₦airaland Forum

Why is Nigeria and Ghana playing in the UK?! Or are they? Cos if they are, that's some serious blow on the self esteem of both countries.

Haha so 4 d end na God una carry settle matta? Na wah to una sha.

Anyways, bros wen dey chop mess for swimming pool, U b dodonyo. In d name of ur paddi babes na'im u go yan me sey u no carry at least one go house. And no try form sey u hammer any of them dat day cos na mess you chop.

As to d pesin wen catch am as to unto yannin am as e dey, well done. na ppl like you wen we need for nigerian government

okechukwu.diei:
u nid to have good problem solving skills, a thorough understanding of computer hardware, d theoretical aspects such as binary arithmetic, boolean logic, etc. U also shld learn programming concepts such as control structures, algorithm complexity & efficiency, language paradigms,

Algorithms complexity, efficiency and language paradigms are too much ado for nothing. To get up from the ground and go, start with a "Hello World" program. Start with something you can code and see immediate results. The languages I am most fluent in are Ruby, C/C++ and Objective-C - listed in the order of their complications. There are free resources to learn these online.

njira:
emmaeno ~ my dear there are free online downloadable tutorials, but you'll have to pick a language first ~ a free downloadable tutorial, a programming language and a computer and you are ready to subdue

Good point! I like the optimism. You should also look into what you want to be programming. Do you want to make websites, business desktop applications, web games, console games, desktop games, etc, etc, etc - the list is huge. Once you find something you are passionate about and want to do, the languages will fall in place, the drive to learn go enta gear. And as @njira bin yan, "subdue" na'im go b d first tin wen u go do; after dat 1 na dominate you go dominate.

chrisvicch:
. . . Though I must acknowledge the importance of electricity, but let it not be your hindrance but your advantage. Just remain focus and all will be history.

Some things in your previous message have been made bold for emphasis. When I was learning to program, my teacher made us run drills where you code on paper - I was too broke to afford a used computer then. This really helps sbecause you and your friends can work as compilers. You will notice that the better you code on paper, the easier it is on the computer. And development is less time-consuming too because you already kno what to do.

The electricity situation - which I am well aware of - may just be the advantage needed to bring up the gurus. Skill and the relentless dedication to polish it is what yields mastery.

Fayimora:
[size=15pt]Hey man dont forget everyone is moving into web development for some annoying reasons. You don't have to know much Ruby to work with Rails. You should know that. I know someone that is a Boss when it comes to rails but trust me, he ain't that good when it comes to Ruby.[/size]

I know you can get on Rails without knowing Ruby. But you will be stuck on doing what the tutorials expose you to. This is how I started btw so I am by no means underestimating those who develop Rails without Ruby knowledge.

& @omo_to_dun, yes consumers do not care if you have the worst or cleanest code. And if that's your market, then by all means feel free to freestyle with programming. But
- when one starts collaborations on projects, there are some standards that need to be met
- when one needs to maintain software, simplicity of code is desired
- when one starts creating softwares that have high traffic (services, not just products) the programming language and its inner workings become things of interest to even the most dumb programmer on the team.

MySQL is tried and tested. Everyone knows this. It's also free and open source - brilliant! Yet, Facebook seeks to drop or modify this to suit its needs. There is a reason they are looking for beter technology in programming. If and when I introduced NoSQL databases, I hope I would have audience.

Let's say I am tired of hearing the "Nigerians are backward in software" comment. And upgrading myself will only, well, upgrade myself. I seek to extend the knowledge to my fellow Nigerians. And what better way to do it than on the largest Nigerian forum online.

True say.

Ruby is built on C. And coming from a C background, Ruby is a breadth of fresh air. Obviously Ruby is not even half as good in doing what C does - like for example, creating itself. But for the high-level OO ish, Ruby get small muscle. Languages are good for what they are good for. We all know that Java is good for software and sucks for web. Erlang is amazing for social sites and sucks for OS dev. And some other examples

I am also a learner as well as a developer in Ruby.

Consider the statements in my first post before you spearhead into conclusions
- it's "an unfortunate oversight"
- "Ruby is gaining speed . . ."
- Ruby is "one of the more eloquent languages" - not the most eloquent.

And the reason I said 'eloquent' is cos Ruby provides that English feel to programming. Consider metaprogramming - the art of defining your classes at runtime (or as I define it, "programming your programming". Metaprogramming started with Lisp so I am by no means giving Ruby credit but Ruby, so far, does this in the most concise and human readable way. But obviously some people may not care cos this is one of the higher technicalities of programming. But comparing this to Java, . . . (blanked out for a second there) comparing this to Java . . . let's just say Java "talk too much to do so little". Checkout this dude's testimony.

I don't know where I said Ruby is the greatest. Well, not yet (:

Again, it boils down to preference as @omo_to_dun said. I just wanna make 9ja peeps aware of Ruby. Maybe by seeing how easy Ruby makes programming, we would draw a lot more genius minds into the field.

Fayimora:
[size=15pt]I don't have hope in Ruby being the future, my bet is on Java but Rails stands a very high chance, [/size]

How can Rails stand a high chance without Ruby? Na wah for you o. It's like saying Yii is the future but PHP no be am.

omo_to_dun:
@ OP
I have a better deal: learn web design within 3 minutes. pm 1-866-IDIOTS

Confirm! Utu-kwanu

Solution: Exercise your genius and make it well known that you are Nigerian.

True say. java has been there longer and is an enterprise language. But you mentioned something of interest here - maintenance. Most Java code needs recurrent maintenance and if you have every created a web service in Java, you know it is a pain in the rectum. Do we, as young and upcoming developers, make the mistakes older developers make and continue to make by sticking to their patterns and preferences because it been there for longer? Going back to the web service example, OSGI and JBMI stuff for Java just doesn't cut it - to add a new function, you may have o develop a new product (I know this is blowing stuff out of proportion but it's true). SOAP is outdated, REST is better. Try implementing REST in Java and watch how the slug size of your web service will skyrocket. I am against having a compiled language serve up web files. Imagine if HTML and CSS were compiled languages and you had to link up the executables before putting them online; then hoping to two crossed fingers that your end users have the right version of software to run it. That is Java.

The same goes for many .NET technologies. Microsoft makes them visually appealing and this is good for developers who want to develop just to say "hey, I made this". When you find yourself wanting to tweak the framework to cater to your app, well, I guess only experience will show you what I mean. I was excited to hear about the Web Matrix framework. Amazing stuff Microsoft engineers did to hook it up with Azure for easy deployment. But everything is prefixed and rigid. I know this may sound like Rails a bit but one has not developed in rails until the bul of your code is in rake tasks, cron jobs and self-made or fine-tuned libraries.

These technologies are there and have been tested. But there is a reason everyone is adopting Ruby into their frameworks.

Also, the singular fact that Ruby on Rails is on the list makes it a senior man. Rails is a framework not a language - as you are well aware. Comparing Rails to Yii, well we both know the outcome.

Ruby is the future, boss. But people resilient when it comes to change. Still, I will educate Ruby into the 9ja community.

Fayimora:
Funny rails app,  Nothing much in it you know, still gat work to do. I love the tic tac toe because of the graphics but it still hasn't beat me yet .

Yeah, I think I stated that that was me following a tutorial. Clearly you can see that I quickly got bored of it. Most of my projects nowadays I can't share or take credit for them either because I wasn't the project lead or cos of legalities.

Fayimora:
[size=15pt]Yope. Pretty = Mac OS[/size]

[size=20pt]Confirm! Utunu[/size]

all4naija:
Lol, on that last sentence. I wish you can't account for those over one billion users of Windows. Anyway, Windows is still the layman best Operating System even at the presence of Mac OS.

Layman, yes. Bible talk am sey "must we sin because grace abounds?" - Me con yan my oen sey "must one be a layman because Windows exists?"

If all man chose to be lay - as in d kain lay wen no sabi anytin, d kain lay wen na only floor pesin dey decide chill everyday - sure Windows will rock and rule; but we will all be dead!

Fayimora:
I program in ruby too, I use rubular when working with rails. However I dnt like it.lol. What happens if you are not online or gat some bad network? I have 3 diff tools(Mac widgets) which I still think is better

True, Rubular is a webapp. There are desktop apps too that you can get. Which tools do you use? I have RegExpr which is an RIA provisioned for OSX - serves me well

English Numbers is aimed for was aimed for Ruby primarily but I will fork the Rails repo and see if I can add it there.

Most talk on this programming section is in Java, Javascript or PHP. As most of the serious involved users here are web and software developers, I am shocked that only a few have mentioned Ruby. This is an unfortunate oversight. I think it's about time we respecognize one of the more eloquent languages in software development.

Ruby is object-oriented, (meaning you can have all the goodness of classes and stuff), loosely typed (variable types are not defined but determined during runtime) and interpreted (the code is parsed as opposed to being compiled. The list explainign Ruby grew big in no time so I curtailed it to this few.

Ruby is gaining speed fast in the development world. With frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and Sinatra, Ruby is owning web development. The Compass framework built on SASS and Ruby makes it possible for you to script CSS (basically, you can write CSS like you write any other programming language - I think this is pretty awesome) winning the hearts of designers too. Ruby was not intended for desktop applications but the new Shoes Framework has made this possible. Mac developers may notice that Objective-C/Cocoa has a coarse syntax. RubyCocoa was developed to make life easier; and more so, MacRuby, which even simplified RubyCocoa. Last but not least, "Ruby" is a precious stone; and best believe everyone wants her for themselves. That's why there are different versions of Ruby (typically known as different 'rubies'). MacRuby is one of them. But the reason I brought this up is to introduce jRuby (which gives you an interface to Java classes and the JVM) and IronRuby (which is for development on Windows and interfaces with different Microsoft .NET technologies); and that's just two of them.

If you,
    - want to learn Ruby,
    - have some code you need reviewed or refactored,
    - need a solution to any problem in programming that requires snippets of code,
    - want to be up to speed with what's going on in the Ruby community,
    - or even if you want to write a letter to your girl which she can both read and execute (chmod 555 ./love_letter.rb - trust me I have done that)
drop by and drop a message

Learn in 3 days?? Sey na break you wan break pesin head carry web design trowey inside? get real son

Java is too much noise - too verbose.

Consider this,


def fib n
    (n <= 0) ? 1 : fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2)
end
puts fib 15


Exponentially slow but elegant. Dont try to use this for any n > 400, you may sleep before the result comes on. For faster algorithms, consider memoizations or dynamic programming

Lmao! Wow I didn't see this. What sort of thing "runs" this forum? Anyways, all good. You were right in the end

Well done @omo_to_dun. Simple and concise.

p.s: I am a Software Engineering major

I no kno why @omo_to_dun dey fall 9ja hand here

omo_to_dun:
Then prove me wrong. Show me a forum created by anyone here that did not use CMS. I know what I am talking about. This statement is akin to saying that NO ONE on nairaland has the expertise to write an Operating System or a Compiler, which is a fact. There are only a few people in the world who can! The level of expertise one needs to undertake such a feat(creating a scalable forum from scratch) is very high and few people in the world possess it. A lot of people's egos were hurt by this fact, but it is the truth. All folks can do is talk, but if we ask for proof, they show us nothing. More importantly, if you know anyone with such skills, please let me know. I'd love to be proved wrong!

I created Blogshop for fun - basic Rails really. It's a free hosting service so the first time you reach the site you may encounter a 404 saying "We are sorry but something went wrong"; just refresh. That, my friends, is a blog/CMS. The rest - Jooma, Wordpress, Drupal, Redmine, Radiant and even gpEasy (to name the ones that do not need a database backup) - give you are just minor details that are flavoured to the companies ego. These can be implemented in no time.

I also designed and created Tick Tack Tohh. Game logic from ground up. This was because of boredom on a holiday night. Took me two hours. The site that Tick Tack Tohh is hosted in is the Webspace given to us by the university and they are strongly against server-side scripting else I would have put up more. In the Lab section of the site, I learn QT and made a .diff app I named Gold.

I have made multiple servers in C that can run off a USB. Those I cannot link to on the site cos dem bin pay me to shut up. I am currently working on another of them "no yan anytin" projects - a minor one; 8 models, 20 to 23 associations. The only thing I can say is one of the models I had to implement is a forum. I just finished the integration test last night.

So man, no fall 9ja hand. Peeps dey wey fit sneeze, CMS go manifest!

God bless @fayimora for trailblazing

Fayimora:
Hmmm yeah am not too conversant with the CMS or joomla thingy,  I normally write ma code from scratch.

And nowadays too, CMSes are old school. Webapps are the way to go. We should be thinking on how to make this site a living breathing Nigerian web entity instead of arguing on what we can and cannot do - whatever happened to "learning" only palm wine and my fore fathers fi yan us.

@all and @every,
Read up on Gamification. It should give you ideas. Now vomit those ideas on forums and watch how the skill set will emerge from nowhere.

Look into SQLite3 for simple database integration. It supports SQL and it can ship with your application - doesn't have a fat ass that requires a server like MySQL

@fayimora there is an error in your code.

Fayimora:

(0, 350).each do |x| 
    puts x if((x%7)==0)
end

You should use (0, 350).each instead of (0, 350) which fails.

---

The way I would do this is,

1.upto(350) do |x|
    puts x if x.divisible_by? 7
end

[color=#a3a3a3]# re-open the Fixnum class to add our new behaviour[/color]
class Fixnum
    def divisible_by? [color=#5ba4dc]num[/color]
        [color=#009900]self[/color] % [color=#5ba4dc]num[/color] == 0
    end
end


Please audit and point out the bugs as I did this without IRB to help me out.

cod3mind:
i actually use codeblocks ide for my c/c++ programs, so far i only view results via console(dos), i use windows,

Look into installing Microsoft Visual Studio. I think they have a Win32 Application template that takes care of all the nasty GUI stuff. One which you can call their libraries for buttons, views and other interactivity containers, input your application logic code and voila, a working application.

GUI programming no be beans talk; it takes commitment but it's fun and the commitment pays off. That being said, you should also look into development for other frameworks. Windows may be a pain in the rectum.

I am working on a Rails site - the idea is classified else I would have ran my mouth here. I am also working on a Ruby gem - English Numbers (not yet on Github). This should make coding read more like English. Basucally it's an extension of the Fixnum and Bignum classes to add methods that make declarations sound more like English. Ruby is pretty awesome but it can be made better. Once I have the gem up on Github, I will post the link here and anyone who wishes to help is welcome.

Nice. Cos mobile browsers - well the ones I know of - have JS. I am conversant with Mobile Safari and the V8 JS Engine that runs on WebKit is formidable.

My mobile twitter client, still doing core updates though, the UI is ugly, what do you think?

http://m.ntwyt.com

One thing you should consider is using AJAX ro reload the page for new tweets. I cannot even post because the page is constantly refreshing

Basically if you want to be totally naive about how a computer works and you're just concerned with what it does, the point-and-click Windows is your choice. Linux on the other hand "allows" you configure it to your heart's content. Now "allow" is in quotes because most Windows users mistake this for "must use terminal to do everything in Linux - even watching Blackberry Babes", no.

I saw a reply about the Apt-Get framework and how people should not be confronted to conform to this command-line interface. Uhm, that is why there is the Synaptic Package Manager you can use to accomplish the same thing.

When you get into core web development - and I don't mean the shallow HTML, CSS and Javascript - server scripting sturves such as Node.js, Rails, RaphaelJS (which is a graphical JS library but has rendering qualms with windows), DJango and all other etcheterams (ecetera), you will find that Windows is a pain to work with. DLLs make your life miserable - and easily hackable too. You will have to end up installing unnecessary helper software to run a Hello World script.

There is a Unix based OS that mimics Windows. It's called ReactOS. I honestly think the author of that os was cajoling Gates. Check it out for your entertainment.

Windows spends time making their UI better not knowing that they are subconsciously reducing the number of elite programmers in the framework compared to other OSes such as Unix, Linux and Solaris.

Getting the job done = Unix/Linux
Pretty = Windows (even dat one sef dem no too strong cos eva since broda Macbook went Pro, church bin close for Windows).