I know Programming... now what?

So, I haven't been on here for quite some time and now is again one of those moments, when I need to sort my hobby-oriented mind.

I am trying to find a home for my "mad programming skillz", but looking at the general trend that everyone is following, it has either something to do with GUIs or with using the webspace. I'll be honest, I hate all sorts of graphical user interface work. It is repetitive, extremely boring and once it comes to the web and its standards sometimes not logical to me. The moment, I try to do something remotely more complex than basest basics, it does things I just don't get (and by the way don't care to find out).

This makes it extremely tedious for me to find applications for my hobby. I have a small outlet in form of the patches I write at Mozilla's mozdownload package. While that is a lot of fun and the community is awesome, sometimes I would like to do something different and exciting... I just don't know what...

Any suggestions are welcome by the way. To give people an idea, I have been considering to learn C in addition to python to get a bit away from high-level languages and then maybe try out my luck with linux, however, it is doubtful that I will have the time for that in the near future.

I need something that has a low entry barrier, is fun and gives instant satisfaction... Difficult, I know. Any suggestions are welcome

I hate writing GUIs

Honestly, I hate it. Every time, I come across it, I end up getting to a point where I want to shoot myself. I had this moment today yet again. This time in the context with trying to write a very simple extension for Firefox. I mentioned before that I am an open-source contributor for the Mozilla Foundation, so for those one or two people who read this blog, it may come as no surprise that I also try to write other stuff for them, as well.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) for Mozilla is created using a specific type of XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) called XUL (XML User Interface Language) and the logic is done using JavaScript. Maybe it is, because I am not interested in design and have no mind for, but everytime I try to do a GUI, I get bored and so disinterested, it is not even funny anymore. I am so much more interested in writing the actual logic. The stuff that does things.

GUI writing is repetitive and because there is so much of it, it takes ages to get into it. I get frustrated, because I know what I want to achieve and then about an hour or two later, I finally manage to get something implemented that somehow resembles what I want. I say "somehow resembles", but it is never in the exact right place or is somehow "off". It is a source of constant aggravation to me.

That's where WYSIWG Editors come in handy. Unfortunately, in this case, there aren't many decent and well maintained XUL Editors out there. I found that XUL Gear did not work on my PC, so I settled for XULExplorer. It's decent, but obvious that it is a one man effort.

Ok, enough whingeing about it. Back to it. If I ever get this finishes, I will write about it.

Contributing to Mozilla

I guess, it's time now to talk about an activity that I have been doing for quite some time. Since almost a year, I am a contributor to Mozilla's Automated Testing Team. I've been learning all this stuff about Python programming, but I didn't find a real way to use it properly. Anyone who followed my blog (I doubt there is such a person as I am not actively promoting it) will know that I had a couple of semi-useless projects on the go, but these all died down for one reason or another.

In the end, I became aware that Mozilla is an Open Source project and aside from the core developers who are employed full-time, anyone is invited to join. I was quite sceptical at first, but once I figured out how to use IRC, I was ready to go (Now it feels odd to think that at one point I didn't know how to ;) ).

For anyone who is willing to improve his skills and is not afraid to be thrown in at the deep end, it is a truly awesome experience! From day one, I was welcomed and everyone had a lot of patience. There are a lot of online resources and when you're completely stuck, you can always go and speak to someone on the IRC channels. I first made my way through Bugs Ahoy! until I figured out how to use Bugzilla and at some point, I was shoved towards various sites on Github to help out on there.

Because it is such a big project not only entailing Firefox and Thunderbird, but several other aspects, as well, there is quite a variety of programming languages being used such as JavaScript, Python, HTML/CSS, Java, or C++. So if you really want to learn something new, there is a lot of opportunities to practice it within the community, as well.

All in all, I am glad I took the step and got involved. There is no pressure and everyone can contribute as much or as little as they want. I am quite proud to say that I have contributed quite a few lines of code to mozdownload and I had a blast doing it!

Codeacademy: I never thought I would fall for that trick

Been starting with the CodeAcademy recently to learn javascript in a less than pressured way. I always had the issue that I needed to learn coding the hard and time intensive way, i.e. practice, practice, googling the solution and more practice.

I read about the CodeAcademy and was actually just curious and to learn Javascript, because it is useful. The bastards got me hooked. I always fancied myself a man capable of independent thought, but all that "Congratulations! You earned a new badge!" got me as droolingly addicted like all those other muppets out there. Ah well, fellow muppets, I am now another member. Just wait until I managed to attach the strings to my wrists, ankles, back and head...

RPG Music'N'SFX - Docstrings are honking useful!!!

I've decided to really revise the documentations of my code today, mainly due to the fact that there hardly is any ;). Also when I haven't had the time for awhile to look into this little project of mine, I didn't have a clue what kinda things I sometimes did and why.

So then I figured, if I want to do it, I may as well do it according to the official guidelines. Said it and whipped out those badboy PEP 257 - Docstring Conventions. Apart from being pretty vague, they are actually quite good </sarcasm>.

I have to be honest, though, doing them at first was as boring as writing can get. Very repetitive and uninspiring, but then I noticed something. An 'A-Ha'-effect if you wish. I noticed an error in my code. A minor one due to sloppiness, but nonetheless an error and I would have not caught it, if it wasn't for writing those bloody docstrings! Then I noticed potential problems in my code or inconsistencies, simply because I went back over it again, because I wanted to document my code.

What I want to say is that these darned docstrings aren't just useful for other people, but for me, too1 It already saved me some hassle, that would have bitten me in the a** about two weeks down the line. I like it, it allows for preventing minor flaws and helps me seeing potential errors and exceptions, which I can then prevent by putting in appropriate fail saves.

In conclusion, I have to say, docstrings are honking useful!

WYSIWYG: A new start with wxFormBuilder

Warning, this is just a short update...

I have been absent for a while and I apologise, real life is keeping me rather busy, I must admit. Regarding things relevant to this blog, I have been busy transferring my GUI design to a new WYSIWG editor in order to have results that are more like what I was hoping to achieve. I used XRCed or wxGlade before, but I have not been content with them. The project XRCed has been inactive since a long time, so it was time to move on and something about wxGlade I just don't like. It is, in my opinion, a bit unwieldy and I find myself trying to incorporate widgets that aren't available in it.

As a consequence, I have been looking for an alternative, which came in the form of wxFormBuilder. It looks like a nice project and the design borrows heavily from Microsoft's Visual Express, which is not always a bad thing. As such, I have been busy, unlearning some of the things, I got used to and gotten to grips with peculiarities of the other. So far, very pleased with it. Unfortunately, there isn't a particularly good tutorial out there, which means, I will ned a little longer. At the off-chance, I may be able to write one once I have become more proficient with it.

Anyhow, so long, folks and thanks for all the fish.

Lots of enthusiasm, no direction

I hate these moments in programming. I have lots of enthusiasm spare in between all these things I do during my daily routine to get some bread on the table, but not project in sight to work on. Unfortunately, I am currently also at a loss as to how to choose a suitable project. Unfortunately, now that the work on my musicplayer is over, I have nothing to sink my teeth into... or better, no idea how to sink my teeth... if that makes sense ;)

ah, well... my search continues...