Help me with my new website!

[FlatAssembler]

Unless you have a VERY compelling reason to stick to an old browser or an old OS, then I'd recommend upgrading.

I've tried Windows 7. But it runs way too slow on my 12-year-old laptop with 512 MB of RAM and a 1.2 GHz Celeron processor. I also think it would be nice to have a modern PC (capable of running Windows 10, it would certainly be able to run many more useful programs than the 5-year-old MacAir I am usually using), but I don't have money to buy it right now.
Maybe I can try to make some money with my knowledge of programming. After five years of learning, perhaps I know enough. What do you think?

There's no particular reason to place your popup inside the control which triggers it, but you can if you like.

I mean, I want the popups to appear above certain words when the user hovers over them. Open the link, click "click here" and hover over the word "romk", I think you will understand the problem immediately. I can't simply set the popup to be absolutely positioned when the word "romk" itself isn't (it can be moved by scrolling the "main", and not by scrolling the whole page).

In modern Chrome browsers, you can right-click an element and "Inspect."

But it's not much better than in Opera 36 (on my PC) or Safari 6.2 (on my Mac), right?

I think this now qualifies as re creating the internet...

What do you mean?

[Losty]

I just looked again and it looks much better than the first time I saw it as far as colors go. Good job

[bennyboy]

I've tried Windows 7. But it runs way too slow on my 12-year-old laptop with 512 MB of RAM and a 1.2 GHz Celeron processor. I also think it would be nice to have a modern PC (capable of running Windows 10, it would certainly be able to run many more useful programs than the 5-year-old MacAir I am usually using), but I don't have money to buy it right now.

If you are very selective, or if you have time to look around a little, you can build your own desktop computer for a very good price.

Maybe I can try to make some money with my knowledge of programming. After five years of learning, perhaps I know enough. What do you think?

To be blunt, while you are clearly a smart guy, I think you'd be likely to embarrass yourself if you attempted to take on a professional contract.  That being said, I'm not a professional either, so please don't let me get in your way.

I mean, I want the popups to appear above certain words when the user hovers over them. Open the link, click "click here" and hover over the word "romk", I think you will understand the problem immediately. I can't simply set the popup to be absolutely positioned when the word "romk" itself isn't (it can be moved by scrolling the "main", and not by scrolling the whole page).

Ahhh.  Those aren't pop-ups.  They're tooltips, and can be handled exclusively with .css:

https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_tooltip.asp

This is almost literally what you are doing with your event calls, but much briefer and more elegant.

But it's not much better than in Opera 36 (on my PC) or Safari 6.2 (on my Mac), right?

For me, google Inspect is the only tool I need to debug my web code.  It really lets you see what's going on at every step, and for .ASP it's super-important because it shows me how .ASP renders stuff out to HTML, so I can hack it with my Javascript if necessary.

[FlatAssembler]

If you are very selective, or if you have time to look around a little, you can build your own desktop computer for a very good price.

I don't know that much about hardware right now.

To be blunt, while you are clearly a smart guy, I think you'd be likely to embarrass yourself if you attempted to take on a professional contract.

Why exactly? I mean, there are people who have been learning to program for only one year before they started working for money with it, while I have been learning it for five years.

This is almost literally what you are doing with your event calls, but much briefer and more elegant.

I'll look into it, but I have a feeling that the problem with scrolling will remain. I guess that's one of the reasons there are so few three-column websites these days.

By the way, what do you think of the way my website looks in Chrome for Android? Most of the mobile browsers let me simply increase the font size in JavaScript if my website is run on a mobile device, but Chrome for Android and Opera for Android don't let me (the layout gets broken in them if I try to, making the text even harder to read because zooming doesn't help then). So, I've made another theme for it.

[KevinM1]

What kind of programming do you think you could make money on? I ask because, in terms of web development, you're definitely not ready to do professional work. Maybe as a paid intern at an established development shop/studio, but not on your own.

[bennyboy]

Why exactly? I mean, there are people who have been learning to program for only one year before they started working for money with it, while I have been learning it for five years.

I can't comment on other employees and employers. I can, however, say that your knowledge of internet programming is in the early stages of development. Could you potentially find someone who will benefit from what you've learned so far and pay you for it? Probably, somewhere. Could you gain a reputation as a solid and reliable programmer who can easily meet clients' needs and work on a deadline? I'd wager probably not.

This is almost literally what you are doing with your event calls, but much briefer and more elegant.

I'll look into it, but I have a feeling that the problem with scrolling will remain. I guess that's one of the reasons there are so few three-column websites these days.

Can you repeat what you think the problem is? Your tooltips seem to be functioning normally.

[FlatAssembler]

I ask because, in terms of web development, you're definitely not ready to do professional work.

You are probably right. It's a bit depressing to think that most of that time I've spent trying to learn to program during those five years is wasted. Hanging out with girls would probably have been more fun way to spend my free time than studying algorithms and data structures. But I was so enthralled by those stories of people making a lot of money with their knowledge of programming.

Can you repeat what you think the problem is? Your tooltips seem to be functioning normally.

Try to scroll while the tooltip is shown. The tooltip will follow your cursor instead of staying above the text you were hovering over. That's because the tooltips are being positioned relative to the viewport (fixed) instead of absolutely. And I think I can't make them absolutely positioned at all in the layout I am using.

[KevinM1]

I ask because, in terms of web development, you're definitely not ready to do professional work.

You are probably right. It's a bit depressing to think that most of that time I've spent trying to learn to program during those five years is wasted. Hanging out with girls would probably have been more fun way to spend my free time than studying algorithms and data structures. But I was so enthralled by those stories of people making a lot of money with their knowledge of programming.

There's nothing wrong with having a social life, but here's the thing - the people getting rich programming are either people who had an idea that completely disrupted the industry (see: Zuckerberg), or they're people who got their degree(s), and really paid their dues both in terms of school work and real work (internships, university programming projects, etc.).  Most programmers are 9-5 types, who work on projects they're not interested in or passionate about.

When I look at your code, I see a talented amateur.  I think you could make a living with programming, but you really need to figure out what kind of programming you want to do.  Desktop apps are different than mobile apps, which are different than web apps, which is different than AI/machine learning, which is different than, say, programming sensors (think: automobiles, rockets (SpaceX rockets are completely computer controlled), etc.).  While there's definitely some overlap, there's also a lot of differences (web apps don't have persistent memory, sensor/hardware systems need to be fast, etc.).

In terms of web development, benny and I don't talk about putting CSS and JS in separate files, reducing repetition by using functions/methods, and generally writing code as elegant as possible because we're tut-tutting neckbeards who are trying to give a rookie a hard time.  These things we keep harping on are the basic signs of someone at least trying to write professional web code.  Unless you're a 100% solo developer (which is rare), programming is a collaborative endeavor.  So writing readable code that can be easily followed/understood by others, while also being easy to maintain/edit/debug/extend is an important secondary goal.  Solving the problem at hand comes first, obviously, and everyone has had to write an ugly kludge with deadlines looming, but when possible, do it right.

And even if you don't ever work with another developer for the rest of your life, chances are you'll need to revisit old code you wrote years earlier. I can't tell you how many times I had to look at old code and went "WTF was this supposed to do? And WTF was I thinking when I wrote this POS?" There's no good reason not to make life easier for yourself from the start. You wind up wasting more time in the long run if you don't at least try to do it right the first time.

Also, code reviews are a common part of most job interviews.  So, yeah, it's kinda a big deal.  And we keep harping on it so you can grasp how important it actually is.  It's the kind of real world thing that "gotta do it fast!" competitions completely ignore, to the detriment of the competitor.

[bennyboy]

And even if you don't ever work with another developer for the rest of your life, chances are you'll need to revisit old code you wrote years earlier.  I can't tell you how many times I had to look at old code and went "WTF was this supposed to do?  And WTF was I thinking when I wrote this POS?"  There's no good reason not to make life easier for yourself from the start.  You wind up wasting more time in the long run if you don't at least try to do it right the first time.

This is huge.  My homepage now has about 5 main pages, maybe 50 user controls, and several .css themes; I have two choices-- organize or fail horribly every single day.  Even though I'm solo, I have become my own project manager.  I'll look at old code and start muttering to myself: "You f@#$-ing dumbass.  That's what happens when you add css styles in codebehind.  I hope you don't mind giving up the last two hours of your life dumbass!  You could have been playing LOL or banging the wife, but no-- you had to get all tricky, and didn't even bother to comment it in the main markup."

[FlatAssembler]

What do you think about the way my website looks on iPads?