5PM at the Bell Harbor Conference Center. Deploy is a conference for technology builders and geeks. New languages, frameworks, storage systems, methodologies and devices are creating entirely new opportunities. Deploy 2010 is a “Show and Tell” conference where speakers will discuss hot new topics and show what can be done – and how. Topics will include NoSQL, Mobile and Tablet, Game Mechanics, Open Source, Location and more.

We have a great lineup of speakers including:

• Doug Cutting, creator of Hadoop, Lucene and Nutch
• Andre Charland, creator of PhoneGap – the open source cross-platform mobile technology
• Brian Fling, founder of Pinch/Zoom and creator of the NY Times iPad app
• Poornima Vijayashanker, first engineering lead at Mint and bizeebee creator
• Bob Walsh, author of “MicroISV: From Vision to Reality and the Web Startup Success Guide

Deploy 2010 will be a technology conference focused on software development. It’s perfect for developers of all backgrounds, whether you are still in college or are an industry veteran . It’s also valuable to managers and executives who have technologists in their organizations.

As an added bonus, we are reserving eight spots for show and tell. For three minutes, up to 8 lucky winners, will be able to get up on stage and either speak about or demonstrate their technology. During the morning session, we’ll collect entries from attendees who want to present their technology during the Tech Demo segment. At 1:30 PM, after the lunch break, we’ll draw the entries from a hat. The lucky winner has three minutes to get up on stage and present his or her technology.

If you are a developer or hard-core tech enthusiast, I hope you will join us for join us for Deploy.

Deploy – A New Seattle Conference for Developers

If you have a passion for coding and will be in Seattle on August 20 – 21st, you will want to attend this event. The Gnomedex10 Open Government Hackathon will be held at the Edgewater Hotel – adjacent to the Bell Harbor Conference Center. The event is slated to begin as our Gnomedex conference winds down, and the cost of attending is absolutely free.

Ruby, Python, PHP, web developers, coders and anyone who has a passion to code, hack or kluge applications that will free (or otherwise enhance) the accessibility and usefulness of government-shared data are encouraged to participate. You can enter as an individual or a team, and don’t have to be attending our conference in order to take part in this amazing opportunity. At the end of the 24 hour period, each app will be evaluated by the Hackathon partners to determine the best apps – which can earn you a prize or two!

The nature of this event will be free-form. Hackathon partners will have organizers on-site to help you get the ball rolling initially. Even though it won’t cost you anything to take part in this day of hacking and fun, you are asked to please register so they know how many people to expect.

I know several of you out there in the Seattle community (and many attending Gnomedex from other far-away places) are hard-core programmers. Let your creativity soar while having a great time winding down your weekend during the Open Government Hackathon.

Gnomedex 2010 Open Government Hackathon

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The job market is always changing. Computer program majors often find themselves having a tough time after graduation. It may sound insane due to the number of computer-related fields that are are there. Much of it depends on where you live, and what your exact area of focus is.

You cannot possibly try to get a “general” computer degree anymore. Pick a specific area that you are good at or interested and focus on that. If you’re a developer, go develop! If you’re more of a networking whiz, you know what you need to do. There are SO MANY hundreds of possibilities. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face by choosing too broad of a major.

A consulting route isn’t a bad idea, but you honestly have to be REALLY good at what you’re trying to do. However, becoming a developer is where it’s at right now in MY mind. The other areas won’t disappear any time soon, no. But look at all of the dev opportunities out there right now. That’s the hottest and most in-demand area.

Network like crazy every chance you get. I say that about pretty much any type of career, but it holds even more true of us Geeks. Social connections enable you to find the path before the path is eliminated.

Most importantly, love what you do. Don’t choose an area of study just because you think you’ll make good money. Sure, that’s an important consideration. You have to support yourself. But if you hate what you do, you’re not going to do it for long. Know where your passions lie, and choose your path based off of them.

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Do Computer Majors Mean Anything Anymore?

Community member “a_v58″ sent me a short list of PHP tips. These days, people are rabid in their thirst to learn more about PHP. If you want to become a programmer, you should know what you’re doing when it comes to PHP. The following tips were sent in to me by Andrew. They are solid tips, so I wanted to pass them along to all of you.

• Don’t be tempted to use packets such as WAMP or XAMPP that install and configure Apache, PHP, MySQL for you automatically. You’ll learn more by installing them one-by-one and configuring them manually. After a quick Google search, you’ll find a list of recommended configurations for PHP and/or Apache – depending whether your machine is a server or a development machine. I recommend installing in this order: MySQL, Apache, PHP.
  A small suggestion to check if all 3 were installed and configured correctly: place a small PHP script in the .htdocs directory of Apache in which you call the phpinfo function, as well as one function from every extension (MySQL, cURL, Java, etc.). If there are no warnings or errors, everything should be fine.
  For fewer headaches and happier programming, I also strongly recommend using an IDE such as EclipsePHP (which can be found at eclipse.org) or Zend. You might also look into xDebug.
• Remember to sanitize your database inputs. To avoid this, understand what this is and how this works. Google or read on Wikipedia for “SQL injection.” Use functions such as ‘addslashes’ and ‘get_magic_quotes_gpc.’
• When you think you did everything right and you don’t understand why something isn’t working, look at your code carefully, debug it, and possibly run a ‘var_dump’ on all the variables to see whether something is faulty. If you still can’t figure it out, take a break and get some fresh air. Come back to the problem with a clear mind.
• Don’t be afraid to ask on forums or the community questions. Remember: there are no stupid questions. However, if for every little mistake you ask, and you don’t figure a couple of questions on your own… no offense: programming may not be right for you.
• Why choose PHP? It has a syntax similar to C/C++ (which are some of the used frequently for desktop applications. PHP.net has almost everything you might need to know – including examples and user-contributed notes (which may contain exactly what you need).
• When somebody asks you a question, don’t be afraid to answer. You’ll either help that person by teaching him or her something new (or be corrected by someone with more experience – in which case, you’ll learn something new).

Sure, it’s a starter list of tips – extremely rudimentary for some. That’s where you have the opportunity to suggest your own PHP starter tips in the comments stream below. :)

Tips for Programming and PHP

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Managing text in a single text file is a bit of a kluge. Let’s say that text happens to be code, such as PHP or CSS. You may want color highlighting, so that if you make a mistake you’ll be able to detect it easier. You want to have a text management tool at your disposal, no matter what operating system you happen to be using.

The free Snippely is just what you’re looking for. It’s an Adobe AIR app, made by the folks at Google Code. Snippely is a basic text and code organizational tool. Instead of storing bits of code, quick notes, and memos in text files all over your hard drive, this application will let you save and organize “snippets” in one convenient location. A snippet is a collection of one or more pieces of code and notes. Snippets are stored in groups for organization and quick retrieval.

You set up groups, and you have sub-groups within those. You can add notes and colors to different parts of your group areas. It’s really easy to do, just drag-and-drop things where you need them to be. You can even choose to make the notes appear in plain text!

Whether you’re managing plain-text snippets, or code snippets, Snippely is going to work great for you.

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How to Organize Text and Programming Code

This is R. L. Shanker’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway. Feel free to leave comments for this article as you see fit – your feedback is certainly welcomed! If you’d like to submit your own how-to, what-is, or top-five list, you can send it to me. Views and opinions of this writer are not necessarily my own:

You probably know a kid who is bitten by the computer bug – could be your son or your nephew or your friend’s kid. Since you are the resident uber-geek, you have been given the responsibility of initiating him into the wonderful world of computers. One fine day, you gather the kid, roll up your sleeves and sit down in front of the computer. And then it hits you: What do you teach him – Java? C++? VB.NET? The guy has a concentration span of exactly ninety-six seconds. You start scratching your head. If this sounds familiar, this tutorial is for you.

In this how-to, I review two tools that have been tested successfully in homes/schools across the world. Like any other discussion on “which software to use”, there are unlimited options and fanatic supporters for each one of them. So, kindly use this tutorial as a starting point and do your own research; there are a lot of pointers that I have included for your reference. Before getting down to details, let me clarify one thing: while none of us would want to force programming as a career choice on our kids, all of us would agree on the importance of making kids comfortable with what is unarguably the most powerful tool at our disposal. There, done. Now, let us move on to the details.

Age 6-9 years

Scratch: A product of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT, Scratch provides kids with an exciting environment to create and share computer applications. Applications in Scratch are built around what are referred to as Sprites; these could be animals, objects, people etc. Using simple drag-and-drop programming, students can control their actions and interactions. In the process, they are subtly exposed to basic programming concepts such as conditional statements, iteration, variables, and event triggers. It is easy to be misled by the overt simplicity of the application; however, the scope of Scratch is not restricted to just creating dummy games. One look at the online Scratch gallery is sufficient to dispel all such notions. I even came across an application that illustrates wave harmonics in the most intuitive way.

This brings me to the other great feature about Scratch – it has a terrific online presence. Currently, more than 200,000 applications are shared online. Your kid can get immediate feedback from his peers and they can even work on a collaborative project. Scratch’s online presence, combined with its highly accessible interface, puts it way ahead of its competitors such as Logo, Squeak, Alice , Toontalk, and Gamemaker.

Age: 10-14 years

Phrogram. The most frustrating aspect about dealing with kids is the pace at which they outgrow their interests. As a mentor, it is imperative that you find ways of keeping their passion alive. Enter KPL, Kids Programming Language. KPL was launched in 2005 as a freeware programming language and has since been replaced by its commercial successor, Phrogram. While the focus of Scratch is on designing applications, the focus of Phrogram is on programming applications – a logical next-step. Phrogram supports object-oriented programming and provides an excellent stepping stone for “serious programming”. In order to make the task more appealing, Phrogram provides a range of in-built libraries. You can find details about a course offered in Ohio State University that uses Phrogram exclusively here. Wait, it keeps getting better – you can even write XBOX applications on Phrogram. Talk about getting a kid excited – his own application on XBOX!

The only downside is that Phrogram is not a freeware. However, the basic version is pretty cheap; it is actually cheaper than most popular video games. If cost is still a concern, you can check out Greenfoot. Greenfoot is based on Java and is equally accessible to kids in this age-group. Here, a parent provides a lively account of a game-building exercise he did with his 9-year old daughter using Greenfoot.

Age: 15+ years

The kid is now ready for the big league; it is time to respect his intellect and let him take the deep plunge. We are talking Python, C, C++, Java, etc. Since the questions are going to come thick and fast, I would recommend that you pick a language that you are comfortable with. For instance, I have been working with C++ for a very long time and it would be my natural choice.

Final thoughts

Engage, engage and engage.

The actual choice of software or platform is a subjective one – it depends on the student and the tutor. Whichever software you choose, for the endeavour to be successful, the kid must be actively engaged. What excites you as an adult doesn’t have to (and in all likelihood, will not) excite the young mind. Put yourself in his shoes. Fit in.

Be the inspiration.

The final onus is on you to convince the kid that there is no end to this wonderful experience. You need to tease him, tantalize him, and then cut him loose. Let him experiment. Support him if he fails. Challenge him if he succeeds.

How To Teach Programming To Kids

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When I was a kid, we had a Commodore 64 computer. It had a program that would allow you to create little games. It was kind of cool, but they were nothing like what you can create and play today. The tools for game creation today are just so advanced and complex, right? Not necessarily, no. Alex sent me an email with a link to the Alice project. Alice is educational software that allows you to learn programming in a 3D environment.

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student’s first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.

In Alice’s interactive interface, students drag and drop graphic tiles to create a program, where the instructions correspond to standard statements in a production oriented programming language, such as Java, C++, and C#. Alice allows students to immediately see how their animation programs run, enabling them to easily understand the relationship between the programming statements and the behavior of objects in their animation. By manipulating the objects in their virtual world, students gain experience with all the programming constructs typically taught in an introductory programming course.

The software is about as easy as it can be, in terms of giving you control over what you’re doing, while still being accessible. It doesn’t matter how old you are, you can still use Alice. You’re never too old to learn something new. I believe a fair amount of people who follow me online would want to do something like this. Alice may be the way that you can become more than you are today. Learning to create a game could lead to an awesome future for you in that career field.

This is a great, free opportunity, no matter what your background is… and no matter what operating system you’re running on. Maybe this will be your first time messing with attempting to create a game. Heck, I still remember my first time with it, and that was a couple of years ago. This is just so much better than what I had to work with. This tool won’t transform your entire life. But it is worth a shot. If you’re a teacher, or a student, or just someone wanting to dabble… it doesn’t matter. The Alice tools could help you jumpstart something very cool.

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Have You Ever Wanted to be a 3D Game Developer?

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I have a feeling life would be much easier if I could program. Sadly, I don’t sit on that side of the Geek fence. I have to rely on others to create things for me. Are you a beginning programmer, or someone who wants to try? Recently, I was doing a video on another type of programming tool when my neighbor sent me an IM. He asked me if I had ever heard of the website HacketyHack. No, I hadn’t. So of course, I set out to learn… and learn, I did!

In the 1980s, a language called BASIC swept the countryside. It was a language beginners could use to make their computer speak, play music. You could easily draw a big smiley face or a panda or whatever you like! But not just BASIC. Other languages like: LOGO and Pascal were right there on many computers. One of Hackety Hack’s sincere pledges is to make the most common code very easy and short. Downloading an MP3 should be one line of code. A blog should be very few.

Presently, Ruby is the only language taught by Hackety Hack. And it’s a great one to start with. Ruby was born in Japan, but has found a wealth of friends across the world. As you can see above, Ruby is a combination of simple words and punctuation.

All of this, the whole of it, is totally free to you. My wish is to spread infectious hacking smarts all over the world. And so Hackety Hack is yours forever at no cost: give it away, take it apart, learn-learn-learn without a 2nd thought.

At this point in time, HacketyHack is only available for Windows. However, they’re working on both a Mac and Linux version. Programming has gotten overwhelming to many people, myself included. It’s just gotten so complicated and involved. The beauty of HacketyHack is that it takes the difficulty out, and makes coding simple and fun again. Anyone age 13 and up will be able to quickly grasp the basics, and be off and coding in no time.

If you’re thinking of getting into programming – or if you’ve always been too scared to try before now – download HacketyHack and give it a try.

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Would You Like to be a Hacker, Like in the Movies?

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Programming is an excellent field to go into, and good Programmers are a hot commodity. That reminds me… if anyone out there is above excellent at working with Drupal, shoot me an email to chris@pirillo.com. Thanks to Grant for sending in this list of tips for young people looking to learn Programming.

• Read. If you do not like spending a lot of time reading… you should not program. When you are learning a computer language, you must be willing to spend hours reading books, websites, and magazine articles.
• Take your time finding the language that is right for you. Think about what you want to accomplish when programming a computer. Remember, once you learn one computer language… it is easy to learn another.
• ThinkWhen you start to make a program, really spend some time thinking about what you want it to do. I cannot tell you how many times I just jumped into a project, only to realize it was useless.
• Use flow charts. Flow charting allows you to organize your code, and make it efficient.
• Back everything up! When you start to program, there is a good chance that you might mess something up, and fry your computer. Give yourself a safety net, and back everything up. Also make sure to frequently backup your code itself! This makes it easier to undo when you make a mistake.
• Comment your code! If you leave a project, only to come back later… you will probably have forgotten how it worked. Commenting your code will help you. With comments, you do not have to read through the whole thing. Instead, you can look at your comments and get an idea of what’s going on.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Microsoft has a great website and databases for programmers. Also check out their blog, and ask questions. There is always someone who is willing to help.
• Get a book. Your local or school library will most likely have books on Programming. Check them out, read them over and over, and learn from them.
• Testing! When you have a good start on your programs, let other people try them out. You could ask people to evaluate them, or you could give them out as freeware. Start a website and let people download them if you want. The feedback will be an invaluable learning tool for you.

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What Advice do you Give to Young Programmers?

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Brian writes: “I’ve been watching your videos on YouTube for a few month now. I’ve been learning Java for a year now, and I’ve got some tips for learning computer programming. Hopefully, these will apply to other things, as well.”

• Learn to use the help section or guide. The first thing you should master when learning, is the skill of using the help area. It’s so much easier to find something you need on your own than it is to ask others for help.
• Trust books… but have your own mind. When you feel the book isn’t right, you should do research rather than saying “oh, well a book knows more than I do”. Nobody is perfect… even authors could be wrong sometimes.
• Use the tools. When you are learning something new, always use the tools that can help you. Such as… don’t just use Notepad for programming. Use an IDE, because it can make your life easier. It will also make your debugging easier when you make a mistake. And don’t just use any tool, find the one that is right for you. By the way… I use Eclipse for my Java programming.
• Take a rest. When you feel you have mastered 2 or 3 new things, take a rest, and think about what you have learned. It will be more effective this way.
• Don’t research immediately. If you find something in the book that you don’t understand, don’t go do research immediately. Read the rest of the article or book first. Then if you still don’t under stand it… do some further research.
• Always read twice. If you can, always read an article or book twice. I always learn a lot of things the second time I read the book or article.

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How to Learn

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Are you interested in become a gaming Programmer? Scott called in the other night when the phone lines were open. He wants to get into game development, and isn’t sure what Programming language he should begin to learn at first.

I feel he should start simple, and download Visual Studio. I know some in the chat room are suggesting different variations of C… but I recommend Visual Studio for a reason. That reason is that it’s designed to help make games for the Xbox. You can learn that way. If you want to really dive into this field, that is one way to go. If you want to learn to walk before you run… Visual Studio is the way to go.

I have never been a programmer myself. I just go off the recommendations of others who are in that field. Find the tool that works for you. Talk to other game devs, and see what they say. Find what’s going to be comfortable for you, in an environment where you aren’t just using Notepad.

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Game Developer Programming Suggestions

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What do we need in order to have “perfect” software? What can companies do to achieve this lofty goal? Here are some excellent tips sent in by a community member. Software manufacturers… pay attention!

• Software should never crash. I don’t care if I try loading a 10 GB file into Photoshop on a computer with 256 MB of RAM. Checks should be performed and resources balanced so that a run-away program doesn’t bring down the entire system. User input should also never crash a program. This isn’t unique to just Windows. I’ve had hard crashes on both Mac and Linux where hitting the power bottom on the tower was the only way to restart it.
• Security should be built in and seamless. Grandma shouldn’t need a degree in Computer Science to keep from getting her identity stolen or her computer infected with malware. Virus-like behavior shouldn’t be possible. One reason Mac and Linux have such fewer viruses isn’t just because of their lower market share, but also because they are built securely and self-propagating programs are rare and are difficult to hide from the system. Firefox is another good example of software that integrates security by alerting the user if they are on a suspected phishing site.
• Protect data at all costs. One horror story comes to mind where a user told me that they had downloaded a document from their webmail but selected “open” instead of “save” at the dialog. After confirming it was the correct document they went to work and subconsciously hit ctrl-s to save their work every so often but didn’t even think about where it was being saved to since they had only “opened” the document. They had kept this window open throughout the day and adding changes and then did a final ctrl-s and closed the window for the night. The next day they looked at their recent documents to see “file not found”. Opening the document put it in a temporary folder which was cleaned out when they rebooted their computer. This kind of thing shouldn’t happen. Operating systems should also keep backups and revisions of documents in case the user needs to go back to a previous draft. Leopard’s Time Machine is an example that comes to mind.
• Online integration. There is a lot of buzz about this “Web 2.0″ (which doesn’t exist) and people thinking that all applications will be run inside a browser. I personally think that is silly. Google Docs & Spreadsheets will never replace Microsoft Office or any other full blown application that is installed to the system. Installed applications have the advantage of performance and being integrated into the OS more than a web application could ever hope to. However, I believe that client-side applications should become more integrated with online services (though not web applications themselves). Imagine OpenOffice, for example, integrated with Google Docs and being able to save data both to disk and online without needing to open up a web browser. My media player can download lyrics for music or provide a link to IMDB when watching a DVD.
• Maintain a “just works” philosophy. I plug in my printer and it works. The user should never even have to hear the word “driver” or “install”. YouTube is an example that we now almost take for granted. Ten years ago I remember having to mess with Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, and Quicktime plugins with all the installing and rebooting just to play a video in my browser. Dozens of different formats and codecs. YouTube has simplified this process. I visit the site, hit “play” and it plays. If flash isn’t installed a quick “click here to install flash” and boom! It works.

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How Can Software be Perfect?

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I programmed a dog into this live video feed. Can you find him? Go ahead… I’ll give you a couple of seconds to look for him. I have a top five list submitted by Raleigh, full of tips to help you become a good Programmer.

• Save your code often! You know what it’s like to be working on something only to have the power go out. Imagine losing several hours’ worth of code.
• Back up your code. This is pretty much the same reason as #1. I backup every night after a day of coding, just as an extra layer of protection.
• Write proper comments everywhere. Comments are very important. These are useful. WHat if you don’t look at the code for a year? These comments will be helpful later.
• Keep your code clean. Separate your code into chunks, and use line breaks where you can.
• Test your code often. Whenever you have made a simple part of code, test it. WHy wait until you’ve written four hundred lines of code before testing? If something doesn’t work… you’ll have to wade through all those lines to find your error.

If you have a top five list related to anything to do with “Geekery” or even something Non-Techie… send them to me! I’m always ready to pass on your knowledge to others.

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How to be a Good Software Programmer

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Programming is NOT as scary of a task as you might imagine. I know some people who shudder at the thought of learning any programming language. However, take a read through these tips, and find out for yourself how to get started.

• Save your coding often! Everybody knows the feeling of having worked for several hours on the same thing and you lose it for various reasons (the computer goes down, program crash, power out). I usually save every five minute or every time I have written a line.
• Backup your code! Kind of for the same reason as tip 1. When working on a mac it is really easy to back up with Time Machine. I do this every night before I go to bed.
• Write proper comments everywhere. Comments are very important. Even though you might not find it useful at the time you write the code, imagine how it is if you do not look at the code for a year. It will take you up to several hours to figure out how the program runs if you have to read the code instead of the comments. It is also a requirement to use commenting if you are developing code as a team.
• Keep your code clean. Linebreaks are free. Separate your code in chunks sorted by what it does. Make it easy to overcome. Combined with tip 3 you are good to go. It is also good to separate the code in files. Files for functions, common used files and so on.
• Test your code often!!!! Whenever you have made a simple part of the code, test it. Writing 400 lines of code before testing is a nightmare. Do it as often as you can. Output your variables to see if they contain what they are supposed to. Also twist your mind to be predict every possability of program crashing and error reporting. E.g. If the end-user is supposed to input a variable. Check if it is a variable, if not, stop and tell the user. Not checking stuff can be fatal and is the main reason websites get hacked.

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How to Get Started With Computer Programming