13 Jan, 2008, Xalin wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
I've been wanting to learn quite a few new languages lately so I searched google for a nice site filled with free books. I found one at http://pspxworld.com. It has great books about many freaking languages going as far as PHP, Basic, C#, C++, C, COBOL, Perl, XML, and so many more.

Anyway, to the point of this thread. I was hoping someone could go to that site that is experienced in Web Design and pick out any books they have found in PHP, Javascript, Perl, and anything else that can be found in Web Design.

On a side note…. I was wondering if anyone knew where I could get a decent free MySQL book online as well.

Thanks
14 Jan, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Well, personally, I don't really believe in learning "web design" programming languages. I'm of the school of thought that learning general principles will enable you to apply them to pretty much any domain, including web programming if that's what you want to do. Then, once you understand the general concepts of programming, learning a language will (usually) take you just a few days for getting the basics, and then a few weeks/months of picking up very particular details or other idiosyncrasies.

For that reason I would perhaps recommend sticking with a language you know but pushing deeper into its advanced features. If you're looking to learn C++ or Java, the course handouts from the introductory classes here are excellent. (CS106a, CS106b, CS106x, CS107, CS108). CS107 also goes into some Lisp (or Scheme) which is worth learning for several reasons but at the very least to get your head wrapped around the different concepts.

As for actual books I don't really know of any meant for learning from scratch. The Lua book is meant for people who already know how to program in general but want to pick up Lua; it's a pretty good book for that and is available online (well, the first version is). I did most of my learning from example, trial and error which, while providing me with a bunch of experience, probably took several years longer than I should have. I also had the advantage of having two CS parents who were quite willing to help me figure out how to implement fairly advanced features, which helped me move forward instead of getting stuck in a comfort zone. Well, sorry for the digression…

I guess that as usual it depends on what exactly you're trying to do. Again I believe firmly that if you know how to program you don't need to get a "web programming" book to teach you programming; you might want one to teach you web-specific platforms. But at the same time, there are a ton of web applications around there with tutorials; it might be best to learn from example (again depending on what exactly you're trying to accomplish).

I hope this answer was at least somewhat helpful… :rolleyes:

[Edit: Fixed stanford.edu links]
14 Jan, 2008, kiasyn wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
i used the php.net online documentation & the mysql online documentation and google when stuck.. lol
14 Jan, 2008, Tommi wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
David, those links you provided all 404'd, any chance of updating them, im sort of interested in java at the moment and some actual course materials would help me out a lot.
14 Jan, 2008, Xalin wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Well what I want to eventually do is be a Web Designer with some C/C++ Background in there. Also I wouldn't mind having a Mud/Website host next year or 2 when I get a new computer since the computer I currently have is better then virtually any free host you can speed wise… Least thats how it looks cause I don't know any free service better then Slayn and I beat Slayn's speed on compiling by far.

But yea.. totally lost thought in the middle of taht paragraph so I really don't know what else to say now…… lol
14 Jan, 2008, Justice wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
webreference.com has alot of good articles on it, including book reviews and excerpts.

I've done some work with them on articles regarding tableless CSS layouts.
14 Jan, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
I would fix the links in the actual post, but it seems that I'm unable to edit it… well, here are the fixed links. I just forgot the http prefixes.

CS106a, CS106b, CS106x, CS107, CS108


EDIT:
The edit button shows up for this one but not yesterday's; I guess there's a time delay on editing your own posts? Seems like it's useful in some cases but not-so-useful here…
15 Jan, 2008, Guest wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
The edit button is live for 6 hours. After that you lose it. There's a very good reason for this that involves people who like to sabotage their posts months down the road for no apparent reason.
15 Jan, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Like I said, it makes sense for some cases (like the one you describe which is the one I had in mind) but in other cases it's something of an annoyance… It seems like a case of punishing reasonable uses because of the occasional screwball (that could be defended against using administrative undo history or something – but yes, I know that's a lot of work to implement). Anyhow, I would appreciate if the links could be fixed in my original post so that confusion is avoided.
15 Jan, 2008, Xalin wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Seems Samson fixed the links without saying so. ;)
15 Jan, 2008, Guest wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Well it's not just for people showing up 8 months later to ruin old posts. It's also done that way because, sadly, forums in the MUD community tend to draw flameage and people get tempted to run back and edit what they said. I figured setting it at 6 hours to be able to edit or delete a post was less of a pain in the ass than the one hour you get on TMC to delete, and the fact that edits are really appends there. Yes, it unduly burdens the honest poster who spots a typo 3 days later and would like to fix it. Much like copy protection unduly burdens the vast majority of honest users of software.

And your links have been fixed. :)
15 Jan, 2008, Xalin wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Maybe I just beat him to it? lol
15 Jan, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks for fixing the links. :smile: And yeah, I do agree with you, it's just frustrating to not be able to fix typos without going through an admin. :wink:
16 Jan, 2008, Conner wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Xalin said:
Maybe I just beat him to it? lol

Given the three minute difference between your post and his, the odds are that he was still typing (or had just started typing) about the time you hit "Reply". :wink:

DavidHaley said:
(that could be defended against using administrative undo history or something – but yes, I know that's a lot of work to implement)

I know, wrong forums for this… Actually, a wiki style edit history for posts in QSFP would be pretty cool.. even if it was admin only (or, better yet, configurable to be admin only or not).
16 Jan, 2008, Guest wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
A wiki style revision history for posts is impractical at this level. Articles are one thing. But having that magnified across hundreds of forum posts would be a database nightmare.
16 Jan, 2008, Conner wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
What about only for certain (admin selectable) threads?
16 Jan, 2008, Guest wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
I don't think there's really much of a point in spending the kind of time it would take, even for selective threads. Forums have gotten by for this long without it. It's honestly much less of a hassle to lock posts after a given time period than it would be to think ahead on what topics would need to have revision history activated, because you can't recover lost edits before that.
16 Jan, 2008, Conner wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
:lol: Actually, I wasn't really thinking about for the proposed purpose, I was thinking more in terms for a thread where players are posting the stats of their characters and just going back and editing their posts each level gain to keep the thread length down, and having that thread have a wiki style edit history would allow folks to see what the stat gains had been along the way.
16 Jan, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
I wasn't suggesting a whole wiki-like history. Just an audit trace of post edits, not necessarily visible to the common users, or even the admins through a web database, just a trace somewhere of what changes were made.
17 Jan, 2008, Conner wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Hey, how'd you know the FBI was watching you that closely? :tongue:
0.0/20