The story thus far…
I’ve written in the past here on the blog about my experience with computer programing, and what it has meant to me. The main thing that I want to get across is just how fun it is to mess around with code. In my own personal experience, computer programming has made me gain a entirely new appreciation for math. I suppose this is because math is such an integral part of all programming languages and allows you to understand how all this stuff works. It’s just plain fun!
It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I started to regain an interest in coding once again. This came as a result of conversations I had with a friend of mine who seemed to be all jazzed up about creating his own custom CMS. At first, I had thought that such an idea was silly because there are already a number of very excellent free CMS’s such as WordPress and Drupal, but it is only now that I am starting to realize the advantage of starting from the ground up. The chief advantage being the ability to tinker with all of the stuff under the hood, which is a tremendous learning opportunity. And the only reason I’m doing this is to learn. Pure education. Some people like to play baseball or football, but I like to mess around with PHP and Perl. Weird, I know, but that’s what nerds are—weird people.
In any event, it took somewhere around 3 or 4 months before any of this talk materialized. My friend remarkably learned all of his PHP skills via a series of very excellent videos freely available online. It is at this point in time that I regret not doing the same, but there is still time for that. The site is purely an experimental “proof of concept”. As of now, it serves no real purpose, besides being a playground of sorts where both me and my friend can learn.
Now, let’s go through a whirlwind tour of the technical side of the website!
The site is running on PHP and is powered by a MYSQL database. It is an entirely dynamic website which allows for quick and painless editing. Most of the administration is handled by a very neat little interface called PHP MyAdmin, which is a browser based interface for configuring and editing a MYSQL DB. Along the left hand side is a list of databases for things such as registered users, blog posts, and videos. So, for instance, to create a blog post with interface, you simply add a new entry to the blog database. It’s that simple. Once you get your head around the notion of a database-driven environment, it is quite easy to add features and manipulate the site.
Of course, I must confess that I am not familiar with the process of actually installing this handy interface on the server. I only joined this project about two weeks ago, and I am slowly learning how it all works. Much of it is held together by chewing gum, but it’s that really good gum that lasts nearly all day. A lot of it still seems magical to me, and I feel like I’m looking at a black box that just works by some process to complex for me to comprehend.
Nonetheless, I feel that my main contribution will be with suggesting new features and reporting bugs. So far, I’ve made a handful of suggestions that have helped improve the site, and I plan to keep thinking of new ideas in the future.
Whenever I do end up coding, I can’t help but think of luminaries like Dave Winer and Randal L. Schwartz, who give me that bit of inspiration to keep on going. These are guys who wake up everyday and get to create something new. Whatever it is, they create things that scratch an itch, which in turn solves problems for other people as well. In my own experience, Dave Winer’s “River of News” philosophy for his OPML Editor has changed the way I interact with RSS and the news. I used to spend hours in Google Reader looking at my unread feeds just as I would look at my unread mail, but now I read the news like a newspaper. It’s one long page that scrolls on and on like a river. If I miss something, no big deal. The river can flow in the opposite direction. But I do realize that these two programmers are people who really love math. From what I’ve gathered, both of them grew up hacking computers, and experiencing the personal computing revolution. The thing is, that era is gone. Everything has become so high-level nowadays, and I feel like I’ll never understand computers well until I start from the most fundamental AND-gates and logic gates.It’s sort of this mixed blessing.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Just as a note, I’ve noticed that posting here at the blog has slowed down considerably. It’s as if all of the writers just disappeared. And I sort of hate the fact that I’m even writing about this issue, because I strongly believe in fulling the mission of this site, which is to provide short essays and anecdotes about life. It’s always a mistake to write a post talking about why no one posts anymore ; however, it is a legitimate concern that I think plagues every collaborative blog. People get busy, and people lose interest. I can’t speak for any of the other writers, but I know that I will continue to write for the blog as frequently as I can. Not as much I would like, but at least 3 posts a month.
Thanks,
optionshiftk
Filed under: Computers, Programming
