"I will learn it when I need it"! I've heard that phrase a lot over the years; it seems like a highly pragmatic attitude to foster when you're in an industry as fast-paced as software development. On some level it actually IS quite pragmatic, but on another level I am annoyed by the phrase. It has become a mantra for our whole industry which hasn't changed said industry for the better. The problem is this, in the guise of sounding like a wise and practical developer, people use it as an excuse to coast. There is too much stuff to know, it is necessary to be able to pick certain things up ...

Next picture shows the Top 20 programming languages in April 2011 from TIOBE. From the picture, we can find the most popular programming languages are the different representatives of programming language styles. And some of them are popular because the platforms which use this programming language is very popular.For example C#, because of Microsoft, this language is used in .Net platform. Many users are using this programming language.Also, Java, C and C+ are the top 3 languages in he world. They are the traditional popular languages.Source : picture is from TIOBE and CSDN...

I have decided to start playing around with the Zend Framework. I have a web host (of course) however sometimes when developing I find it is easier and faster to use a local web server, with all the bells and whistles. WAMP, LAMP (this link is ubuntu specific, but any linux distribution should have easy HowTo guide for installing the LAMP software stack), MAMP, all provide the basic environment for beginning web development, and some have nice little GUIs to help you configure and maintain your local web server.So for this tutorial I am going to show you how to add mul...

In a society where technology and the Internet have become incredibly prominent elements of our daily lives, being able to program is akin to having a super power. In fact, a programmer is able to not only easily interact with cutting edge technology, but also to take advantage of said technology to transform pure thoughts into something as tangible and useful as software.I would argue that there has never been a more exciting time for being able to program. While being a part of our industry back in the late seventies and early eighties must have been a very exciting time for programmers, I f...

I believe some of us may encounter some strange problems when we expect something normal to happen when we operate on our computer. On Windows 7, we may sometimes want to manage our service or applications by opening service manager.But somehow we may find that we cannot open it by clicking on Start->Right click on Computer->Manage.It may prompt some error message to tell us we cannot open the service manager. Then what to do? Here is a way to open it,goto Start->Run,then type "compmgmt.msc". It will open the Computer Management window.Hope you are good luck!...

I’ve recently realised something. The best place to write code isn’t in front of your computer, with your compiler, IDE and tools. The best place to write code is far, far away from any of these tools – somewhere where you can think properly. For a language with which you are fairly familiar, the mechanics of translating the program in your mind to a program that the compiler can compile (or the interpreter can interpret) is fairly easy – it’s coming up with that program in your mind which is hard.The other day I was on a train journey. I had my lap...

When it comes to designing and building websites, it never seems to happen fast enough.Given this fast pace, many small details that are eventually required to build the website are often left out of the design process. While these details might be minor, they are what take a website from nice to truly awesome.These details are often easy to miss because they don’t drive the overall look and feel of the website. The problem is that as your development team works through the design, it will be forced to design and create these elements for you anyway.You could adjust the production cycle...

In PHP, we can define our own functions which can accept optional number of arguments. In this kind of functions, the optional argument should be set with default value.Fox example, the next code example will illustrate this:<?php function func($name,$type=NULL) { echo "$name $type"; } func("Hello"); echo "<br />"; func("Hello","world"); echo "<br />";?>Here $type is an optional argument. It must be set with a default value either NULL or some other value. Quite simple.Right! In other programming languages, we can achieve similar effects. This is very convenient if we...