Facebook

Hello, everyone. I am presently reading about Facebook applications. I am curious about them because I use many of them. Some of the one's I have used impressed me, made me laugh, and got me to think that I should try making one of them. The problem is the languages they support for making their applications are all ones that I no experience in. I have signed up and registered a test application in the hopes that I will someday begin work on a Facebook project. Anyways, I have a long drive ahead of me. I have to go back to Des Moines, spent a wonderful Holiday Weekend at home. Next weekend I plan to go to Adventure Land Theme Park with my best friend, and girlfriend Diedra.

Thanks,
Matt

3-Day Weekend!!!!

This week was full of wonderful programming experiences. Even though times were difficult and frustrating I pulled through. I am still having problems with my program, but mostly cosmetic. The project lead wants every field in my forms to autohighlight when the user picks that field. Then if they click it again the cursor should be place were that click is. This is turning out to be more difficult than expected. I can only get the text to highlight when the field is tabbed to, and I am uncertain if that has anything to do with my code. My next issues is having a three letter abbreviation automatically be the start of a new row in a combo box. Because these three letters are never going to change. I can get them there and can mostly stop them from being deleted. But, their are still glitches. I plan to use vb express this weekend to find ways to fix these problems. Anyway, I am going to try and have a fun and safe weekend.

Matthew Cook

Programming is hell

Hello, everyone. Assuming that no one read this. I am everyone. Anyways, I didn't get a chance to post yesterday. My mind was kinda wrapped around a problem I have been having at work. I have been working with this DataGrid in vb 2008 and everything is working well. The I hit the escape key while editing a new row and find that I get an amazing amount of errors out of it. I spent most of last night researching this topic. I found that when using Row Validating, you have to set your conditions explicitly in order to have the escape key work properly. Yesterday, I kept on looking for ways to catch the delete key when it is pressed and found that to be a crazy amount of code. My philosophy is that you should look for the shortest and most general purpose code to complete a task. I figured out that the delete key null the entire row prior to entering row validating so all I had to do is make sure the row is null or notDirty and it would skip over my regular operations. Thus, saving me the trouble of writing insane amounts of code.

As for my quiz show database. That is being delayed a bit more, I figure with the 3 day weekend coming up I should have plenty of time to work on it. I am considering writing two versions of my quiz program. One in vb that is run like a regular program and one in asp that can be ran on a website. I figure this will push me a bit further in my summer goals. Which I am fully confident I can achieve.

Thanks,
Matt Cook

Wonderful Monday

Hello my friends,

I am sorry to have posted nothing this weekend but I decided it was time to take a mental vacation. I have been working long and tedious hours at work and have felt like I was getting less done than usual. So this weekend I played video games watched a few documentaries and really got back in touch with who I am. Last night I did continue work on my Questions database. I presently am working with two tables, one being for Questions, and one for Categories. I wanted to use a foreign key in the Questions table so I can easily just use an identifier number rather than typing out the category name for each question. I will be uploading the working database file tomorrow.

Thank You,
Matthew Cook

Awe, the weekend!

This was one of my hardest weeks of programming ever. It seemed like errors were starting to have their own errors, and things that worked perfectly days ago now were unstable and useless. I believe that at some point I must have gotten a little careless with what I was doing. I have learned so much this summer and I think I took a week long nap from learning. I am taking the weekend off from doing any major work on my computer and spending some time relaxing my mind. I will put up a few posts but I can't imagine programming anything until Monday. Programming is an art and you can't force art to happen you have to have some sort of inspiration. As for my personal project, I am continuing to create questions for the database and will have this available whenever possible. God bless you all and Thank You.

Matthew Cook

Red Ring of Death

Yes folks, I am one of the lucky Xbox owners who got the Error Code 74 problem with my Xbox. But, not to worry Microsoft says they will repair my console for free. Let's hope they follow up on this well. This got me thinking about how I program in my work life and hobbyist life. Looking for errors and glitches in my programs seems like a very tedious and time consuming task. Like hitting one button 100 times and holding the shift key, just to see if anything strange happens. However, the more time you spending testing your software, the more time you save yourself writing patches and fixes. I plan to enter testing sessions with a new found hope and try not to be so impatient when errors do occur. As for my personal project, I am busy getting the initial questions written and hope to have some same data available this weekend. As always God Bless You and happy coding.

Matthew Cook

Project Idea Made

Well, last night I decided that I would get a pen and paper and brainstorm on which of my ideas would be the best for me to program and I came to a decision. I will begin working on a Quiz Show games. I know this doesn't seem like the most impressive of projects to undertake, but I believe it can grow to something great. I intend to create a database which contains my questions, along with answers and various other pieces of information. I will get 100 questions written before I get to far into the coding phase of the project. I am hoping for creative input from my friends and family. Then I will start to design my various screens and finally begin melting this all into one stable piece of work. Intend for the first release to contain 200 questions and then the next release will have 300 with the possibility of having a audio voice over. I may just have myself, but I am also looking for a good candidate the will work cheaply. Well, maybe later I will post the first look at the Database, but until then God Bless you and happy coding.

Matthew Cook

VB 2008 Express

Tonight, I spent some time tinkering with VB2008 Express. I have to say that since I use VB Pro all day at work, I can confidently say that the Express edition is fully functional and worth my time. I was experimenting with creating a SQL database file. This would be useful for any future program I intend to make. I would like a to make a program that has the database contained in it RunTime folder. It will give the user quicker access to information. I do not intend to create network friendly applications in my spare time, because I am paid to do that during the day. Things are progressing nicely at work, and tomorrow I plan to be on the final stages of my current project. As for my personal projects, things are moving slow. I cannot find good ideas to start from. Every time I think I have an idea it becomes unworkable for what my overall goal is. I promise that I will reach a decision as to what I will create very shortly.

Thank You,
Matthew Cook

Happy Monday!

Hello my programming friend. Today was a very successful day at work. Had some difficulties with my combo box cells in datagridview again but managed to find quick solutions to these problems. I have learned over the past few weeks that the amount of code you write in a day is not a good measure of your productivity. What I believe is a better measure of productivity is how much code you are able to eliminate in a day without sacrificing stability or performance. I removed may duplicate entries in my program and was able to solve many bugs by simply organizing my methods and calls better.

As for my personal projects, I installed VB2005 express this evening. I have access to VB2008 professional at work, but I want to be able to distribute my programs legally at home. I am still at a crossroads of what kind of project I will begin to program. My issues are what will be the best representation of my skill as a programmer and what will keep me interested from start to finish. I have learned that it is hard to program when their is no promise of a pay day at the end.

Anyways, I will continue to research various ideas and begin work on a project very shortly. As for my domain website, I will be purchasing a website soon. I have some concerns about which company to use. Some of the unlimited offerings seem very tempting but offer little features. As with the limited space providers I get more important features.

Thank You,

Matthew Cook

Goals for the next few months

I am a firm believer that you should create goal for yourself, make them simple and reasonable. Then, you should go off and do your best to succeed. My goals are simple and to the point here.

1. I want to purchase a domain name website were I can distribute more of my programming projects and have this blog be a large part of the website.

2. I want to create a product(game, or otherwise) that I can distribute for some type of monetary gain. Either by selling this product or usage of advertising.

3. I want to get enough traffic to this website to keep it running indefinitely off of proceeds made through it's existence.

These goals seem simple enough, I give myself to the end of the summer to keep good on them. I will never edit this post and I will refer back to it from time to time.

Thank You,
Matthew Cook

The Hangover

This post is mostly unrelated to computer programming; however, tonight I went and saw "The Hangover" with my girlfriend Diedra. I honestly have to say that it was one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. Extremely well written and the best possible cast of actors. If I am to say one thing was wrong with the movie, I have to say that Heather Graham's part in the movie should have been bigger. She is a wonderful comedy actress and would have been well suited to have a much bigger role. Anyways, the movie was perfect in every way.

Since this is a computer programming blog I feel the need to include something in this post related to my computer programming. I had said that I may post some code tonight or an idea. Well, I am torn between two ideas. I play a lot quiz games, such as You Don't Know Jack and Are you smarter than a fifth grader. I am considering creating something like this as a commercial product. I feel that something like this could be a decent seller in the independent market. My second idea is to create a program that would be usable by my mother's work. She is a social worker and she handles a list of clients, their various details, and there hour sheets. She presently uses an Access database that is very inefficient. I would love to make something for her that would make her life a little easier at work.

I should have another post this evening, but if not Good Night and thank you.

Matt Cook

Happy Saturday

I didn't get a post in yesterday, and I feel bad about that. However, yesterday was a very successful day both professionally and personally. The combo box column problem has been solved, and was easier than I anticipated. When the day started yesterday, I was trying to manipulate the CurrentCellDirty event to act like SelectedIndexChanged for a combo box. It was working moderately well, but not what I wanted. My co-worker and I were discussing the code as we are working on the same projects and found that we could change a cells editing control by catching its editing control showing event. This has brought us further to completing are goal. On Monday, I plan to see if this type of trick can work all over the grid and if so, we plan to implement this for nearly every cell.

I will let you know how this goes in a couple of days.

Tonight I will attempt to post some code or at least an idea.

Thanks,
Matt Cook

DataGridViewComboBoxColumn

The name of this post says it all if you are experienced in working with VB. In my current project I have to work with a few of these and have been having some difficulties. My goal is to simulate as best as I can a normal combo box but have it in my grid view. So .SelectedIndexChanged and similar events can be handled. Somehow the people at Microsoft decide that they would no add any library events to this object, and then create something call DataGridViewComboboxEditingControl that you can't even use because you can't change the editing control on a library object. So basically, I am having a terrible time deciding which approach I should take this problem. On one hand, I can use DataGridViewCell events and reasonably simulate what I want to occur but not perfectly. Or, I can create my own object and create my own event handler for this object and get the precision I desire. The conundrum is which one will be the most cost effective. Creating a new object type of this magnitude would take more time than is alloted for my current task. Tomorrow will be Friday, and I always seem to find the best answers late in the day. So, I hope that by this time Friday this problem will be a distant memory. Sorry for not posting any code this evening. I may write something tomorrow, and most likely in Java. I am not saying the Java is better or specifically easier than C++, but I like knowing that whoever tries to run my program will be successful. C++ is just to damn picky! Over the weekend, I plan to spend time with my best friend and girlfriend Diedra. However, their will be more posts and more code as usual.

Thank You,
Matthew Cook

Objects Rule

As promised I wrote another program. I admit I had some trouble finding inspiration to write something because I spend all day at work looking at lines of code. That being said I decided to have some fun. This program is written in Java. I know I said I was thinking of writing some C++ tonight but I really didn't want to.

Anyway, I am a huge fan of using the power behind creating your own objects. You can create methods that will greatly reduce the code you place in your main program and you can made rapid changes to a large scale application if you have the kind of control you have when making your own objects.

Then files included are myTasks.java and myTasksTester.java, please compile them both and see what objects are such a fun and powerful thing.

Thank You,

Matthew Cook

Random Programming Thoughts

I have often hated using an IDE(Integrated Development Environment) when writing code for any language. The reason I say this is that I don't like the way that most IDE's will try to auto format your code. Either indenting too much after a method header or an IF statement. Then when you delete that IF statement, the IDE decides to either remove it's formatting or simply lock it. I often write code one way first "Rough Draft", then find where I can fix errors and shorten code "Working Draft", and finally I am ready to release the code when I have eliminated redundancies and shortened my code as best as time allows "Release Draft". An IDE will often suggest many different methods and similar Key Words when you begin typing. I have to admit occasionally this becomes a life-saver. Especially when you need to find a method on an object you haven't used before and you don't have much time. However, I believe solid programming fundamentals are created when you invest time into the different objects you use and their inherited methods. It will lead to easier coding and a better understanding of a language. I will now step off my soap box. Thank you for listening again and I wish you happy coding. Tomorrow, I will be posting another problem and solution. I plan to create a c++ program, but I haven't thought of what it will do just yet.

Thank You,
Matthew Cook

As promised a litte code

Let's imagine you want to solve a problem that many people face. Maybe once a week or once in lifetime. What are my lucky number? You could spend hours trying to find some insane method of choosing numbers to circle in your lottery drawing. Or, you can create a program that will randomly give you numbers. No human intuition or imbalance, just clean, simple numbers. Check out the code by clicking here. As you will see this is a Java .class file that you can compile and run on your own computer.

Off to work...

It's early in the morning and I am getting ready to go to work. I am presently working on a screen in VB where the user will be able to look at invoices and add items to existing or new invoices. I wish I could give more detail than that but my employer deserves it's privacy. I really enjoy VB programming. Mostly because this is my first programming experience where I get paid, but also I find that VB is plainly simpler and easier to use than most other languages. Well, it's off to work for me. Tonight, I plan to work through a simple problem to solution approach with a program.

Thank You,

Matthew Cook

Java, C++, VB which one

In today's programming world. Many argue that certain languages are better than others. Saying things like "General Purpose", "Universal Platform", and "Rapid Development". These are all nonsense terms. You will hear them from you boss when you are a staff programmer, or from some idiot professor. The truth is that no one programming language is king of all. If that were true then nearly every company would use it.

I have found a proper measure of a programming language based on three important factors. Purpose, Time, and Skill. Let say you need a program to calculate interest on all the loans your bank presently have issued. This is not a robust task in any way. A simple text-based program can read in your data, and give you the calculations you seek. Then you can apply this data to whatever medium you wish. When the purpose is simple, time is unimportant, and skill of your programmers is low. Java is the clear winner. You can create very stable and powerful applications with ease in a language that looks out for you in every way. A program made in Java can be used on any machine running the Java Virtual Machine.

Let's say you need a program to calculate measurement of 3D objects and track their trajectories. This goes beyond programming and adds an understanding of physics and calculus. Java could do this for you, but it would be more code and runtime than your company would be willing to spend on. I would suggest C++, the reason is clear. You have very complex calculations to compute and need a language that allows for more flexibility. With more flexibility comes consequences. C++ is powerful and will allow you to write code that can potential harm your computer and file-system. Some argue that modern operating systems prevent C++ catastrophes, but as a experienced C++ programmer I know that anything is possible. So when do you choose C++? When the purpose is to create something powerful, when you need it to run at exceptional speed, and when you have developers capable of handling a feature rich language.

Lastly, VB.NET. There are some programming enthusiast that claim VB.NET is a waste of time. I have heard some say "If you spend any time programing in VB.NET you have wasted time you could be programming in C# or C++." I disagree strongly! VB.NET is a wonderful language. Which allows for begginer to professional programmers a way to create fast and beatiful software. A syntax that will feel vary similar to c or java, but with added help. I would use VB to create a program that can allow for fast database editing, and management of data.


Thank You for hearing me out. I know that my opinoins may seem odd, and some other programmers may say I don't know what I am talking about. I respond by saying that I probably don't know what I am talking about. So please tell me where I am wrong and I will be happy to learn.

Matt

The first Post

Hello World! If you are a computer programer, you will understand why the first text in my blog is "Hello World". Secondly, the title for my blog is very simple. It is a play on words with System.out.println() in Java programming. This was my first language and I use it as a reference point for all of my programming ventures. I believe that System.out.Matt represents me by saying that I am a part of the Standard Package. You need not import me, or inherit me. I am simply here. Thank You very much for your time and I hope you will enjoy my future posts here. I would add that if you wish to post a question to me via my blog or by e-mailing me at Mattjcook07@yahoo.com. I will be happy to tackle it, provided that you show me some proof that you have made an effort and it is not an attempt to get your homework done the easy way.