[Bendug] Bored

[Tami Kinney]

> It is useful and easy, but, like Perl, it is very easy to be dirty and
ugly.  If you like PHP and are good at it, then power to you.
> I have seen awesome stuff done with PHP.  I love some stuff that has been
done in Perl. Still, I have no love for it.
> We're just on friendly terms.

I've seen some good stuff done with PHP, but I've never gotten around to
learning it.  I keep thinking I should, to increase my marketability, but I
just prefer ColdFusion.  Then again, some people sneer at CF because it's so
easy to learn that newbies can roll out a sucky app in no time without
having a clue what they're doing.  You can also do enterprise level
development with it, and the way it's structured saves all sorts of
development time, not to mention debugging and maintenance time.  I would
rather spend my time designing and building an efficient, effective
application than typing lines and lines of code.  Also CF runs faster than
ASP, although I'm sure there are ASP and .NET developers who can build zippy
apps, too.  Another set of languages I should learn, but I'm getting
prejudiced in my old age, I guess.  Perl is next on my list just because I
want to round out my non-web development skills, just in case I get an
opportunity to become a real software developer.  Not a good time to make
that a career goal, but it is what I most like to do.

> I see fine, and it takes me 4 or 5 times as long to do everything, but I
don't let it stop me.

Lol.  Why do you think I fret about taking even longer to do it in Braille
or with a screen reader.  I like to take all that extra time to make sure
everything is just right or to try something different just to see how it
works...  I do a lot of stuff off the clock when I'm programming for a
client, just so I can be as nitpicky as I like.  But I'll adjust, one way or
another.

> A guy I know in Eugene is visually impared and is part of the Debian
project (I think).  He has an Apple iBook that he holds up
> to his face really close to read email using mutt. I would be interested
to hear how you configure your machine and what
> programs you use in order to work on your computer.  When I worked at
Purdue, I would make various changes to the size
>and color of an interface to allow some of our students to work.  Sometimes
black or blue backgrounds with White text was much better.

Cool!  There seem to be a number of visually impaired programmers and
computer dudes, and it always gives me a thrill hearing about them.  Keeps
me from thinking I'm just not facing reality in wanting to do it, too.
Right now, I can still read more or less effectively with my top-of-the
line, high resolution LCD monitor.  In fact, Commission for the Blind bought
it so I could keep doing my business, and it's kept from needing them until
just recently.  Sometimes I enlarge stuff, especially web pages with teeny
weeny fonts on a low-contrast background.  Using the CRT at my new job (I'm
reading customer satisfaction survey scripts) was impossible, especially
since the scheme was as low contrast as it could be.  Now I've got 11 point
Verdana in black on white, and I can manage pretty well.  I do get
excessively tired as the shift wears on.  What I'm really doing with reading
is pattern matching, since I now have a lot of voids in my tiny bit of
remaining central vision.  When I design database GUIs in access or for the
Web, I go ahead and get colorful, but I make things at least 12 points and
use a screen font and make sure the contrast is high -- white text on a dark
background or black on a very light background.  If I have doubts, I'll bold
the font just to be on the safe side.

> We also had some programs that would read text out load.  That experience
has made me very aware of the need to
> follow ADA standards when building web pages.  I got very angry when a
coworker suggested it was unimportant.

When I was learning the ADA standards for web design, my own husband
grumbled about my spending all that time for a small minority, and blah
blah.  Being the saint I am, I didn't hit him over the head with the big
frying pan, but I sure fantasized.  Especially since he was adamant about
designing for perfect display in Netscape 4.x -- a smaller minority who
could get themselves a respectable browser for free!  And it takes much more
time!  There are also practice, market-related reasons to make pages
accessible, though I'm never sure if clients get that or if they're humoring
me.  Sadly, the same reasons apply to outdated browsers, so I continue to
mutter and cuss a lot while dealing with cross-browser compatibility.

> Wow!  I didn't know anyone was interested in our little snippets of Ruby!
I have tons of stuff I have written.  Most of it is
> very specific to a job I needed to do, but Paul and I have discussed
building a custom system for the BendUG page.
> It would be fantastic to have some other feedback.

It's clear you guys are far ahead of me, and I always love to see how people
who know deal with various programming issues or to do some tricky little
task.  It helps me see possibilities, and also keeps me going since I'm
doing self-study and can get into a funk.  Unix/Linux people seem to be more
creative, too, and more enthusiastic, which is cool.  And I would love being
in on building a custom system!  I wouldn't much more than a cheerleader for
the actual programming, but I could offer useful (and occasionally zany)
feedback for the conceptual part.

> I think that my friend, Joseph, mostly uses console application because he
can read them better.  At least for email.
> I'll write to him and get a list of things he recommends for high
visibility hacking on unix.

Thas would be great!  I'm getting pretty adjusted to this latest vision
loss, but also planning for the future and how I can adapt next time...  And
I had better get some client work done this morning so I can clear out those
projects and pop linux onto the wonder machine.  Backing the stupid thing up
is hard part.  Have I mentioned how much I hate Windows backup.  It just
pisses me off, for some reason.  It honestly expects me to feed in 129
diskettes becase it won't back up onto a CD, and if I have to back up to my
hard drive and copy it, I have to break the backup files down so they'll
fit...  Then next time I can't just do a quick incremental because I don't
remember which file has which stuff...  Or maybe I just make things too
complicated because I'm snarly.  Really, I should get a tape drive, but
never seem to do it when I can afford it.

Tami Kinney
tami at one-horse.com
541-318-1030


-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Howe [mailto:thowe at bendtel.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 10:21 AM
To: tami at one-horse.com
Cc: bendug at lists.bendtel.net
Subject: Re: [Bendug] Bored


On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 08:45:55 -0800
"Tami Kinney" <tami at one-horse.com> wrote:

> Ah, boredom.  No better inspiration for starting new projects.  I've 
> never been too impressed with php myself, though it might grow into a 
> truly robust programming language in a few years.

	

> Me, I'm still working on learning Java.  I finally have my brain more 
> or less wrapped around the OOP thing, but I'm still doing more reading 
> than programming.  I'm into the fun stuff now, getting a good view of 
> all the neat stuff you can do and how, then I can sit down and plan 
> out a baby program (bouncing balls or something), then write it and 
> spend a week or two figuring out where I went wrong...  I'm a big 
> believer in learning from my mistakes, so I have to make a lot of 
> them... I'm also studying Braille for real now (5 lines an hour.  Yay, 
> me.), so I have to alternate my study time. I know there are blind 
> programmers out there, but I haven't made contact with them yet to 
> find out how they do it or even how blind they are.  I'm getting an 
> unhappy feeling that it just takes them three or four times as long to 
> do everything.  Ah, well.  Might as well give it a shot, eh?

	I

> When I start to get lazy on my studies, I remember that I need to get 
> Java down so I can move onto Perl and Ruby so I can at least have an 
> intelligent discussion with you guys about what you're doing.  I'm 
> just familiar enough with Perl to sort of see what you've done in Ruby 
> if I really work at it.

	

--TimH