Category Archive: Learn »

11 programming languages worth checking out »

If you program for fun or profit, chances are that you know C, C++, Java, PHP, Perl, Python or Ruby. These programming languages are all widely known, and, to a different degree, used in commercial applications. At least some of them can safely be considered mainstream, even if that word has become so overused and misused that has almost lost its original meaning, if it ever had one.

If you are earning your living by coding, it’s often one of these languages that pays the bills. Nevertheless, true hackers frequently meander in other directions, exploring and discovering different paradigms and methodologies, sometimes to the most esoteric extremes.

“The most obvious common ‘personality’ characteristics of hackers are high intelligence, consuming curiosity, and facility with intellectual abstractions. Also, most hackers are ‘neophiles’, stimulated by and appreciative of novelty (especially intellectual novelty). Most are also relatively individualistic and anti-conformist.”

– Eric S. Raymond, The Jargon File

Even if you’re particularly devoted to one of the languages mentioned above, it is normal to be curious about what else is out there. As the end of the year approaches, I find myself thinking about learning – or at least become acquainted with – some less known, more experimental, programming languages.
I was originally planning on learning another programming language as a New Year’s Resolution, which is quite common among programmers. The most difficult task turned out to be choosing a particular language: there are so many out there which makes it very hard to decide.

This article deals with ten possible candidates, and it’s far from being an exhaustive list. The programming languages described henceforth are very different from each other, but they all have one thing in common: they all stimulate my curiosity in their own, very different ways.

All about CSSLint »

Getting our code reviewed by a pro is a great way of improving code quality but what happens if you don’t have access to a rockstar programmer? You do the next best thing and grab a ‘lint’ for that language.

Today, I’d like to talk a little about CSSLint, a recently released code analysis tool for, you guessed it, CSS. Join me after the jump!

Sorting Multi-Dimensional Arrays in PHP »

Every time I need to sort a multi-dimensional array in PHP, I have to remind myself how to do it. It’s not quite as quick and easy to look up as most things, so I’m going to blog a quick example. I’ve always felt like there must be a better way to do this, so please let me know if there is, and I’ll update this post accordingly.

Here’s a simple array of users:

$users = array();

$users[] = array('username' => 'shiflett', 'name' => 'Chris Shiflett');
$users[] = array('username' => 'dotjay', 'name' => 'Jon Gibbins');
$users[] = array('username' => 'a', 'name' => 'Andrei Zmievski');

Using GROUP_CONCAT in MySQL »

If we have two tables with the following structure:

CREATE TABLE
	member(user_id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, name VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL);
INSERT INTO
	member (name)
VALUES
	('Vasim'),
	('Alice'),
	('Sumit'),
	('Sunil'),
	('Vipul'),
	('Pravin'),
	('Nikhil'),
	('Harshad');

DDL, DML, DCL and TCL Explanation and Examples »

DDL:

DDL is abbreviation of Data Definition Language. It is used to create and modify the structure of database objects in database.

Examples:

CREATE: to create objects in the database
ALTER: alters the structure of the database
DROP: delete objects from the database
TRUNCATE: remove all records from a table, including all spaces allocated for the records are removed
COMMENT: add comments to the data dictionary
RENAME: rename an object

Five common PHP Design Patterns »

Design patterns were introduced to the software community in Design Patterns, by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides (colloquially known as the “gang of four”). The core concept behind design patterns, presented in the introduction, was simple. Over their years of developing software, Gamma et al found certain patterns of solid design emerging, just as architects designing houses and buildings can develop templates for where a bathroom should be located or how a kitchen should be configured. Having those templates, or design patterns, means they can design better buildings more quickly. The same applies to software.

11 More Things to Learn from the jQuery Source »

As a follow-up to his popular presentation from the jQuery conference, Paul continues with eleven more interesting notes and facts on jQuery.

HTML5, CSS3 and Dom Performance »

Paul Irish, from the Chrome Developer Relations team, walks through smart techniques to improve the performance of your app. He describes CSS reflows and how to avoid them, hardware accelerated CSS, animation optimization, web workers, benchmarking and build scripts.

The Best Web Development Books »

Some people say web development books are dead. Why spend $40 when there’s a seemingly never-ending stream of information available for free on the web.
Well, there’s absolutely validity to that statement, but the fact remains, nothing compares to curling up on a couch with a fully researched, definitive guide to a particular subject.

With that in mind, we’ve prepared a list of books that we feel are among the best of the best.

Create WordPress Plugin using OOP Techniques »

Object-oriented code, among other things, can help organize and add reusability to your code. In this tutorial, I will teach you the basics of writing a WordPress plugin using object oriented techniques. We’ll be using Dribbble’s API as an example for this tutorial. Ready?

What We’re Going to Learn:

Benefits of using OOP for WordPress plugins.
How to setup a shortcode.
How to setup a template tag.
How to enable shortcode in WordPress widgets.
Real-world example by using Dribbble’s API.