On Thu, 2002-06-06 at 09:38, Russell Hires wrote:
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> Hello out there!
>
> I want to create a gradebook type program using (insert product or
> programming language here). I have some great ideas for some really cool
> programs, but I don't have the technical ability to transform my ideas into
> useable products. I would like to propose these ideas to ??? , with the hope
> that someone will look at that and help me get going with these ideas that
> I've got. The question is, where do I start? Where do I ask for help? I
> realize that people aren't going to just flock to my projects like they did
> with the Linux kernel, but hopefully someone will show up and say, "sure,
> I'll help with that."
>
> Anybody have any ideas on this?
My three suggestions would be, in order of complexity and power:
PHP
Perl
Java
And definitely use the web as your UI.
Now in detail:
PHP - The scripting language PHP uses is very similar to Perl, but
perhaps I could say more consistent, and PHP is somewhat "easier" to
learn (great documentation) and get working with Apache. Lots of handy
built-in functions and constant development. If you *really* wanted to
be cool, you'd write it as a plug-in for PostNuke, which is also all
written in PHP, and which would also give you a head-start as a lot of
the user interface stuff will already be present in PostNuke. The
existence of PostNuke is probably the strongest argument for PHP
considering the maturity of a lot of other web-based application
platforms today.
Perl - Perl is more "powerful" overall than PHP, and you have the
advantage of all those billions of modules out there in CPAN to take
advantage of. CGI.pm is also amazingly handy. You'd be starting pretty
much from scratch though, as I can't think of any PostNuke-comparable
thing for Perl, or at least any that is as highly developed. And of
course, with great power comes great responsibility... Some of the
worst code in the world is written in Perl. It's real easy to quickly
make disgustingly unmaintainable code in Perl. Of course, once you know
what you're doing, it's also easy to make easily maintainable code.
Java - YMMV, but I think that writing servlets/JSP with something like
Tomcat is possibly the most powerful application platform out there
right now for web-based applications. Again, there's not going to be
much of an existing framework to build from, other than the hundreds of
classes available from the Apache Jakarta project...
(http://jakarta.apache.org/) Java will be much harder to learn and get
comfortable with, and then you'll still have to figure out Tomcat, but
if you can get to that point, and build some useful base classes,
development becomes a breeze there. I, at least, find it amazingly easy
to reuse code - and to write easily reusable code - in Java. And if you
decide to go hole hawg and learn J2EE, you can use JBoss which has some
amazingly cool features.
And unless you want to be a masochist, use the web as your user
interface. There's really not a whole lot of reason to write custom
native user interfaces anymore. Plus it can help you quickly template
your application design by just building a few fake pages that line up
the various functions.
I know you were probably looking for more hands-on help, like code, and
I'd personally actually love to help as my wife is a teacher, but lately
I've been so busy I barely have time for even sitting down and watching
half an hour of TV in a week...
--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map
{$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;
$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)
[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h=5;$_=unxb24,join
"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$d=
unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d
>>12^$d>>4^$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*
8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}
print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval
usage: qrpff 153 2 8 105 225 < /mnt/dvd/VOB_FILENAME \
| extract_mpeg2 | mpeg2dec -
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/
http://www.eff.org/ http://www.anti-dmca.org/
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