DEV Community: Brunner

How to create a random word generator program

Brunner — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 09:29:26 +0000

One use of a word generator application is to generate new website domain names
A word generator works like this:

You store all the consonants in box A
You store all the vowels in box B
You let computer randomly pick some consonants from box A into a new box called box C
The computer also randomly picks some vowels from box B into box C
Now box C contains both consonants and vowels.
Finally, you let the computer randomly arrange the content of box C. Whatever is the result of this arrangement is the 'generated word'

Links To The Best Resources On UI And UX Design On The Internet

Brunner — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 17:02:49 +0000

I would like to announce to you, my ebook on: Links To The Best Resources On UI And UX Design On The Internet.

For those of us looking for advise and inspiration in building the right User Interfaces and Experiences for our customers. There is a lot written on UX and UI on the internet.

I have compiled the best out of the lot that have generated the most positive results for their readers. The list includes links to blogposts, articles, etc on the internet , on this topic.
https://7website.github.io/ebook/
Thank you

why are there so many programming languages when they all do the same thing?

Brunner — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 11:48:48 +0000

You want to code for android? You need to know java or kotlin
you want to code for ios? you need to know swift or objective c
you want to code for the web? you need to know php or js or ...

In order to code for multiple platforms, you need to learn so many languages when they all do similar things.

For example: 'print()' prints text to the console in java, swift and php. It does the same thing everywhere. But its interpreted by different compilers.

Don't you think it would be great if we could cross compile our code to different platforms? Thanks

is getting a PhD in computer science beneficial to a software engineer?

Brunner — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 11:32:54 +0000

This is my personal opinion on this:
First of all, I have a bachelor degree in computer science and not a PhD.

I have heard that to be a machine learning scientist for some tech companies, PhD is required.

For a software engineer, I don't think you need a PhD. Probably, that will take too much of your time.

The software field is consistently improving and you might be left behind while persuing your PhD. On less you are eyeing a role in some company, and that role requires that qualification.

This is just my opinion, what do you guys think?

How to build a professional website template

Brunner — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 11:21:06 +0000

During my free time, I build website templates for sale. Now there is a difference between a 'template' and a 'theme'.

A 'template' is like a website built with html5, that allows the buyer to change the pictures and text on it to suit their needs.

A 'theme' is more like a website built on top of wordpress ( wordpress theme).

LETS GET INTO IT

Get feedback: If you are building your templates to sell on someone's market place, post your template's link to their forum and ask for feedback. If they say its okay, you then submit your template.

If you submit your template before asking for feedback, they might not accept you template and will not give any reasonable reason why ( some template marketplaces do not help people to know how the template should look like to appear professional)

validate your source code: it is interesting that most websites you see online do not pass the html validation test.

You can validate your html code on validator.w3.org, which is the official html validator and its free. Or on freeformatter.com (Note: I do not have anything to do with any link I post here, any link I post here is because I only used it to do my own template building )

Live host a template demo: clients interested in your template, will want to see how it works in order to make a decision.

Its not necessary paying for a server to just host a template demo. The solution is to create a github account and host it your account. The hosting is free and guarantees uptime.

4.Creating a template preview and thumbnail:
I have observed that almost all the photo editing softwares and websites do not allow you to manually choose the width and height of an image you want to resize.
When you choose the width, it automatically chooses the height for you and vice versa. Even Gimp ( an open source photo editor ) fails to do that without having to crop the image or change some settings.

The only solution I found for this problem is photoresizer.com
They do a good job of allowing you to change the dimensions of the image any way you want.

Thank you for your time.

do younger developers have an advantage over older developers?

Brunner — Fri, 29 May 2020 18:44:46 +0000

I often hear that companies favour young devs compared to old devs. Probably because it costs less to do so.
However, I also hear that experience is the number one reason a dev is usually hired. Also when companies are hiring, they look for people with 5 years of experience, etc.

Do you think think young devs have advantage, or the opposite is the case?

why some of my projects failed

Brunner — Wed, 27 May 2020 20:18:31 +0000

Over the last 3 years, these are some of my projects and why I think they did not succeed.

project: adstech

aim: to monitor how well your ads are doing across platforms

failure reason: built only the landing page, marketed to the wrong market, didn't know how to build the whole project at the time

project: apiteacher.website

aim: to teach people how to use popular APIs on the internet

failure reason: was too time consuming to learn and teach what is learnt, pricing was not inviting to customers

project: codebrunner blog

aim: a blog about tech

failure reason: a saturated market, designing the website took 3 months as I was first learning to code front end and back end

project: chargewhat.website

aim: advising new enterpreneurs on how to price their product

failure reason: was a great idea, had good initial traction, but did not find a way to monitize, solving customer problem required a lot of research and too much work, could not be automated

project: covid19 app

aim: an app to monitor the progress of covid 19

failure reason: no market need, inability to monitize, google tried to discourage people from installing apps not from their playstore

project: emailmanagement

aim: auto reply to emails, important emails automatically appear at the top of your inbox

failure reason: built only the landing page, building the actual project was too difficult at the time, difficult to get access to peoples' gmail inbox

project: travel master

aim: a website that showed people the tourist attractive places in a country and how to get there from the airport

failure reason: customer of the project had too low a budget, cost of work exceeded profit

project: neckline helper

aim: to help manage the businesses of busy enterpreneurs

failure reason: no market need, poor marketing of project, built only the landing page

project: htmlrice.website

aim: a website boilerplate

failure reason: no market need for a paid boilerplate, too costly for customers, similar boilerplates existed in the market for free

project: neckline

aim: to help online buyers to order the right cloth size for their bodies

failure reason:no market need, was a web app instead of a mobile app, customers expected the service to work inside the sellers' website but mine was standalone, sellers did not encourage using their cloth charts for your own purpose

Thank you for spending time to read this post. Have a nice day

how long it will take you to learn each programming language

Brunner — Tue, 26 May 2020 13:46:35 +0000

Before I continue with this post, let me state that this is the average time, both from my experience and from research. Much depends on your individual situation and tools.

LANGUAGE AVERAGE DURATION

html 1 week, if you spend 2 hours daily.
html stands for Hypertext
Markup Language. It is the
standard markup language for
documents designed to
be displayed in a web browser.
css 1 week, if you spend 2 hours daily.
css means Cascading Style
Sheets. CSS is a language
that is used to change the
appearance of html
documents.
javascript basics 3 weeks, if you spend 4 hours daily
JavaScript is a powerful

lightweight
programming language. It is used
in web development to
build interractive webpages.
java 4 months, if you spend 6 hours daily.
Java is a general-purpose
programming language that is
class-based, object-oriented. It is
intended to let
application developers write once,
run anywhere..
php 1 week, if you spend 2 hours daily.
Was created by Danish-Canadian
programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994.

It is a scripting language for
backend web development.

In the next post, I will include other programming languages.
Comments are appreciated. Thanks for your time

is java better than python?

Brunner — Fri, 22 May 2020 18:45:18 +0000

This post is comparing both languages in terms of pros and cons.
They are suitable for different needs . And their use is dependent on the type of project.

these are the advantages of java

it is old and well tested
-it has a large community
it is cross platform
it is suitable for Machine learning (ML) programs
-it is suitable for projects that require accurate calcuations. (eg. banking apps, scientific apps)
these are the advantages of python
-learning python is much faster

it requires less code to do something similar
there are a lot of already built methods for you to use
it has a large community
it is suitable for Machine learning (ML) programs
these are the disadvantages of java

it has a learning curve ( it is difficult to learn)
it is somehow proprietory (owned by Oracle and java 9 and above require some license to build enterprise apps)
these are the disadvantages of python

it is not as old as java
versions are usually not backwards compactible. (eg. python 2 syntax is different from python 3 syntax)
has less job opportunities compared to java

What do you think guys?

why does DEV.to have no API?

Brunner — Fri, 22 May 2020 17:26:17 +0000

I would really like it if DEV.to had an API so that we could post and like posts from outside the website. Can we volunteer to build one for it? Or what do you think guys?

why php developers should edit their files directly on the deployment server. part1

Brunner — Fri, 22 May 2020 16:15:28 +0000

This post is for php developers. And who use local servers like mysql and wamp to edit their backend code. Before uploading them to the deployment server.

The deployment server refers to the main server that powers your online website. It is not the server you use purposefully for debugging and nothing else.

I wrote this post because its good to see that, files behave in different ways on different servers.

Let's dive into the ways php files are different on both local and deployment servers.

CHECK YOUR FILE NAMES. Wrong file names still work on mysql server but do not work on deployment server. For example, on mysql, 'myfile.php' is the same as 'myFile.php'. so 'https://website.com/myFile.php' is the same as 'https://website.com/myfile.php'

But on the deployment server, or your website host server, 'myfile.php' is not the same as 'myFile.php'. So if the link 'https://website.com/myFile.php' works, then the link 'https://website.com/myfile.php' will not work and vice versa.

Therefore, after testing your files on the local server, be sure to check the file names again before uploading them onto the deployment server.

In order to avoid all this work, why don't you create and edit the files on the deployment server directly, so that you do know they work from the ground up.

This way, users can continue to access your website and your links while you edit them.

as a developer, what do you regret the most?

Brunner — Thu, 21 May 2020 13:22:06 +0000

There was a recent quora question, where a newbie developer asked:
"as a developer, what do you regret the most?"

A seasoned developer replied: "What I regret the most is that I spent too much time on the technical side. Learning the latest frameworks. And learning all new languages. But not finishing any side project. Always starting but not completing. A jack of all trades and master of none."

Do you also have something to share?