₦airaland Forum

Your approach will depend on your level of skill,an approach that will get you running with your skill-set is to develop it as a web app.
I'm assuming you had good familiarity with the web-dev stack, if you don't, well, do. So I'd break it into two category of which you can then further investigate

[Front-end: HTML(5)/CSS/Javascript -- will mostly handle your presentation and those fancy buttons]
Sancha (HTML5 based): http://www.sencha.com/products/touch/
JQTouch: http://www.jqtouch.com/

[Back-end: PHP/MySQL]
Ok, I should note here that all this I will be describing require you have solid (or at least a passing) knowledge -- I mean, if you can't tell what any of this is by just see it, open Google and read up on them before proceeding at all.
1) Object Orientation 2) Design Patterns esp. a) Active Record (AR) b) Object Relational Mapping (ORM) c) Model View Controller (MVC) d) Singleton. e) Factory

And of course, how they relate to PHP language using MySQL as the DB. That done:

There are a ton of PHP framework, but this, I've found shine; you of course can read their respective documentations to choose:
Kohana: http://kohanaframework.org/
Yii: http://www.yiiframework.com/

------ OR --------
You can download pre-made solutions and be another chicken a.k.a "installers" which it turns out, Nigerian web dev'er are getting the rep of being lately. I unfortunately cannot recommend any.

In What country?

Since you need a quick fix, not a problem, see here: http://jsbin.com/osufot/4

I think the cart is being put before the horse here.

There are some problem that PHP is better suited to solve and Python, vice-versa, what problem are you trying to solve? -- it might turn out that neither is even an appropriate fix.

Programming languages are continually evolving, a method or patch-set that might be causing low performance today could get fixed in another release, the grand scheme of things, if you know PHP/Scala well, and you've been using it on [significant] projects, it's counter-productive to suddenly drop that and start following the Python buzz (or Ruby). My point is, an hammer is super at driving a nail into a wood, it wouldn't do so well to saw down a 4 x 4.

You probably must have figured from that analogy that it's rare to find someone working in web techs to be a "Purist." You're constantly jumping around your basic core skill-sets of some core back/front-end divide (depending on what you do).

All these of course assume you are not a beginner, if you are, well, whatever language you choose doesn't matter, choose the one you find approachable.

okeyxyz: .... thought provoking & a message to people(maybe not for everybody, but it was useful to me) who are capable of applying it's principles to their lives.

..... it's not as if these masters\phd's are breaking new grounds that will revolutionalize industry, but simply that everybody is struggling to be more qualified\certified\learned than the other.

^^ Applaudissements permanent Monsieur! I'm content, very content, at least someone gets it.

In fact, this thread provides the point for the [hidden] illness of the status quo of [formal] educating -- "there is only one right, and it's at the back of the book, but don't look."..Now can we get back to the topic and Algorithm Design and Analysis course IN PEACE", don't you see how this thread and its respective replies relates to Algorithm, do you see the pattern? Why should it be linear? Why?

Let your mind roam mate.

@fatezy:
Def Agege all day, everyday --

How is the Classic ASP support, I couldn't get intellisense to work right?

Kobojunkie: ...
You know what? I am not here to engage in any lazy-man logic on here. If you are anti-education, don't bother spreading that on a thread that was created to help EDUCATE people. Go find your fellow lazy men somewhere else to spill that nonsense to.

.....

And please stop derailing threads on here with all this your nonsense logic. I can pick out at least 4 different threads where you have about done the very same.

I'm glad you're keeping count, but really, you sure have better things to do with your time; but that's another derailing.

Educa-t[e]ion: from the word "educare" which means "to bring up", from e- "out" and ducere "to lead; to bring forward". This is certainly not synonymous with "schooling," which in some cases raise convergent thinking -- but that's not really the issue.

I think it's safe to say that the marginality schooling creates doesn't work, after a certain tipping point of [a country or individual] economic status. Case in point, few years ago, if you wanted to learn about algorithm, your only option was to take some difficult Math classes which are pre-reqs to Algo classes, solve arcane problems, then if you're lucky you'd remember anything after the semester.

That could be a great model for test-takers or folks great at math, what happens to the folks who aren't great at taking tests, sorry, you didn't make the "pre-req."

But again, that's nullified by me being lazy, which I must admit, I quite am, excellent observation mate! Now I just need to find a few lazymen who hopefully their emotion and esteem isn't tied to their beliefs.

P.S. An interesting read for you might be Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers: the Story of Success" which looks through what really "brings one out"

Fayimora: I do understand that you don't need to be good at algorithms to take that course, however, they(at least 50% of what you would see) wouldn't really make sense. You would also need basic-intermediate level maths. I helped a friend that took the course and I felt for her.

I did my math and I realised that it is always better to use to book to get started on algorithms, that's if you ain't in a physical class of course. It might not work for everyone but I believe it works for at least 8 out of 10 people.

^^ Two particularly great ones being: http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Nutshell-In-OReilly/dp/059651624X && http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steve-Skiena/dp/0387948600 ( <<this a lot more academic)

Kobojunkie: Because someone goes on TED to say schools kills creativity means no one should go to school then?

It means one should question the status quo... (usually hat notion that schooling is a path to success, sure Uni marketers love that) not to mention, in many personal life, there is almost an inverse relationship between school and creativity ( and on a slightly comical note, you should follow "PHD Comics", http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php -- whose main subject is off academia) -- IMO (to which I strongly agree w/ SKR), school is designed for scholars.

And a follow-up, he did a bit after:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U , which quite frankly even if you disagree sorely with his points, it gets you thinking.

fatezy: Surprised I haven't seen Visual Studio mentioned here. Is it because there are not that many Microsoft programmers on here?
I'm here thinking VS is the best gift to man since sliced bread

Apart from Sliced Bread been over-rated, what's particularly great about VS, I've personally haven't great experience with it but then you might have used it more?

csharpjava: Design and Analysis of Algorithms I
By: Tim Roughgarden, Associate Professor

Yes they do. And your point is...?

Actually, before you go off, watch this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html (luckily, Sir Robinson is referencing Brick and Motors)

Fayimora: Just as a side note directed towards beginners, there is no point studying the analysis of algorithms if you dont understand the algorithms themselves.

^^ Very true, a better link should have been: https://www.coursera.org/category/cs (Algorithm I & II, been much more approachable)

And one particularly intriguing is: https://www.coursera.org/course/saas (where they even used Rails)

Just in case you've been to church and the pastor has made another promise s/he can't keep (what's the deal with that guy who is always "coming back?" They've been saying this since I was in my mom's kinker) -- now you can finally revenge, cook up some algorithm, set things on fire and promise him/her you're an Elijah.

Anyways, Stanford University (one of the world's best Comp Sc. dept.), is offering their "Design and Analysis of Algorithms" FREE, online -- gosh, learn from the best of the best -- and maybe, just maybe, we can prevent some pastors from making false promises: https://www.coursera.org/course/algo


Disclaimer: A lot of the common algorithms are mostly built into popular programming language....

vlink: my people, i want to share my experience with you, especially to those of you that are novice or very new to programming, or want to know programming. i used to fear programming and i thought it was very difficult. After the training I attended a month ago, I have started developing web applications, web services and database-driven server applications. we were about 10 in the class. The 2 teachers that thought us were experts in programming and they thought us hands-on.

So to get this clear, you where able to start doing all these after a month of learning programming -- or they are promising you that will happen after a month of programming. I'm strangely smelling a scam here.

If your teachers are indeed experts, I'm confident they will never promise you a novice can confidently do any of those in a month, not even 2, heck, not even a year of just learning programming. Sure, you can slap a thing or two together, if only you and them will be using it -- but when sh#t gets serious, it's a different story pal, don't get it twisted.

@Moderators:
There really should be a ban on promotions on here -- wtf, this is surely misleadingly (intentionally so).

@OP:
What exactly is the point of this post?

@Kobojunkie & @lordZOUGA & @kodewrita:

This will be a slightly long reply but hang in there.

Technically, creating API is not difficult at all: choose your language, choose your data source, choose distribution method and you're on the road but are you going to be designing API "just cause?" It turns out that's the trap folks in engineering fall into, not seeing the business side of things, and that's where things get really tricky, really, really tricky.

In Western country, developers can afford to develop an App, design an API "just 'cause", well, they can afford the luxury -- when someone has limited access to resources, the argument for them to develop things "just 'cause" becomes quite hard (I made the argument for this somewhere else, and might do on my blog sometime soon). That said, developers need incentives to do very interesting things, usually, this incentives comes from companies that hire them and can give them benefits of doubts and let their creativity roam (and can at least invest in them through trainings).

But I haven't really answered to why company like NSE, CBN, FAA etc. aren't having solid APIs one can pull from, after all there are smart people in this places, well, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is obviously a top notch economist, in her terms as Fin. Min, she barely made dents, thankfully she's not World Bank president, but I digress, point is, change is very hard.

In software systems, it's even harder when you have the complexities of legacy systems that still have to be support. Yes, you can have all these great ideas and forward thought but hey, "our biggest clients love the way it is." Or more commonly, "oga's brother likes it!"

Truth is, people that can make decision in the technology sector of this federation are stuck in the past (not to mention them always talking about things they don't know); they prefer to higher a US-based consulting firm for millions of $$ when that same money could be used to invest in kids scholarship to study Comp. Eng/Sc. IT/Systems, in say MIT, or Harvard or Oxford, ok, I'm slightly biased there. But you get the point: our leaders are f$cking short sighted!

It's not all gloom though, so companies that are showing serious potential are(all not surprisingly from the private sector) in order of potentials:
1. Iroko partners (http://irokopartners.com/): who recently got VC capital for abt $18M this folks sure have it going, they've got a business model on lock down, perhaps they can now emulate US's Netflix & Spotify and make much more cash from APIs than regular subscriptions. Maybe I can apply for CTO here? I do suspect they already have private APIs though considering all the mobile apps they have.

2. Gbedu.fm(http://music.gbedu.fm/): Oo, the guy behind this app as a bit of the problem I described earlier -- not looking at the business side of an application and I remember suggesting a business path when we talked about the app on his blog a while ago -- maybe he'd follow, maybe not, now he is stuck competing with iRoko who, it might make a good business to just hire him and shut down Gbedu.fm considering they are both tackling the same exact problem, the same exact way only iroko has more cash and cash is king.

3. Paga (https://www.mypaga.com/): There are a bunch of payment gateway processors that are trying to break into the market (considering Lagos is now 'cashless' whatever the f#ck that means), this however shows more promise the others.

A summary of points (in case my jokes bore you):
1. Legacy systems (and people) are though to work with.
2. Lack of incentive to "trust" home-brews.
3. There are few in the private sector doing big things.
4. I'm not a fan of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

This will be a great start: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1346431

Kobojunkie: . . . those of you in Nigeria need to get up and start working already.

The problem, unfortunately, is not that simple -- historically, what [significant] data is being kept. Are folks in power really interested in making the investment? How reliable can it be (stand alone)?

Those that are showing promise are from the entertainment industry which is IMO, not very interesting -- It's not just about serving data, it's about serving meaningful data.

@Fayimora:

Fayimora: I really don't see your point prof. delomos. I can't remember saying it is the most recent or anything. Just so you know I use it to run trainings and tests, nothing in production. If you have something better then post it.

I'm not Prof. sir, I'm curious, what trainings and tests this are that you have to write your own wrappers and gems? As @lordZOUGA mentioned, most modern languages have XML handlers. Something better?....mmmmm.....urrrrrrrrr.... JSON[P] ? You prefer dealing with objects, that's exactly the problem that JSON solves.

In most cases, the amount of Mathematics you need will depending on the kind of computing you want to do -- what Mathematics teaches you (that's non-trivial) is logic and structures which comes in very handy when you're trying to break down a problem and make head way.

You cannot be an expert programmer, no one can, everyone keeps learning, and learning, which make my next point. There is so much to learn and when you start you start seeing that the more you know, the more you discover you don't know, you continue to learn. And of course, be read to learn for yourself, school is B#llSh#t. A lot of B#llSh#t.

That said, after you've gotten your algebra and geometry straight, an interesting area of mathematics that will help a ton is "Discreet Mathematics : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_mathematic )" It is the core of anything you do on computing, hardware or software al-ike.

Don't be deceived though, being good at DM wouldn't make you a super programmer, it will just allow you see problems different, as you might have noticed the idea really is, if you want to be good at programming, you have to program, read the 1st chapter of this book and see if the field is for you: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/intro.html

A2J: Any webservice/API to deal with Nigeria airline flight schedules? I need to get daily schedules/pricing of our nigerian airline

I believe I already answered your question on the separate thread you created, to quote my response:

"
If your clients can afford it, yes there is: AMADEUS is the global fight distribution network (they serve XML & SOAP) , and believe it or not, it's what almost all booking site are running under the hood (it is actually what 90% of airline in the world use to book their trips and manage reservations) ... and yes, if you're interested, I started the search for you, you can continue investigating further: http://www.programmableweb.com/apitag/?q=amadeus

"

Cheers

callydon: Plz is PYTHON a programming language?
Everybody is saying something abt python but I av neva heard of it,am currently a 300l student of ANSU.
Plz wot is PYTHON n how relevant is it in programming?

Sure not a problem: please read about it here: http://jsbin.com/osufot/4/edit#preview

@kodewrita:

kodewrita: Also include any nigerian APIs you know ( those won't be on Programmable Web anyway, though I might be wrong).

We aren't there yet, we still need some time to start delivering solid reliable, pluggable APIs. Thankfully RESTs are significantly easier to write. The bigger problem is, organizations that have access to big data aren't evolving at the pace of technologies or better put, those "baba isale" are too comfortable with the status quo.

@ Fayimora:
The first few lines of webservicex reads: "..Emerging web services standards such as SOAP, WSDL and UDDI will enable system-to-system communication that is easier and cheaper than ever before." Clearly, that statement was written in c. 1997/8. And reading that in 2012 should make you "x" the site, delete it from your browser history and pretend you never saw it. That;s before mentioning they have just about 70+ web services

But you might prefer writing wrappers, I'd say it's considerably easier to just JSONify it and work with JS objects, you just might write lesser gems and wrappers.

@VURN:
It's doable and you'd be surprised how easy it is (or maybe not depending on your experience with IIS) -- I'm assuming you have some familiarity with IIS, if not, see the last sentence.

What you want to do is:

1. Install ODBC drivers and connect to Access with that, when what's successful
2. Set up IIS an an intranet service (that makes it accessible over LAN)

OR

Install IIS on your supervisors machine anad just copy the project to her "Inetpub" folder.

If you're not sure how to do any of the above, perhaps that is where the hard-work is: https://www.google.com/search?q=setting+up+an+IIS+intranet

A2J: pls fellow programmers, i want to be able to get Nigeria airline flight schedules for each day, to include in an upcoming project, is there any web-service/API out there for such?

help pls.

thanks

If your clients can afford it, yes there is: AMADEUS is the global fight distribution network (they serve XML & SOAP) , and believe it or not, it's what almost all booking site are running under the hood (it is actually what 90% of airline in the world use to book their trips and manage reservations) ... and yes, if you're interested, I started the search for you, you can continue investigating further: http://www.programmableweb.com/apitag/?q=amadeus

I think the largest archive of APIs is at: (and nicely sorted by category) http://www.programmableweb.com/

Life, it turns out
is full of complexities -- many of which we've cause ourselves

Life, it turns out
is full of ugly things,
ugly lines
bloated patterns &_
half bakes

There are fads and trends
Codes from Coke
Coke to Code in thousands of lines

This is my time && life has thrown me CVS
nearly making me leave the beautiful world of DVC
to that erry world of CVS

O the Lost fads,
the braggarts of GitHub
the shallows of SourceForge
that hills of Freshmeat
_me_ back to making Gits

Whatever the complexities
When Life throws me CVS, I'd make Git
Again and Again

P.S. In case you're interested, read my short blog on how to convert your CVS to Git, or maybe GitHub: http://www.delewrit.es/2012/04/23/from-the-cvs-to-githib/

@xterra2: not sure how to respond to a NL PM, I got it the message though. email me: me (at) delewrit.es
Cheers.

@SoftVersion: please send that email to me (at) delewrit.es -- the one I got was from NL PM, not sure how to respond to it from within NL.

lordZOUGA: while I agree with you that Nigeria is not a conducive place for programmers, I have to ask, what awesome stuff have you done that you think is awesome and have been ignored

^^ Now that is a f$$kin respectable response! And also sweetly answers the question (when you read between the lines), and @OP, until this question has been answered, you will not be getting any meaningful response from (significant)people on here.

So, answer that question. Again the question is, per @lordZOUGA: "What awesome stuff have you done that you think is awesome and have been ignored?"

SoftVersion: @delomos... Sth wrong wit dat email... delewrit.es.com?

Not sure how you mean, I got the mail, will be replying shortly. thanks.

bb6xt: I'll go for PyCharm any day, but Editra is also a cool second choice.[color=#770077][/color]

Never used PyCharm by but I can bet it'll be a killer, those JetBrain guys don't play (at least judging by their products I've used.)