The most recent example was GNU Make. When I first started reading the Makefile generated by gclient I got stuck. The Makefile dumps almost 30MB of instructions to compile the project and some lines of code were a complete mystery to me.

The usual approach. Order a used (if possible) book from Amazon. Managing Projects with GNU Make (Nutshell Handbooks) by Robert Mecklenburg is a really good book. I just skipped the Java chapter.

I kept switching between reading the book and Chromium’s Makefile. Being confronted by a real (and big) working example of a Makefile pushed me harder to go through the entire book.

I’ve been writing quite a few Makefiles since then. Even for situations were GNU Make is not appropriate. After all, when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail.

I first started reading Restful Web Services by Leonard Richardson & Sam Ruby one year ago. April 2009. I know that because of the Amazon receipt.

I read the first chapters and wondered why I didn’t learn about Restful Web Services before. Simplicity is the key. Suddenly all XML-RPC code that I wrote in the past started to smell really bad.

The problem is that after the first chapters I probably got bored or the book could have been shorter. In any case, I just finished reading it this past April. A year later! It is a good book though, even if you just read the first few chapters.

After a lot of experimentation I finally have one mail server up and running with Postfix and Dovecot.

Besides the official documentation I usually try to read at least one book about the tools I’m working with. Safari led me to Postfix: The Definitive Guide by Kyle D. Dent. The book gives a good overview on how Postfix works and goes through several different configurations that you may be interested in implementing. The only problem is that the book is outdated (December 2003) – that’s last decade!

Everything seems to be running ok but running and maintaining a mail server is a lot of work. There are just so many details and configurations that can go wrong. Performance, Security, Authentication, Disk space, Spam, Anti-viruses… The list is huge. I’m looking forward to meeting the next sys admin to join our team.

I’m working on a project that offers domains and email accounts to the final client so it’s been a good experience to understand how mail and dns servers work. We have a lot work ahead!

I had to move one of the web services we offer in my regular job to its own server. It was a good change, we moved the entire app from a CentOS/cPanel box hosted on the Planet to an instance running Ubuntu on AWS.

CPanel is a really good product and saves you a lot of time but it is a pain in the butt if you are serving more than shared hosting accounts. If you have ever tried to automate tasks that handle virtual domains, email accounts and DNS entries you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, I must admit that I’m having a blast wearing a sysadmin hat during part of my day. I’m learning a lot. I have this great excuse to read some books that were on my TO READ list for a long time.

One of these books is Pro DNS and Bind by Ron Aitchison. I have had this book on my desk for months but I finally finished reading it. The book gave me a nice introduction to DNS servers, resolvers, zone files, resource records and diagnostic tools. Highly recommended.

However, I have one more motivation to keep writing. Besides my beloved wife who has the burden of proof reading my posts I have a reader. Yes, that is right. One reader. Hallo Rafa! Thanks for all the support buddy.

Now, back to the topic of this post. I was checking the draft list and noticed that I didn’t add Masters of Doom to the Books category on this blog. I read this book many years ago but ended up reading it again this past December. Great source of inspiration.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Masters of Doom is about John Carmack, John Romero, Id Software, Commander Keen, Wolfeinstein, Doom…

If you didn’t read it just do yourself a favor and order a copy of it!

The cleanup included my bookshelf. My mission was to dispose of as many books as possible. Boy, books are heavy to carry and physics does not apply when it is part of your luggage.

While running through the titles I started to compare dates of purchase against subjects. I have had this habit since I was a teen, every time I buy a book I sign and date it.

Anyway, my small library was another lead to an obvious issue: my quest to become a programmer is a mess.

Here’s one good example. I wanted to code games when I was a teen. After some research I concluded that C++ and DirectX were the right tools for the job. I decided to start with C++ and ordered “C++ How to Program” by Deitel. Back then, a small number of web pages would advise: “You have to learn C”. My mind discarded that advice as fast as I could read it. Why would I learn C? Isn’t C++ not only C but PLUS PLUS! It is the future. Yeah, I know you are laughing at me.

I read and tried all the examples from “C++ How to Program” before reading or writing any line of pure C code and felt ready to dive into some DirectX books and code the best tic-tac-toe ever!

Turns out my ambitious plan needed a detour. You have to go through some Windows programming before you can dive into DirectX (I don’t know how it works now a days). Gosh, 70 lines of C code just to print Hello World in the Win32 API world.

I can’t just copy and paste code so I ordered “Programming Windows” by Petzold to become familiar with Windows programming. BTW, Programming Windows is a great book — and I found a minor mistake in the text! (Erratum #5).

I read the book, tried the examples and the fact is: Win32 API is C Code.

Because of that I finally ordered the classic “The C programming language” book to fill this awful gap in my skill set. Comparing the dates of purchase I realized that I bought the C book 2 years after the C++ one. Sad.

I now remember that after going back and forth I finally achieved my goal. The best tic-tac-toe game ever written did compile and run without crashing. The euphoria lasted for almost 5 seconds!

Before writing my first line of code I was already humble and comfortable with the idea that it takes a lifetime to be a great developer. BUT, it took me a long time to have a better overview of the skills set you need to build in order to be a software developer.

It’s a matter of proper guidance.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a CS degree or guru souls willing to show you the way.

Evaluating how you you learn is key to excel and achieve mastery in any form of art. Yes, I’m including software in the art category.

A good example to follow are musicians as they have in their curriculum a solid base on the matter. They learn not only how to play but how to study and practice. They have method.

Aprenticeship Patterns is a good book and the subject is fascinating. Probably most of the patterns are already part of your daily schedule, but reading the book is still a good opportunity to reflect on the process to hone in on your skills.

I just finished reading one more book from the O’Reilly learning series. Learning MySQL by Seyed M.M. (Saied) Tahaghoghi and Hugh Williams.

I picked this book up for two reasons:

1) I had never read an entire MySQL book until now and there is just no excuse for that.

2) It is easy to read and digest. Productive leisure.

I think I’m now ready for an advanced book on the topic

]]> http://daniberg.com/home/2009/10/learning-mysql/feed/ 0 http://daniberg.com/home/2009/10/writing-gnu-emacs-extensions/ http://daniberg.com/home/2009/10/writing-gnu-emacs-extensions/#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:56:04 +0000 Dani Berg http://daniberg.com/home/?p=488 I’m not an Emacs Lisp programmer. In the best case scenario a wanna-be Emacs Lisp hacker. A few months ago I decided to have an introduction to this world full of parenthesis to solve a few problems I was having with Emacs default settings.

When I first started using Emacs I had a hard time dealing with tabs and spaces. Thanks jwz. In my day job tabs are the norm but I like my personal toy projects to have spaces instead. Problem solved. Now each project has its own preferences in my .emacs file. Life is great.

I went to the public library here in Sunnyvale and while skimming through computer titles I found Writing GNU Emacs Extensions by Bob Glickstein. Now, I have a few books to finish reading and of course, tons of code to write/read/edit, but I couldn’t resist and borrowed the book.

The book was printed in 1997 and mainly refers to Emacs version 19.34 but so far the concepts still apply (I’m running version 23).

I think the next step is to learn some form of Lisp…

The text form is pretty much like Microserfs, an epistolary novel according to Wikipedia. JPod has one different thing though, a subtle dark humour. People are killed but the narrative gives you the impression that the characters don’t take it as a big deal! Weird and funny!

There is also a TV show based on the novel. CBC Television from Canada produced 13 episodes and then canceled the show. Too bad. At least the episodes are available on DVD. Oh well, now I have to watch it…

Note on Nov/27/2009

… and I did. I must say that the first episodes are not great but by the end of the season you are wondering why the show was canceled. Can we have season 2? Can we have Arrested Development back? Please?!

One of the first languages I tried some years ago was Python. I really like the language but never had a proper introduction to it until now.

I just finished reading Learning Python by Mark Lutz. It’s a really good book especially if you are learning your first language. If it’s not the case the text can sometimes be too repetitive.

Anyhow, to make better use of my new and improved Python skills I devoted a few hours at night to understand what the heck is going on when I setup and sync Chromium‘ s source code.

I can finally rest when I type

gclient config http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src
gclient sync

The learning curve is demanding though. It is not just a matter of learning a new language like C# and the .NET platform. There are also tools like IIS, SQL Server and Visual Studio. Took me a while to print “Hello World” in the browser.

I did add 2 books to my Safari account at O’Reilly. Learning C# 3.0 by Jesse Liberty and Brian MacDonald and Programming ASP.NET 3.5 by Jesse Liberty, Dan Maharry and Dan Hurwitz.

The ASP.NET book was a good choice for me. It’s hands on and the examples are really easy to follow. Nice start.

Learning C# is a great book only if you are learning your first language. I skimmed through most of the chapters to get the information I was interested in. I’ll try Programming C# next week.

It is a good source of information if you are trying to improve or understand all the processes and overhead demanded by software development. Recommended even if the project you are engaged is not free/open source.

The text mentions, for example, where the word buffer comes from:

The word `buffer’, by the way, comes from the meaning of the word as a cushion that deadens the force of a collision. In early computers, a buffer cushioned the interaction between files and the computer’s central processing unit. The drums or tapes that held a file and the central processing unit were pieces of equipment that were very different from each other, working at their own speeds, in spurts. The buffer made it possible for them to work together effectively. Eventually, the buffer grew from being an intermediary, a temporary holding place, to being the place where work is done.

The narrative is in the form of diary entries which guides you into a very personal and introspective reading. The plot starts in Redmond, Washington then moves to the Silicon Valley. This was really attractive for me since I’m now living in California. It was great to read about the cities, places and roads across the valley and be there the next day.

Can’t wait to order more books from Coupland!

Well, I must admit that it was not 100% fun. First my flight was canceled and I had to make a connection in France. Then they lost my luggage. Due to almost 8 hours delay I missed the chance to visit Switzerland. Aff. At least I had a book with me. For good or bad I improved my skills on security. PHP Pro Security is good reading by the way. Since I mentioned a book I can also recommend Beginning Linux programming although I’m still reading it.

Now! I didn’t know how tired I was until now. I’m feeling that batteries are recharged and don’t need to sleep for a long period. And that’s great

‘CAUSE I’ll will put on hold the AR development.

BUT I have a new side project with a great webdesigner.

Details about Vaporware some other day.

The main reason I’ll put on hold the AR project is time. I just don’t have enough free time for it now. Other than that it’s PHP code. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a PHP issue. The problem is that my “official” job demands most of my day into PHP. You know, nothing like a different project/language to keep you fresh and learn new stuff. Since the AR is not an online project no one will be hurt if I bury it into fridge for some time. Gesundheit.

Note on Mar/22/2009: I’m not maintaining this section anymore.