DEV Community: Katie Nelson

Nevertheless, Katie Coded

Katie Nelson — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 21:53:29 +0000

My story so far…

Well, you can see from my profile how young I am, so this should be short. 😊 About 4 years ago I was in my room one day (bored most likely) and was surfing the web looking at clothing sites. I forget exactly which one it was, probably Forever 21, when I came across a page that did not render correctly in my browser. I though it was my computer, but I really wanted to make that page work for me. I Googled around and found by pressing F12, I opened up "Developer Mode".

What was all this stuff I was looking at? I probably spent a couple of hours looking at the source code and got my first exposure to HTML and CSS. By some miracle, I changed some of the CSS and OMG!!, the page suddenly looked right!
I of course thought I had changed the code on their server and got a real shock when I refreshed the screen and it was bad again.

That was my introduction to coding and something about it fascinated me to read more and start saving things to my hard drive. I made some very crude looking web pages (design is not my forte), but I got into the logical aspect of it and taught myself basic web coding.

Of course, I wanted my pages to be more flashy and that's how I came across JavaScript. Boy, what a leap that was. Ifs and loops and functions and callbacks; I gave up on it for a couple of weeks, but it kept calling me back. Take it slow... learn one piece at a time... be an expert on this one function... move on to another one.

Front to Back-end...

At some point I read about Java and initially thought it was the same as JavaScript. Then, I downloaded Eclipse and entered the world of IDEs. I built a couple of very simple Windows applications and experimented with layout managers and putting all kinds of controls up in a window. It was like moving to another country. Java and JavaScript looked similar, but I realized web programming and desktop application programming were as different as cats and dogs.

When I started high school, I saw they had a student run website and poked my head in one afternoon to see how an entire site was put together. When the club adviser heard that I knew HTML & CSS, he encourage me to help out. When he found out I knew JavaScript, he dumped more responsibility on me.

Trouble fitting in...

I found out the first week that I was the only girl in the club. The more senior boys looked down on me and didn't make any effort to help me out. It didn't help that I streamlined a chunk of code to run more efficiently (I quickly found out that one of those boys had written the original code). They would keep to themselves and I'm sure I heard them make foul remarks about me.

A couple of bad remarks later, I had enough and went to the club adviser and told him I was done. My first "job" and I was quitting it. He took me into his office and said that the others felt threatened by me because as a freshman, I was already better than them at coding. I got the idea in my head that this would be what I could expect if I entered the real world of coding for a living. I convinced myself that it's a fun hobby, but I should find something else that makes me happy (like clothes shopping 😊 don't get me started on that!).

The teacher asked me if I was interested in helping him out on the back-end. It uses ASP.NET MVC and a MySQL database. Suddenly, I had another world to explore. None of the students ever did back-end work and I would not have to interact with the boys as much. I went home, downloaded Visual Studio and taught myself C# .NET framework.
I made the same desktop apps using .NET as I had done the year before in Java AWT. It wasn't too difficult and got comfortable with a new IDE and it's project structure. There were DLLs instead of JAR files and binding them all together took some time, but I agreed to be the back-end person.

SQL was another hurdle along with Entity Framework. I'm no expert, but I know how to use the tools (like builders and debuggers) to get by.

Like I said at the start of this post, my story is a short one. My next big decision will be what to major in when I apply for college. Do I go the Computer Science route and spend 4 years in classes learning stuff I might already know? What will the male/female ratio be for that major? How are the women treated? All to be decided.

I’m an expert at…

As previously stated, I don't feel I'm an expert in any one subject. I can say that I know a little bit about a lot of different technologies. However, as time goes on, the number of things to know about seems to grow faster than I can keep up with. I'd like to learn some of the ES6 frameworks like Vue, React and Angular. Then there's .NET Core, SQL Server, Docker and all those pieces too.

When my head gets too full of coding options, I go to the mall to clear it all out. It's my break from hi-tech and an opportunity to window shop!

Looking for a helpful dotnet library

Katie Nelson — Tue, 31 Dec 2019 22:17:17 +0000

Hello DEV community.
I'm writing some code in C# using the .NET Core version 3.1
I need to communicate with another host which runs an old program on a TCP port that is using a custom byte-oriented protocol.
My side will be the client, since the other is a server listening on a specific port number.

I know I will need a TCPClient function to open and establish a stream between the 2 hosts.
I have looked around for a NuGet package to help and I've found two: NetCoreServer and WatsonTcp.

Since this server is not always available, I might have to build a quick simulator app, so I'll have to do a TCPListener function for that side too.

My question is: has anyone used these before or is there another I haven't found yet? Or maybe just use the classes already in the System.Net.Sockets namespace (Microsoft provides examples that look fairly easy).

Any help from those with a lot more experience than me would be greatly appreciated.

A Comment is not a Post

Katie Nelson — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 17:42:01 +0000

This post is for all the new people just joining the DEV community. It's about navigating your way through the neighborhood.

Welcome to DEV

Your first introduction to DEV is usually through one of the Welcome threads. There, you are encouraged to contribute a little something about yourself as an introduction to the rest of the community.
For all of us, it can be a little scary opening yourself up to a large group.

What should I write?
Who will see this?
How do things work around here?

These are common thoughts we have all experienced. For those who take the first step, you might see a response like:

Hi

Or the classic:

Hello, World!

Others might even write a full sentence or two about how they found this site or even what kind of coding they are interested in.

Whatever you write, just know that you have not created a Post, you made a Comment. (Even though your browser made an HTTP POST to get that comment to the DEV server.)

A Post is the initial message written by an author (in this case, the dev.to staff).
A Comment is a response to a post.
A Thread contains one post and zero or more comments.

Some people after making their first entry, go off and look around at other pages. At some point you look at the page with the latest posts and scroll down looking for your entry. What's going on? I don't see my entry. It's not here. Did I do it right?
Some of those will get back to the Welcome Thread and re-enter what they had written the first time unaware that they have just written another comment.

If that is you, don't worry about it. I have a secret to tell you. I made that same mistake! Really. If you search for "Welcome Thread - v44" you will see two comments by a once clueless me.

If you're still not sure you wrote something, or you can't find your comment, click on your profile picture in the upper right hand corner and select your user name (it starts with the @ sign). On that page, just below your profile box, you'll see a list of links to all the comments you ever made. When you begin writing posts, they will show up there as well.

It's all just a part of finding your way around a new neighborhood. If you get lost, just ask by leaving a comment (you can leave it here and I'll do my best to help). Or, see that big button at the top of this page that says "WRITE A POST"? Press it and ask the entire community. One piece of advice before you actually press that scary looking button, read up on Markdown. It will explain how you can format your post to look nice and even add all those emojis 😄.
If you have already pressed it, at the bottom of the page is a ? button that will also guide you.

Hearts

One more important topic is hearts ❤️. Every post and comment has a heart symbol associated with it. Use these hearts to tell the author that you like what was written. Whenever I read an interesting post or comment, I always press the ❤️. It lets the author know that someone actually read it.

For myself, I love to receive hearts. It encourages me to write some more. In fact, this post was done because so many people gave me a ❤️ to a comment I wrote in the current Welcome Thread. I do my best when someone hearts me to heart them back. It's my way of letting them know that I appreciate the gesture.

The Mysterious Unicorn

Now, you might ask yourself, if the heart indicates I like it, what is that unicorn for? I have been asked this question before and the truth is "I don't know".
There have been several posts like this one below that have discussed the meaning.

How do you use each of the emoji reactions on dev.to?

Frederik 👨‍💻➡️🌐 Creemers ・ Aug 2 '17

#discuss #meta

For me, I press it when I really like the post. Maybe we are each meant to leave it to our own interpretation? But at least now you know if you get a unicorn from me, you made an awesome post.

finally {
  Environment.Exit(0);
}

I hope this post has been helpful.
If it has, let me know by leaving me a ❤️.
Even better, leave a comment, or the best thing to do is to pick a topic you like and write your own first post. When I read it, you'll get my ❤️!

Choices for a console in Windows

Katie Nelson — Sat, 07 Dec 2019 15:53:28 +0000

I've spent a little bit of time lately looking into different consoles to use in Windows 10. The built-in cmd console is what I've used the most in the past.

Consoles tried are:

Windows System Command Prompt (cmd.exe) for simple batch operations
Windows PowerShell ISE (PowerShell_ISE.exe) for PowerShell scripting
Git for Windows (git.exe) for a bash shell (although I've been into using the TortoiseGit client more.)

Some of the newer choices I found were:

Windows Terminal - A Windows App from Microsoft in preview release that does Command Prompt and PowerShell
Comemu - A console emulator with a customizable GUI
Clink - Runs in the cmd console with some bash-like enhancements
Cmder - An all-in-one console that uses Comemu & Clink and does cmd, PowerShell and bash with extensive lua scripting

Now, I'm trying to decide which one is best for me. Cmder looks like a good choice, but I'll have to put learning lua on my to-do list.

Before I do that, I'm curious if there are others out there to try.

Requirements:

Must be free
Runs under latest version of Windows 10

Let me know what some of your favorites are and I'll post my opinion on what I like and what I decided on.

What advice would you give someone thinking about a career in software?

Katie Nelson — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 16:06:02 +0000

I’m a student and consider coding as more of a hobby for me. I do enjoy it, but I’m at that stage where I have to think about what to major in for college. Is computer science something that I would want to do? It’s not an easy decision for me since my other interests that I like more might not be ones I could make a living doing.

How have you found your own careers in software have been?
Are you happy you chose it, or are you always thinking that maybe there was something else?

Any input would be appreciated.

What's the craziest code you ever read?

Katie Nelson — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 17:39:57 +0000

A while back, I saw some JavaScript where every var and function in the file was named after a type of fruit.
It look something like:

grapes.forEach(function(grape) {
  if(grape < 10)
      apple += orange;
});

We decided to name the unknown coder Fruitcake, although the code was running as expected.
The crazy part was having to read it all to see how it actually worked in order to just add a single new feature.

Has anyone else come across something like this?