Top 3 Contest Winners experience Sharing

Could winners share your experience to us?
How you program? How you learn a programming language from the nearly begginning to your status right now? Is there any advice on newbies?

Yes, I had registered already. My name is Edmund, from Hong Kong. I am a newbie and hope to learn much faster so I consider to join the coming contest. Hope we all can gain benefits from contests.

Nice to meet you all. :]

Hmmm, i dont consider myself a programming expert, just average to good. What is your level of programming in general and php especially?

If you are just starting, php is a very easy languange to learn but this has it's drawback. You will familiarize yourself with a programming style that is not considered good on almost any other languange (ex. not declaring variables at the start of the program, not defining their type etc). So i would suggest you to begin with another languange first and then start programming in PHP and think you are in heaven :-)

I always considered pascal to be the best languange for someone willing to start programming. You can also start with c++ which is a bit more difficult but is more widely respected as the programming standard. Of course what you should have in mind is that you can learn programming with any languange, you just have to focus on the underlying elements of programming.

Saying elements i consider : data structures, control structures and algorithms. Some examples :

Data structures : variables, arrays, objects, lists, stacks etc. Ask yorrself when and why you should use the X and not the Y data structure.

Control structures : ifs and loops. Same here.

Algorithms : You must gain the ability to identify problems and plan the steps required to solve them. After this has been done, you can use the data and control structures you have learned to actually code the program. There is almost always, more than one way to code it and this is why programming is considered art by some.

Now when you decide what languange you want to learn dont bother with tutorials. Do yourself a favour, buy a good book and ...



To find a good book, do a search on www.amazon.com and read ratings and user comments about them.

Now when you have familiarize yourself with the elements of programming you can jump in any languange you please. You just have to learn the syntax and grammar of that languange, not to reinvent the wheel.

Oh and welcome, hope to see you in a future contest.

Sorry for my poor English.

Thanks fractalbit. I had learn java about half year and know php do not need to declare variables. I set my server to report E_ALL and global_register off.

At the beginning start of php programming, I can already code the coming contest, based on the 6 months experience.

The coming contest, I can read and practice to achieve my goal. Of course, my goal is not only (1)learn php part by part and (2) to boost the process by submitting a functional script within a time limit, but also (3) avoid my enthusiasm destory by coding independent aimless scripts
(I need this contest to make all aimless scripts to become useful.)

No matter how the result it is, I enjoy the process. I wodener I can submit the code. hehe
(with some luck, hope I may not be the worst)

Q: How do I get to Carnegy Hall?
A: Practice...

I started programming about 20 years ago on a ZX80. Mainly BASIC, later PASCAL and even some assembly.
Even now I notice that I program in a complete different way than a year ago.
What makes a good programmer is not the knowledge of a specific language, I only started with PHP 3 months ago, but the feel for logic, constructs and algorithms (an interest in math is always helfull).
Specific syntax can always be looked up, but good programming is an art that takes a long time to master.

I usually start by looking at examples and trying to understand them. Secondly I start by thinking how I would do it.
Patience and a drive for perfection make the picture complete; I usually rewrite my programs 10 times over before I'm almost satisfied (but never reaching ultimate perfection).

Contests are very good for developping your skills (and driving you nearly mad), because in the end you will have plenty of comparison material to learn from.

PHP is an easy language to learn - plenty of documentation and (bad) examples can be found; however I would not advice anybody to start with it. Before starting with any serverside language I always advice people to master HTML and clientside scripting first. This will give you a good feeling later for the client-server concept; you can create a beautiful program in PHP, but when it produces sloppy HTML it's worth nothing. Also you shouldn't want to do everything just using PHP, some things can better be left over to the client (such as dynamic navigation elements, initial validation of forms, simple calculations etcetera).

Maybe javascript is also a good option for starting to learn programming.

I'm a self-made coder, and I'm programming games since 1986.
I first started with Basic, then ASM (transition was tough, because there was no documentation at this time), then C, C++, HTML, Javascript, .NET and finally PHP (I don't like too much .NET, since it's heavily based on Basic, on the contrary of PHP and Javascript which are based on C, but that's a matter of taste).

Learning a language is like speaking a foreign language: you start with very little vocabulary and you lose your accent after a lot of practice !

IMHO, if you want to learn a new language, first, learn a subset of it and then practice to use more and more functions. The aim is to know all functions, even though you use around 10% of them.

Personally, I started PHP programming 5 months ago, after having understood HTML and done some Javascript coding. In general, I better learn by analyzing examples, but you may be better by reading documentations (I'm not very good in this domain).

For the books, there are some sites which contain good online books, but PHP has already a terrific documentation, compared to HTML or JavaScript.

Working on contests is much more fun than trying to write some SQL based program, but you don't exactly learn the same things: in standard coding, you have to try to solve a lot of different problems, but most are easy (you have to concentrate on efficient data structures and future extensions), and in contests, you have to solve only one hard problem (you have to concentrate on processing time).

I discovered that there are some coding levels ! Every time you pass one level, you're 2 times better at coding than before. These levels can be achieved by a deeper and deeper understanding of computers and languages, and a lot of programming !

Finally, I have to say that I was once a demo coder on Atari ST, and Codewalkers contest is one of the places where we have the same kind of 'spirit' (competition, exchanging ideas and fairplay).

JC

Hmmm, it seems that we are many around here who just use PHP to enter the contests. At least the ones that usually get the best places. And me ;-)

Though I learned PHP before, cause I found it interesting for web development. Only that I don't do web development right now!

Can I speak a little about me, too? I won Scrabble, so I suppose so... prepare for the ole bore gatopeigh life... ;-)

I started programming at 12 (1987), when I got a MSX. BASIC, ASM, bytecode, no books at all... The typical 'buggy-catch the-apples and jump-over-baddies' was the oldest game I did. Neat childhood.

I programmed some demos, also, in assembler, with my deared 20MHz. 80286 machine. Back in that times I hadn't connection with other programmers, so I didn't enjoy the demo scene but as an espectator.

Today I think I have programmed in 90% of main languages, from BASIC to LISP, from machine bytecode to JAVA (not bytecode ;-). My favourite is C. The one I can't get the grasp is PERL. The funniest is PHP, thanks to this contest.

Today, at work, my best programming efforts are focused on a DragonBall VZ running uClinux. The same cute processor you can find within most modern Palm handhelds. 60 times slower than my workstation. That's where my speed optimization skills have their place.

I'm with crisp about the rewrite of programs, I too rewrite them a lot. But I think perfection can sometimes be achieved, in a sense of "adequacy to task" when there is a well-defined task (as 'winning the contest'! ;-)

I find 'elegance' important in code, as well as clearness. That last I don't usually do on my PHP Contest entries, at least to the extent that I would like.

At work, my colleages say "your code speaks", and I am proud of it.

My tip for programming (and life) would be: "Do have fun with it." I think this has something to do with self-improvement.

The main thing is research... most of the contests posted so far have had basis in game theory and mathmatical approaches to a solution....(i won the google parser contest, not too much math just alot of string operations) google is your best friend for finding the right answer. Also a programmer that writes more code than (s)he reads isnt that good of a programmer.