During our work in Excel at the end of November, I had to install Yosemite to update my OS in order to run the most current versions of Office and Sigil. If I load up Yosemite, I will lose a ton of old (not free) software I use very frequently. I'm going to have to buy a whole bunch of new software to update those apps (Adobe Creative Suite, which I have delayed in updating since the end of my design career, but that I use on an almost weekly basis and I won't do the subscription versions). I'm not really budgeted to make a major software purchase until January. This is an alarming situation. I don't know what I can do for a workaround.
Regarding coding, I definitely want to learn more about PHP and using it to query our database and get it to put out answers was a very practical project. I definitely want to tame if not master PHP. So far all I've done is PHP in this class and NetBeans which seems to be Java-based, but man, generally with coding you have to cross your t's and dot your i's and if you make the slightest error, it won't run. That said, when you can compile code and it works, it's rewarding. Then you can copy and paste parts of code you know works and customize it here and there.
I was really impressed with the Excel providing those customized lines of code for each ISBN number and if my paste special function were working the right way, I could do it automatically.
Since writing and compiling code doesn't happen in a WYSIWYG environment, (like html with a nice editor where you can just about see your changes on the fly) you might be mystified for a while before identifying where you made a mistake. Yeah, a compiler is a crazy and very opaque black box and you realize how instantaneous feedback can propel a project. When you can see your changes in something like real time you can really move quickly and without that quick feedback from the system you're kind of in the dark.
No comments:
Post a Comment