"Yikes,"
...echoed in your brain chamber as you read the title.
Let me preface this article with this tidbit:
Like many young, budding...
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My first experience with code was Geocities. HTML and CSS, but then I wanted to find out how to make really cool things. I tried to reverse-engineer complicated server-driven websites by downloading their HTML source. I tried sooooo hard and couldn't figure it out.
Eventually I found out about PHP. I still wound up losing interest in programming for about a decade, but I finally came back.
When I came back I was still making table-based layouts 😱
glitch.com is trying to make this kind of process as magical as possible. @anildash and co are doing cool things.
Yes!! Reverse-engineering things is what I do professionally. 😹
But it's so time-consuming and convoluted, especially at an enterprise-level.
I embarassingly went into my web development degree thinking table-layouts were still a thing.
2014 . Jesus.
Thank you for the links! I'll definitely check them out.
Also, I just listened to your interview on Learn To Code With Me Podcast! It's what inspired me to finally write here today.
I should probably go back to work....😅
Awesome!
I really need to do more podcasts.
This was why, back when people actually banged out HTML in their favorite, wholly text-oriented browser of choice, you could embed <!-- stolen from > notations.
That is, if you weren't so concerned with squeezing every last bit of "nonsense" out of your page so that it would render acceptably quickly on your shiny, new 56Kbps MODEM. =)
A 10 year old me just cared about cursor sparkles, man. hahaha
I'm just gonna go over to this corner, grab a rocking-chair and a warm sweater and complain about kids being on my lawn. =)
I use view-source to copy pages for the NetKoTH competition my 2600 group hosts.
You tag the site with your team name and reupload on the compromised server (OWASP VMs)
The index pages are normally quite simple, but they are a good start to analyzing the site structure.
Good luck at figuring out ASP.net setups though
I just looked up the details of NetKoTH. That sounds amazing.
Welcome to one-stop-shop frameworks: where you need an actual rosetta stone to figure out how to do one. stinkin'. thing.
We can just let the inevitable AIs coalesce the framework ecosystem into something usable
since kid I'm always curious and questioning myself how something ( tech things) are done, back then I was crazy to know how people made Nintendo and specially the mortal kombat game, then in high school, I went to a prefessional school, and start to study programming, when I wrote my first Pascal program mannn I fell in love with, after Learn some PHP and Js and Finally have internet on home I got nuts, like all the time searching how things are done e trying out stuff and that has been doing good for me, working as webdev by day and studying computer science by night :)
Great post, Cat! I always say to the n00bs turn off the autocomplete. dont cp paste the codes, but type it. to, when you learn something, even if its simple, teach another people that dont know it yet. ASK! if you dont dont know something, ask! there's no stupid question. And have a nice side project and keep improving it with your new skills.
Franken-coding is one of the most fun ways to learn! Like you, my early knowledge of HTML, JS, and Perl came from finding neat features and figuring out how to modify them for my own totally cool '90s AOL webpage. I remember typing up a list of all the HTML tags I knew and printing it out for a friend so she could make a webpage too (and she did!). I discovered CSS when I was trying to understand how some sites had links that weren't underlined. Sounds so basic now, but at the time it was incredibly exciting.
When you discover
text-decoration: none;your whole UI design world changes instantly. 🤣Should have called this "Franken-code 'Till You Maken-code."
Dangnabit missed opportunity right there. 😤
Amazing article. I found that taking lines of code from different sources and applying it to my projects actually helped me to understand what I was doing and how it worked, even making my own adjustments in the process. I don't feel too bad anymore about doing that
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
That's exactly how I feel about it. I felt so awkward not being able to make anything from scratch (and I still do). I'm learning to let go and own my process.
Cannibalization: consumes code, gives +1 to intelligence, +1 to wisdom, -1 to charisma.
+10 to { { your Hogwarts House here } } for your clever analogy.
I agree, but I'm not sure a lot of it can be considered stealing... It's like taking sand and making a sand castle then claiming the next person stole your sand castle idea.
This brings to mind this comic:
nedroidcomics.tumblr.com/post/4187...
Can I get a full definition of what "Franken-coding" means? Is it...you copying/pasting is more like a zombie/robot?
Putting together a bunch of code from different resources and forming them into an app or a site.
Purely from the front, you can't really tell. Under the hood, however, is a different story.
The joke in my class was, "Just...don't Inspect. Please."
It was a mess.
Oh! I get it now.
..I totally forgot the premise of Frankenstein... face palm
Thanks for explaining!
My first experience with code was lotus 123 macros. How weird is that?