When writing programs, it’s often necessary to perform repeating operations on collections of items such as customer orders or invoices. Often, you can just iterate through the collection or count the items to determine how many times to perform the operation. When working with a hierarchy of items such as a directory structure where you have…
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Using Visual Studio to Manage Your Data
(This article was updated in August 2018 for use with Visual Studio 2017.) Moving Beyond Microsoft Access I’ve written a lot about Microsoft Access over the years and still believe it’s a great training ground for people who want to learn to design database applications. Its user-friendly interface provides an easy learning curve and introduction…
Getting Started in Software Development: Part IV – Long Term Strategy
In the last chapter, I talked about some of the current options when it comes to getting started in the programming field. I mentioned several development tools that you can get familiar with to decide what path you want to take as a software developer but getting started is only half the battle. As I…
Getting Started in Software Development: Part III – Programming Technologies
So far, I’ve given you some general ideas of what it takes to start and maintain a career in software development but you’re probably still wanting some direction as to the actual first steps of learning how to program. In this chapter, I’ll give you a sampling of the options available. Pay close attention to…
Getting Started in Software Development: Part II – Finding a Career
You’ve probably heard people talk about how we’re living in the Information Age with an emphasis on how much information there is to process from all different directions. This is certainly true and it can be a challenge for the average person, especially if they were born even a few decades ago before there was…
Getting Started in Software Development: Part I – More than Writing Code
Ask a lot of people about the requirements to be a computer programmer or software developer and they’ll probably start talking about computer science degrees and years of formal training. Those things don’t hurt but they’re not strictly necessary, either. I personally do not have a degree aside from the accounting diploma I earned from a…
What is JavaScript?
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Should I become a computer programmer?
So, I was glancing at Reddit first thing this morning and saw the following question …
I’m exploring the possibility of being a programmer, wondering what there is to it, and why you enjoy your job.
A very articulate high-school student was thinking about career choices and wanted to know what being a computer programmer was about and if he should explore it. Always wanting to encourage potential programmers, I offered my answer …
On software design …
In my upcoming book, Your First Guide to Database Design, my goal is to provide a clear guide for users at all levels of experience on how to organize their data into an efficient database, regardless of whether they’re using a desktop database like Microsoft Access or a network software such as MySQL. The first chapter…
New Article: Surviving the Programming Interview
While preparing for a recent interview with a local company, I was going through my list of questions to ask the interviewer and suddenly realized it would make a good article for the site: Surviving the Programming Interview: Responding to “Do you have any questions for us?” Although this is primarily written for programmers and…