Help me with my new website!

[c172]

OK, so it does work for me now. I'd say the only glaring thing for me is that the rollover pop-ups are the same colors (white text on black) as the items in the column that they pertain to, making it kind of hard to see. (sorry, I'm not a programmer. I don't know the lingo. And also sorry if this has been addressed. I'm kind of rushing out the door).

[LastPoet]

When I was learning C++ back in the day, I never got to threaded programming.  The most I did were programs that highlighted the usage of various, simple data structures (linked lists, stacks, queues, that sort  of thing).

So, honestly (no snark), thanks for pointing that out.

Question: I keep seeing people refer to libraries like Boost for everything from better/safer memory management to string helper functions.  Is there a go-to library?  Or are they all more or less equal with their own pros and cons?

When I design a program, I originally abstract from using anything more than the language own primitives. Let us say I have a chess game, I would code the board, code different piece habilities, allowed moves etc, then depend on a GUI class of my own, abstracted, so that display can be coded as the OS is concerned. Console, SDL, Allegro etc are much cross plattform and would do a good job in making a chess game, but the art is in the implementation.

For the most part, people using Boost with C++ would be better off using Java. Java already has the framework to memory management, strings (heh, std:tring is a template class, so if you want to do better, derive from it).

The only reason I hang to C++ is for its native run from C and control precisely my memory usage. Yeah, I am from the time personal computers had lower ram than the cheapest of cell phones today. Most compilers will even optimise code on their own. I like to control my code.

It really depends what are the aims. I am making a tool to help players analise mafia games. I will first define what those tools are, then worry about the display. (usint console at the moment, as its simplier to test for bugs).

[KevinM1]

It's actually quite impressive, It's rare to see a site all done by hand.

I cheated and used a website builder.

I tip my hat to you.

*recoils and hisses*

[bennyboy]

A website builder is a good way to guarantee that nothing cool you have in mind will be easy to add.

[KevinM1]

A website builder is a good way to guarantee that nothing cool you have in mind will be easy to add.

Or possible to add.

[bennyboy]

A website builder is a good way to guarantee that nothing cool you have in mind will be easy to add.

Or possible to add.

My approach to web design.

1.  Figure out what I want to do, for example: "Add google map with markers to my site."
2.  Search google for it.
3.  Choose from one of a dozen forums or developer sites that show how to do it, then tinker for an hour to see what other cool things I can do with it.
4.  Go back to #1.


Designer approach to web design:


1.  Figure out what I want to do.
2.  Search designer's homepage to discover it's not mentioned.
3.  Search designer's forums to find where someone else asked how to do it.
4.  Read the inevitable "This feature is not currently supported by Designer X, but we'll add it soon" message written in March 2014 and closed 10 days later with no update.
5.  Don't do the thing I want to do.
6.  Go back to #1.
7. After doing this about five times, stab steak knives into my eyes to lessen the pain.

[KevinM1]

Yup. And that's one of the many reasons I don't even touch software like WordPress, let alone use WYSIWYG tools .

"It's free! And you can simply plug in themes and other functionality!"

Yes, but in my experience, its one-size-fits-most design philosophy actually fits none. I've never met a client that was happy with stock WordPress with unmodified plugins and theme. They always want something - sometimes something simple, sometimes something complex - that can't be found in a plugin. And WordPress is an absolute pile of shit under the hood, a throwback to late 90s/early 2000s web design with unnecessary global variables/magic values/tight coupling everywhere, and The Loop™ which sloppily merges back end logic with display logic.

So, I wind up fighting against a really shitty piece of software in order to get anything done, which takes me twice as long.

[LastPoet]

Yup.  And that's one of the many reasons I don't even touch software like WordPress, let alone use WYSIWYG tools .

"It's free!  And you can simply plug in themes and other functionality!"

Yes, but in my experience, its one-size-fits-most design philosophy actually fits none.  I've never met a client that was happy with stock WordPress with unmodified plugins and theme.  They always want something - sometimes something simple, sometimes something complex - that can't be found in a plugin.  And WordPress is an absolute pile of shit under the hood, a throwback to late 90s/early 2000s web design with unnecessary global variables/magic values/tight coupling everywhere, and The Loop™ which sloppily merges back end logic with display logic.

So, I wind up fighting against a really shitty piece of software in order to get anything done, which takes me twice as long.

I know C/C++ isn't used for webdesign, but perhaps such a tool should be developed. A tool that enabled you to do high level design, but also allowed to get to the micromanagement.

I hear people complaining about how hard pointers are, and segfaults are a thing, but direct access to memory by location alows for neat tricks. It adds much more customization.

[KevinM1]

Yup.  And that's one of the many reasons I don't even touch software like WordPress, let alone use WYSIWYG tools .

"It's free!  And you can simply plug in themes and other functionality!"

Yes, but in my experience, its one-size-fits-most design philosophy actually fits none.  I've never met a client that was happy with stock WordPress with unmodified plugins and theme.  They always want something - sometimes something simple, sometimes something complex - that can't be found in a plugin.  And WordPress is an absolute pile of shit under the hood, a throwback to late 90s/early 2000s web design with unnecessary global variables/magic values/tight coupling everywhere, and The Loop™ which sloppily merges back end logic with display logic.

So, I wind up fighting against a really shitty piece of software in order to get anything done, which takes me twice as long.

I know C/C++ isn't used for webdesign, but perhaps such a tool should be developed. A tool that enabled you to do high level design, but also allowed to get to the micromanagement.

I hear people complaining about how hard pointers are, and segfaults are a thing, but direct access to memory by location alows for neat tricks. It adds much more customization.

Eh, outside of the Hiphop compiler and, later, virtual machine made by Facebook to translate PHP into bytecode, there's really no need for the average web developer to touch C++. Web sites, by the very nature of HTTP, are stateless. They're not programs in the traditional sense, but rather one-shot affairs that live and die per server request.

Regarding better tools, that's why I use a framework like Symfony. It's really modular, and it handles a lot of the low level, "every site needs this and it's pretty much the same" crap (routing) while allowing the developer to write real code to solve real problems. It uses a MVC architecture, whose point of entry is just a simple Front Controller that parses what the user sends in the address bar... it's up to the developer to write the code to handle such requests.

It also comes with an event model, which you can use (or not), a service model, which you can use (or not), etc.

There's other frameworks that do the same kind of thing (Laravel also for PHP, Django for Python, Rails for Ruby, ASP.NET MVC for .NET/C# (which I find to be far, far superior to web forms (no more stupid page lifecycle BS) ), etc.). And it's really the best of both worlds, IMO. If you want to whip up something custom, there's nothing in the way stopping you.

The barrier to entry is higher. You need to know how to:

Program in the language the framework is written in
Understand the basic design philosophy the framework employs
Understand SQL, and the particular ORM being used (Doctrine 2 in my case)
Understand HTTP (not hard) and how routing is different between GET and POST requests (also not hard, but seems to trip up newbies)
Understand the template engine used for creating views (read: pages... Twig in my case, Razer in ASP.NET MVC)
Understand HTML, CSS, and JavaScript because that shit isn't going to write itself

But you can do so, so much more with it than with prepackaged software that never looks or feels or works quite the way the client wants.

[bennyboy]

Yup.  And that's one of the many reasons I don't even touch software like WordPress, let alone use WYSIWYG tools .

"It's free!  And you can simply plug in themes and other functionality!"

Yes, but in my experience, its one-size-fits-most design philosophy actually fits none.  I've never met a client that was happy with stock WordPress with unmodified plugins and theme.  They always want something - sometimes something simple, sometimes something complex - that can't be found in a plugin.  And WordPress is an absolute pile of shit under the hood, a throwback to late 90s/early 2000s web design with unnecessary global variables/magic values/tight coupling everywhere, and The Loop™ which sloppily merges back end logic with display logic.

So, I wind up fighting against a really shitty piece of software in order to get anything done, which takes me twice as long.

I know C/C++ isn't used for webdesign, but perhaps such a tool should be developed. A tool that enabled you to do high level design, but also allowed to get to the micromanagement.

I hear people complaining about how hard pointers are, and segfaults are a thing, but direct access to memory by location alows for neat tricks. It adds much more customization.

You have to understand two things:
1)  Webpages right now are html with java scripts and css. html describes how content is organized and sends content to the client, java scripts control how the client can interact with the data without posting back to the server, and css determines how the data is visually presented. That pretty much covers everything you could want to do.
2)  ANY programming language can (fairly easily) generate html, javascript, and css files.

If you are the owner of a physical system connected to the internet, then so long as you are capable of receiving incoming page requests and sending out html files via TCP/IP, you are officially operating a server.  You want to use C++ to generate your html files?  Fine, you can do that.  After about 50 years, you may end up creating something like the Apache server technology, which actually IS written in C.

The same thing goes for browsers.  Internet Explorer was written in C++.  In fact, I think you'd have a very hard time finding a PC browser that WASN'T developed in C or C++.

But that's not the web programmer's problem.  You don't GET direct access to hardware memory or the hardware operating system, because nobody is stupid enough to give up that access. Nor would you want to-- do you want to have to deal with how Windows drivers access memory, or Linux, or Android, or iOS, or would you rather let THEM deal with that stuff, and just send them the data, the data handlers, and the visual presentation information?

Last thing: ASP.NET allows you to do some pretty robust programming using C# "codebehind" files.  You can use the Microsoft or other .NET libraries for graphics processing, sound editing, and a lot of other things, add files to your homepage, and then. . . pump out those same ol' html files. I recommend it highly.