Hey guys,

Have a general "What programming should I learn?" question.

I have been getting into web stuff. Using Wordpress last few months and now using Dreamweaver for a site I'm managing.

My HTML/CSS are alright, good enough to get by. My PHP/Javascript are mostly nonexistent and doing anything but basic editing of previous files is beyond me.

My goals are to be able to read javascript/php and to be able to code calculators for webpages (I am going to grad school for environmental science and feel this skill would be valuable.) NOTE: I don't know what language you would code a webpage calculator but I'm guessing JS or PHP works.

Given all that, I have a little bit of free time this summer to reach my goals above before school starts.. Should I try courses like Udacity 101? I am unclear how much learning Python would help me. Thanks.

Python is good for anything related to any science. I dunno what exactly environmental science is but I know Python is used a ton for Biology modeling (i.e. would that species go extinct if X,Y,Z changes in it's habitat) and I'd guess environmental science uses somewhat similar models.
For the web stuff just pick up Django and you should be set.

**** PHP and week long 2p2 downtimes imo

enviro science is pretty broad -- just like the word environment is pretty broad and contains biology, geology, etc etc. It definitely involves lots of math (calc/stats) and models.

sounds like knowing some python could be useful.. the 101 course on udacity seems pretty good for a newb like me. Thanks.

For js i've been using codecademy.com, it's pretty decent software and it handles your progress in a nice way. It has some python tutorials that you can try in beta at the minute but they're not tracked at this point.

The whole thing is a nice experience so try it out.

FourFins, you can also use python to write webapps with, for example, django, which is basically the ruby on rails for the python world. don't have much personal experience with it, but i'd feel pretty safe betting it's going to be a better developer experience than anything you'll find in php

You can't insert a column anywhere except for the end, and you can't reorder columns. You can create a new table, move the data from the old table into the new table, drop the old table, and finally rename the new table to the name of the old table you just dropped.

I'll also recommend that you take a glance at scipy/numpy, and remember it exists if you decide you like the language.

if you want to "be able to read javascript/php", there's no real substitute for learning the basics of them. or I suppose any "C like" language. then you read their structure OK, and google / look up any unfamiliar function names

Yeah pretty much the reason I recomended Python over Ruby

+1. Python is the defacto scripting/programming language in the sciences these days. Julia looks like it could become pretty sweet though (1 based array indexes tho )

Designed the logo for my pkrsess site. As you can see, I am not much of a designer...



Edit: You can see it on the home page here: https://pkrsess.com

I really hope I'm not going to offend you but that logo just doesn't go with the site imo

Also btw, might be a good idea to buy other domains such as pokersess.com, pkrsession.com (available)

No offense taken I am aware that I am not designer.

Thanks for the tips about the domains, probably a good idea to snap those up. Also going to look at getting a professional logo made... im sure I have seen sites in the past that will do a pretty decent one around the $50-$100 mark.

Edit: I am planning to make the site 'official' at the start of next week, so probably going to have to stick with the current logo through launch, kinda tempted by the idea to run a competition on the site for a new logo if it gets any traction.

Wooster,

You probably know about this already, but you should also have a look at the "my holdemmanger" online site. It is the closest thing to your product that I know of -- has session support, replayer support, notes support and some other stuff.

Ye, they have similar features but I the page isnt very free-flowing... and you cant really (to my knowledge) view an entire session and comment on it. Also, you have to have an account to submit a session... im hoping that the ability to submit sessions anonymously will draw a lot of people to the site.

MySQL has the AFTER command, I'd be surprised if DDL/SQL didn't have similar.

I want to change my first sentence to just "you can't reorder columns once they already exist". Good call on after, haven't used that in a long time, and forgot about it.

AFTER works with both ADD COLUMN and MODIFY COLUMN (so yes you can reorder after a column already exists).

That logo is horrible (and yet I couldn't even produce something of that quality haha). Just go to one of these "design me a logo" sites and you should get a good one for 50$. Basically you describe what you want, everyone who wants your money uploads samples and you pick the one you like most+pay.

Any suggestions on a reputable site... google spits out a gazillion different ones...

99designs seems like the best to me, and you don't have to pay anything if you don't like any of them iirc

Yeah I've heard good things about 99designs as well
Edit: Seems like it's 300$ for a logo, pretty sure I've seen similar sites with cheaper deals...there's also some "leftovoer logos" sites that basically buy up losing entries and refit them to other needs. Doubt the "pokersite" marketplace is that big though but it's usually a good deal for your typical dentist site.

Looks like they have a few poker logos (http://99designs.ca/logo-design/stor...q=poker&page=1) but not sure any of them are that good.

A decent logo is super important tho so dont mind spending a bit of cash on it. $100 is probably going to be my upper limit.

Custom design starts at $300 which is going to be too much. Might have to look at purchasing one of their stock options.

I bet yoiu could also ask one of the guys that design the cardmods here on 2p2 to do a logo for you for 50-100$. They sell their mods for less and already have a bunch of stock poker design stuff that they can mix and match.

Basically if you can live with a mashup of poker symbols or whatnot it should be very little work for them.

Yeah, I was gonna suggest this yesterday but got sidetracked - have a look in the mod threads in the Software forum and try PMing some of the designers to see what they say.

Juk