TQ☄️ is a user on octodon.social. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse. If you don't, you can sign up here.
TQ☄️ @TQ

Is there anyone interested in doing a group where we learn to code together? Using mostly free resources? And work on a common project, perhaps? Programming language is open for discussion.

Gibt es Menschen die Interesse hätten an einer Gruppe, in der wir Programmieren lernen? Dabei v.a. freie Ressourcen nutzen? Und vll. an einem gemeinsamen projekt arbeiten? Programmiersprache ist noch offen.

· Web · 45 · 35

@TQ My avid search for knowledge says yes; my task list is just waving a fist at me.

@DaveHiggins So does mine! As does my toddler! Ah, well, I will carve out some minutes, I'm sure!

@TQ That sounds like a cool idea. I'd be happy to give advice.

@wim_v12e That sounds nice! Are you specialized in one programming language?

@TQ I program in many languages, but of course not all of them to the same extent.
I can give details if you like.

@wim_v12e Perhaps you could give advice which ones are not tooooo hard to pick up. Some of us are beginners who haven't had experience coding so far.

@TQ OK, sure. Ruby, Python and Perl are fairly easy to pick up. C/C++, Go, Rust and Java are harder. JavaScript is in between, closer to the easy side.
Haskell is hard to but very beautiful.

@wim_v12e That is great advice, thank you!

@TQ When I say "harder" it means "takes a bit longer to learn".
I think what is very important when you learn to program is what I call a "mental model" of what happens when your program runs, how it executes what you've written. For languages that are close to the hardware like C, this model is more complex than for languages that are running in a VM or interpreter like Ruby, Perl etc.

@wim_v12e Yes, I've heard that... Good point! Thank you!

@TQ i would like to learn go, python or ruby. if you choose one of them, then i try to participate

@TQ ich wär gern dabei, hab aber eine lange Geschichte von "total begeistert von so Internet-GruppenDingen sein aber dann doch nicht mitmachen", also… großes vielleicht, ich würde eher spontan einsteigen, falls ich dann grad Ressourcen hab.

@TQ If you decide to go with Python, I could help out if you have questions. Same goes if you run into trouble using git, this is something I teach people on a regular basis :)

@rixx Gosh, I am alreading running into problems with git! I'll perhaps go watch a tutorial video on youtube, though, my questions are so... newbie! /o\

@TQ Git has a horrible, horrible user interface - everybody runs into lots of problems at first. If you learn well with interactive tools, try try.github.io/levels/1/challen , if you learn well from text, try chapters 1.3 and 2 of git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting … I don't learn well from videos so I have no recommendation there, but visualizing git concepts can be very very very useful!

@rixx Ahhhh! These are so useful! Thank you!

@rixx @TQ 🎩 been looking for something like this for a while, as I really out to start learning to using it .

That UI reminds me of something from late 1980s/early 1990s (at least I'm used to stuff like that from "first time round" 😁 )

@TQ @rixx Just realised that this might have come across as an attempt to troll, but "Oh shit, git!" is a serious (and really quite helpful) resource.

@rixx @TQ git is a pure command line application - what interface are you talking about? it doesn't even have a ncurses text UI

@ginsterbusch @rixx Ah, sorry, was unclear. I meant either GitLab or GitHub. These provide additional options.

@TQ @rixx github is okay, getting better all day .. gitlab is so-so, but nothing compares to the crappy (web) interface of bitbucket - they didn't even offer the (rather) simple option to tag your commits. took them more than 4 (in letters: FOUR!) years to implement that o.O

@TQ @ginsterbusch I really enjoy using GitLab. They provide new features every months, are easily self-hosted and provide some things GitHub doesn't.

@rixx @ginsterbusch GitLab was mentioned by so. before.

@rixx @TQ like 500 errors every few weeks, esp. for important *ix projects? :D

@ginsterbusch Ah, you aren't really interested in constructive dialogue, are you? Just tool bashing and stuff? Carry on then, that's not my kinda thing.

@ginsterbusch @TQ It doesn't have a graphical UI, but even a command line interface is a user interface, and git's is fairly nasty due to lots of magic parameters and inconsistencies . I love using git, I love its data structure, but its UI is still horrible.

@rixx @TQ my guess is, you havent been around much. there is lots of tools, apps, utils etc. pp. around with WAY worse syntax. just take ffmpeg / avconv or grep or ls or tar or most of the gnu utils .. $younameit :)
I always havs to look up stuff, but then, that counts for the rest as well, so I'd rather call it "in true unix cli spirit" than anything else :D

@ginsterbusch @TQ

First off, I think "you haven't been around much" is a terrible argument to make, because less experience does not discount opinion.

Secondly, I *have* been around much, and I know that ls and tar and the fuckups that are fdisk &co have horrible interfaces, too. I just do not think that that's a good excuse to build bad user interfaces, especially if you start off after the 90s. I still use and like git, but bad UI should be called out.

@rixx @TQ thats what you said. I could have said: look over the tellerrand, there is much worse. or just a really derogative "you know nothing, puny mortal". but i chose that phrase as a middle way. and really: there is worse. much worse. the only thing that is truly bad is: there is no reliable cross platform GUI (or just TUI) git tool / wrapper. sorrowfully remembering TortoiseSVN .. that was a fun tool to use :'(

@rixx @TQ
I don't agree that the user interface is horrible (it was in earlier versions though 😉). I think many commands or options just only make sense after understanding some of the internals of Git. For example that the ID of a commit changes during rebase makes perfect sense, yet it is very confusing in the beginning (or so it was for me).

Also, @TQ, feel free to ask me questions about Git if you have any. I often get the impression that I'm still far from expert but at least I have been using Git for almost 10 years now. 😄

@TQ @winniehell oh no, Git is already 10 years old? we'll have to move to something new soon!

@rixx @TQ I recently did this git course codecademy.com/learn/learn-git

But I won't hesitate to join your git course :D

@TQ I can code so I guess I'm out of that call, but I can help finding resources and answering questions.

@ekaitz_zarraga That is great! Do you have thoughts or recommendations about a project we could do together, as a group? And are there languages you would recommend?

@TQ It depends on what you want to learn.

Python is cool to start.

You can make... I don't know... a Mastodon bot?
It depends in your interests, I make simple scripts for myself, they are easy to do, but they are command line tools for my geek stuff. Maybe that's not very attractive for you.

@ekaitz_zarraga A bot, why not! I don't decide that on my own, obviously, so I'll propose that to the group that's about to form. :)
Thanks!

@TQ It's not the easiest job but It's fun and it will keep you motivated :D

@ekaitz_zarraga @TQ this is what most of my coding involves TBH, any graphics goes as far as ANSI colours :😁

But I think its important to start with this *first*, otherwise new coders could feel overwhelmed with trying to deal with GUI libraries, web servers etc. Especially if folk are on mixture of Windows, Linux and Mac desktops/laptops which is likely to happen!

@vfrmedia @TQ The good thing of python is handling libraries is quite easy.

I agree with you. Scripts are the best to make to avoid all the graphics, web and such, bit it's difficult to motivate people to make a script. :D

@ekaitz_zarraga @TQ

There is a big "retro" trend amongst younger generations today, you can still get pretty colours/graphics (including 256 colours) with ANSI art, and Python can of course be used to generate basic (and more advanced) HTML content (although I haven't even advanced that far myself!)

@vfrmedia @TQ Look, I made a Mosaic generator in python in the past. It could be also a good idea.

Some image creation :D

@TQ Ich wär vielleicht auch dabei, wenn es ok ist, dass ich schon programmieren kann und nur interessiert wär ne neue Sprache zu lernen und vor allem nach dem Uni-Stress wieder Spaß dran zu finden. Würde also erstmal beobachten, worauf ihr euch so festlegt und kann dann ja vielleicht auch hier und da weiterhelfen.

@Jules Find' ich total cool! Und wir haben auch ein paar Leute dabei, die Interesse hätten, eher Tipps und Hilfestellung zu geben. Wenn also für dich interessant ist, worauf wir uns festlegen, seh' ich nix, was dagegen spräche! 😊

@TQ Ok 🐼 Ich denk mal, wenn es nicht grad C/C++ oder Java wird, bin ich interessiert.

@TQ Kann übrigens gitlab.com nur empfehlen. Kommt 1 auch mit klar, wenn das ganze Terminalgedöns noch nicht so sitzt.

@Jules Cool! Hab es schonmal probiert, aber bin noch nicht so richtig mit warmgeworden... Versuche es gerade mit einem Tutorial.

@TQ Ja, braucht bisschen Reinwühlen, ich muss auch immer mal wieder Zeug nachschlagen. Vorteil von gitlab ggü github ist, dass man auch private repositories for free hat. Und wenn man mit mehreren Leuten an nem Projekt arbeitet, lässt sich das da auf der Oberfläche gut verwalten.

@Jules Privat ist praktisch, stimmt!
Ach, ich mach geraade ein GitHUB-Tutorial, mein Fehler... Argh. Noobie, ich...

@TQ naja, git ist das zugrunde liegende System, github und gitlab bieten halt zentrale repositories auf deren servern an zu verschiedenen konditionen + grafische oberfläche zu verwaltung usw.

Wenn du das Prinzip mit nem github tutorial verstanden hast, ist da sicher das wesentliche git-Zeug drin und darauf kommt's ja an.