Introducing our Developer: The SlyDev Thread!

[Slydev]

Thanks for the reply

I'm glad you've been able to make a living out of programming

That boat sailed for me when I realized all of yous are so dedicated and spend your spare time doing stuff like this
e.g. making ATARnotes!?!?

Web is huge at the moment and will be for quite so time, I am very fortunate to have a career doing what I love to do. While I do work for myself I am really loving it at Atar, everyone is chill and fun and they really make me feel valued.

Slydev, I have a question for you my man.

I want to pursue a career in medicine, as I have grown up my whole life wanting it, but developing, programming and coding has always been a passion of mine, you never know when you might just be working, or even better, creating the next hit website, like ATARNotes, which makes the actual process of developing exciting. So my question is, is it possible to program as a hobby, through self-teaching methods etc? Apologies if this is not supposed to be in this thread, but clearly there are some others who share the same passion!

Thank you Mr. Sly

Well a doctor with programming skills isn't a bad thing, could be a niche in itself. My father is a doctor and wanted me to work on some stuff for him, no idea what half of the stuff he was talking about was. I think there could be value in knowing the jargon.
Anyways I am also mostly self taught, when I went to uni the curriculum was really a bit behind and I learnt a lot of things that I never used again, I don't think I got taught a lick of PHP so I had to work it out myself. The most important things to keep in mind is this:
- Your code can always be better, seek to improve don't get stuck in your ways.
- Code legibility is super important, even if it is just personal you might need to look back at old code.
- Don't re-invent the wheel, if there is something out there that does what you want it can be a lot quicker than doing it all yourself.
- Try to enjoy the coding, find what it is about the whole process that you are passionate about.
- Don't feel ashamed for googling solutions, no-one really knows how to make regular expressions anymore.
- If you come across code you don't understand in a language take the time to learn how it is written, you can learn tons that way.

Thanks Sly, oops I mean Bangali (kidding, of course xD)

Thing is, I already know the basics, have designed a couple websites myself too. But like, I was wondering how to get 'Sly' level, you know, a website that holds high traffic, and has such a complex user interface. Any ideas?

Thank you

Work up from the bottom. Programming is, when you break it down just small logic operations all working in unison. No matter how big it gets it is still essentially the same. Obviously the larger a project gets the more dependencies and factors and wibbly wobbly time stuff you have to keep track of but its just building on the same principals.

If you know some PHP I would suggest trying out a framework, they bring in some really powerful tools and make programming a lot easier. Laravel is a pretty hot PHP framework right now. (http://www.fetcher.com.au/ is a site I built in the codeigniter framework)

Funnily enough some really large sites are being built on wordpress now so learning how to make plugins would be a huge advantage. (https://theright.fit/ is one of the sites I helped to work on end of last year).

Once you feel confident in even basic skills, level up, get a job at a web development company and experience the industry and the project process first hand. For me I did that for 3 years then quit and decided to run my own show, after that people I knew (and people they knew) needed jobs and I started to take them on freelance. I hope one day to start my own web development company but who knows! Still learning industry, dealing with clients and managing the project (scoping, deliveries, testing, etc) are all important skills that you only really get by being hands on. Learn your strengths and weaknesses and surround yourself with people who make you feel valued and challenge you to improve yourself.

Feel free to ask Sly questions in this thread - he's a cool guy and actually doesn't afraid of anything!

Bad code scares me, some code I have seen makes me wonder what people were thinking when they made it. Then again I am sure I have put out my fair share of bad code. Oh and clowns, they are creepy.

[heart]

Thanks Sly, oops I mean Bangali (kidding, of course xD)

Thing is, I already know the basics, have designed a couple websites myself too. But like, I was wondering how to get 'Sly' level, you know, a website that holds high traffic, and has such a complex user interface. Any ideas?

Thank you

You could also undertake a concurrent diploma in informatics if you wanted to https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/view/2016/D-INFO

[brenden]

So anyway, Joey just told me that "Sly" isn't the nicest name to be called. So yep... Joey is the man!

[Slydev]

Okay so latex should be working for fancy math equations! We are using a new system for this which renders the equation in the page instead of trying to create and load an image. You can right click on these for more info (and to get the code). This should be backwards compatible with all older tex code however there might be some small issues so if you find any let me know.



It will all be inline so equations will appear on their own line centered in posts, this might mess with some formatting on old posts but I think this makes for a cleaner and easier to understand format.

I braught back the 'latests posts' on the homepage but it is super slow so I will have to rethink of how I will approach loading it (will probably be an ajax call), still got a big list of things to do so will just keep at it!

[brenden]

Okay so latex should be working for fancy math equations! We are using a new system for this which renders the equation in the page instead of trying to create and load an image. You can right click on these for more info (and to get the code). This should be backwards compatible with all older tex code however there might be some small issues so if you find any let me know.



It will all be inline so equations will appear on their own line centered in posts, this might mess with some formatting on old posts but I think this makes for a cleaner and easier to understand format.

I braught back the 'latests posts' on the homepage but it is super slow so I will have to rethink of how I will approach loading it (will probably be an ajax call), still got a big list of things to do so will just keep at it!

YAAAAAAAY

[Orson]

Okay so latex should be working for fancy math equations! We are using a new system for this which renders the equation in the page instead of trying to create and load an image. You can right click on these for more info (and to get the code). This should be backwards compatible with all older tex code however there might be some small issues so if you find any let me know.



It will all be inline so equations will appear on their own line centered in posts, this might mess with some formatting on old posts but I think this makes for a cleaner and easier to understand format.

I braught back the 'latests posts' on the homepage but it is super slow so I will have to rethink of how I will approach loading it (will probably be an ajax call), still got a big list of things to do so will just keep at it!

Hey there Sly! Welcome! I've been messing around with some programming (VB.Net, but I've also been doing some web design with simple HTML/CSS), and I was wondering how people actually learn to apply code. Sure codeacademy teaches me what a loop in PHP is, but I have no idea what it actually does, where to use it, and why it exists. Any tips on learning techniques? Anything at all that could help? How did you begin?

Thanks so much mate!

[Slydev]

Hey there Sly! Welcome! I've been messing around with some programming (VB.Net, but I've also been doing some web design with simple HTML/CSS), and I was wondering how people actually learn to apply code. Sure codeacademy teaches me what a loop in PHP is, but I have no idea what it actually does, where to use it, and why it exists. Any tips on learning techniques? Anything at all that could help? How did you begin?

Thanks so much mate!

Hmm that is a tricky one to answer. I would say when it comes to learn WHERE to use certain code is in looking at other peoples code (though helps if the code you are looking at is not terrible).
The syntax is kind of like lego bricks, you are told what they can and cant do and have to work out where you want them to be used depending on what you are building. It is about experiencing the scenarios of where you might need to use different things and getting used to that.
I am sure any university/online course would cover good examples of this, but as where to find online I am not as sure. The best thing is to come up with a small project and see if there is a tutorial on how to do that, this would help with the idea on how to approach things.

To answer the question more specifically a loop is used when iterating through something (generally an array). So say we queried the database for all forum users, we would then need to use a loop to go through them all, some psudocode would be like this:

[users] = [query all users]
foreach([users] as [user]) {
   [print out user]
}

This code would iterate through each user and print them out one at a time. That is what you will mostly use loops for but there are other contexts.

[Slydev]

Small update!

Added in 'Show unread VCE' and 'Show unread HSC' links so that your unread feed isn't cluttered up with HSC/VCE forums that don't really have any bearing on your existence! SACE and WACE peeps have got to up their presence if they want the same special privileges though 

As always if something isn't working as intended let me know here or at our 'AN problems' thread Here

[heids]

The links to the blog under VCE and HSC don't work - but the blog hasn't worked for me except on very odd occasions for a month or two anyway.



http://atarnotes.com/free-hsc-tutoring also returns the same, and sometimes the homepage (atarnotes.com), but at least it sometimes goes through.

[brenden]

The links to the blog under VCE and HSC don't work - but the blog hasn't worked for me except on very odd occasions for a month or two anyway.

(Image removed from quote.)

http://atarnotes.com/free-hsc-tutoring also returns the same, and sometimes the homepage (atarnotes.com), but at least it sometimes goes through.

Clear your cache and go again? I've never had problems with any of the three pages :S

[heids]

Clear your cache and go again? I've never had problems with any of the three pages :S

Nah, did that, also tried on a different computer and browser - they still don't work.  Anyone else got this problem, or is it just me, my internet, and my clicking skills?

[brenden]

Nah, did that, also tried on a different computer and browser - they still don't work.  Anyone else got this problem, or is it just me, my internet, and my clicking skills?

Not sure if this explains things, but the URL I get when I click the button is:

http://atarnotes.com/blog/?state=VIC

It looks like yours is missing the forward slash after 'blog'?

[heids]

Not sure if this explains things, but the URL I get when I click the button is:

http://atarnotes.com/blog/?state=VIC

It looks like yours is missing the forward slash after 'blog'?

Nope, that link doesn't work either...

[keltingmeith]

Yo Sly, I love to use the "Recent Posts" section at the bottom of the main forum page to go through threads, the problem is that it's getting half-filled with the HSC threads and I'm missing a bunch of VCE and common threads as a result! (and I'm assuming the issue is bigger for our HSC friends, with that part being swamped by VCE posts)

Is it possible to get that to filter based on state, like the buttons you gave to us? Or even to be able to allow us to pick which forums feature down there? (obvs if it's too hard, minor issue. I can just use the "show unread posts" button more. )

[Slydev]

The links to the blog under VCE and HSC don't work - but the blog hasn't worked for me except on very odd occasions for a month or two anyway.

(Image removed from quote.)

http://atarnotes.com/free-hsc-tutoring also returns the same, and sometimes the homepage (atarnotes.com), but at least it sometimes goes through.

Hmm this could be a DNS setting issue on your end. I will investigate but I have not run in to the same problem on any network yet so it is hard to work with. Are you getting a 'retry for live version' button in the top right?

Yo Sly, I love to use the "Recent Posts" section at the bottom of the main forum page to go through threads, the problem is that it's getting half-filled with the HSC threads and I'm missing a bunch of VCE and common threads as a result! (and I'm assuming the issue is bigger for our HSC friends, with that part being swamped by VCE posts)

Is it possible to get that to filter based on state, like the buttons you gave to us? Or even to be able to allow us to pick which forums feature down there? (obvs if it's too hard, minor issue. I can just use the "show unread posts" button more. )

We are brainstorming some ideas for state based forum display. For now try using the 'Show unread VCE posts since last visit.' button if you don't want to see the HSC stuff. (I know it isn't quite the same but should do for now).