Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Ethan Gruber ewg4x...@gmail.com wrote: The language you choose is somewhat dependent on the data you're working with. I don't find that Ruby or PHP are particularly good at dealing with XML. They're passable for data manipulation and migration, but I wouldn't use them to render large collections of structured XML data, like EAD or TEI collections, or whatever. It's also dependent on your environment. You may or may not have a say in this, and chances are you'll have to work with code that others wrote. If you mess with systems, it's hard to avoid working with perl. Ruby is popular here, but relatively few jobs call for it, it's slow, and the support community is way smaller than it is for some of the other languages. PHP is decent for web stuff, but it's not a good all purpose language. Yes, you *can* do just about anything with it (presuming you don't need something it just doesn't do like multithreading), but if you're not root, you could easily find it wasn't allocated nearly enough memory or time to do what you want. It's also not fast even if it is considerably faster than ruby. Speed's no biggie if your program is calling something else that does the real work or if you don't have that much processing to do. But it could be a big deal if you have to cut through lots of data regularly. Even if you don't intend to do much coding, it's impossible to avoid working with a number of languages. Learn what you need, as you need it. If you're trying to figure out what to start with, use whatever the people you're most likely to turn to help use. The best resource (if you have access) is a willing local person who you can ask questions. kyle
[CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
This is a terribly distorted view of Ruby: If you want to make web pages, learn Ruby, and you don't need to learn Rails to get the benefit of Ruby's awesomeness. But, everyone will have their own opinions. There's no accounting for taste. For anyone interested in learning to program and hack around with library data or linked data, here are some places to start (heavily biased toward the elegance of Ruby): http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Working_with_MaRC https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+books https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+tutorials http://rdf.rubyforge.org/ Jason Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:43 AM, John Fereira wrote: I have been writing software professionally since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time. I'll agree that there are a few aspects of Perl that can be confusing, as some functions will change behavior depending on context, and there was a lot of bad code examples out there.* ... but I'd recommend almost any current mainstream language before recommending that someone learn PHP. If you're looking to make web pages, learn Ruby. If you're doing data cleanup, Perl if it's lots of text, Python if it's mostly numbers. I should also mention that in the early 1990s would have been Perl 4 ... and unfortunately, most people who learned Perl never learned Perl 5. It's changed a lot over the years. (just like PHP isn't nearly as insecure as it used to be ... and actually supports placeholders so you don't end up with SQL injections) -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
The language you choose is somewhat dependent on the data you're working with. I don't find that Ruby or PHP are particularly good at dealing with XML. They're passable for data manipulation and migration, but I wouldn't use them to render large collections of structured XML data, like EAD or TEI collections, or whatever. Ethan On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 8:52 AM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.eduwrote: This is a terribly distorted view of Ruby: If you want to make web pages, learn Ruby, and you don't need to learn Rails to get the benefit of Ruby's awesomeness. But, everyone will have their own opinions. There's no accounting for taste. For anyone interested in learning to program and hack around with library data or linked data, here are some places to start (heavily biased toward the elegance of Ruby): http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Working_with_MaRC https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+books https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+tutorials http://rdf.rubyforge.org/ Jason Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:43 AM, John Fereira wrote: I have been writing software professionally since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time. I'll agree that there are a few aspects of Perl that can be confusing, as some functions will change behavior depending on context, and there was a lot of bad code examples out there.* ... but I'd recommend almost any current mainstream language before recommending that someone learn PHP. If you're looking to make web pages, learn Ruby. If you're doing data cleanup, Perl if it's lots of text, Python if it's mostly numbers. I should also mention that in the early 1990s would have been Perl 4 ... and unfortunately, most people who learned Perl never learned Perl 5. It's changed a lot over the years. (just like PHP isn't nearly as insecure as it used to be ... and actually supports placeholders so you don't end up with SQL injections) -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
This is an interesting and frustrating conversation. Most modern languages are capable of doing almost anything. They all have strengths and weaknesses. I have worked in many languages starting in Fortran, and, while I have favorites, I like the fact that I can be productive and efficient by concentrating on one language at a time. Because my day job is mostly Drupal, for me that language is PHP. When I started, I was working with ColdFusion (ok, maybe not really a language), Java (meh), and Python (++). I didn't love PHP or choose it, but I appreciated that it could do what I needed it to do. At the time, that work included a lot of XML manipulation. I think that PHP has a good toolset for dealing with XML. I am sure that there may be something better, but that really does not matter, since my team has sufficient facility with PHP to complete anything we take on and the experience and resources to do it with economy and efficiency. We haven't abandoned everything else. We use Python for server management — its AWS libraries sealed that deal — finally displacing Perl, and Ruby for DevOps (why this gets capitalized at all, I have no clue) and deployment. Solr keeps us vaguely in touch with Java. This boils down to: If it is your decision and you have a tool you prefer, use it. Thanks, Cary On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Ethan Gruber ewg4x...@gmail.com wrote: The language you choose is somewhat dependent on the data you're working with. I don't find that Ruby or PHP are particularly good at dealing with XML. They're passable for data manipulation and migration, but I wouldn't use them to render large collections of structured XML data, like EAD or TEI collections, or whatever. Ethan On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 8:52 AM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.eduwrote: This is a terribly distorted view of Ruby: If you want to make web pages, learn Ruby, and you don't need to learn Rails to get the benefit of Ruby's awesomeness. But, everyone will have their own opinions. There's no accounting for taste. For anyone interested in learning to program and hack around with library data or linked data, here are some places to start (heavily biased toward the elegance of Ruby): http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Working_with_MaRC https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+books https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+tutorials http://rdf.rubyforge.org/ Jason Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:43 AM, John Fereira wrote: I have been writing software professionally since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time. I'll agree that there are a few aspects of Perl that can be confusing, as some functions will change behavior depending on context, and there was a lot of bad code examples out there.* ... but I'd recommend almost any current mainstream language before recommending that someone learn PHP. If you're looking to make web pages, learn Ruby. If you're doing data cleanup, Perl if it's lots of text, Python if it's mostly numbers. I should also mention that in the early 1990s would have been Perl 4 ... and unfortunately, most people who learned Perl never learned Perl 5. It's changed a lot over the years. (just like PHP isn't nearly as insecure as it used to be ... and actually supports placeholders so you don't end up with SQL injections) -Joe -- Cary Gordon The Cherry Hill Company http://chillco.com
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
I suggested PHP primarily because I find it easy to read and understand and that's it's very commonly used. Both Drupal and Wordpress are written in PHP and if we're talking about building web pages there are a lot of sites that use one of those as a CMS. I've looked at both good and bad perl code, some written some very accomplished software developers, and I still don't like it. I am not personally interested in learning to make web pages (I've been making them for 20 years) and have mostly dabbled in Ruby but suspect that I'll be doing a lot more programming in Ruby (and will be attending the LibDevConX workshop at Stanford next month where I'm sure we'll be discussing Hydra). I'm also somewhat familiar with Python but I just haven't found that many people are using it in my institution (where I've worked for the past 15 years) to spend any time learning more about it. If you're going to suggest mainstream languages I'm not sure how you can omit Java (though just mentioning the word seems to scare people). -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 1:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:43 AM, John Fereira wrote: I have been writing software professionally since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time. I'll agree that there are a few aspects of Perl that can be confusing, as some functions will change behavior depending on context, and there was a lot of bad code examples out there.* ... but I'd recommend almost any current mainstream language before recommending that someone learn PHP. If you're looking to make web pages, learn Ruby. If you're doing data cleanup, Perl if it's lots of text, Python if it's mostly numbers. I should also mention that in the early 1990s would have been Perl 4 ... and unfortunately, most people who learned Perl never learned Perl 5. It's changed a lot over the years. (just like PHP isn't nearly as insecure as it used to be ... and actually supports placeholders so you don't end up with SQL injections) -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
Getting back to the original point so noting some nice starting tools, I find http://www.codecademy.com to be a decent starting spot for those of us without much computer science background. I am not sure what professional developers think of the site but I find it a helpful to tutorial to start getting a basic understanding of scripting, Ruby, JavaScript, Python, JQuery, APIs, ect. Hope that helps. Matt Sherman On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.eduwrote: This is a terribly distorted view of Ruby: If you want to make web pages, learn Ruby, and you don't need to learn Rails to get the benefit of Ruby's awesomeness. But, everyone will have their own opinions. There's no accounting for taste. For anyone interested in learning to program and hack around with library data or linked data, here are some places to start (heavily biased toward the elegance of Ruby): http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Working_with_MaRC https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+books https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+tutorials http://rdf.rubyforge.org/ Jason Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:43 AM, John Fereira wrote: I have been writing software professionally since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time. I'll agree that there are a few aspects of Perl that can be confusing, as some functions will change behavior depending on context, and there was a lot of bad code examples out there.* ... but I'd recommend almost any current mainstream language before recommending that someone learn PHP. If you're looking to make web pages, learn Ruby. If you're doing data cleanup, Perl if it's lots of text, Python if it's mostly numbers. I should also mention that in the early 1990s would have been Perl 4 ... and unfortunately, most people who learned Perl never learned Perl 5. It's changed a lot over the years. (just like PHP isn't nearly as insecure as it used to be ... and actually supports placeholders so you don't end up with SQL injections) -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
If you're just learning to program, I would absolutely recommend an interpreted language like Ruby, PHP, Python, Perl, JavaScript etc. over something that is compiled like Java, C, or Go. These languages are almost always slower, but the immediate feedback is invaluable for learning. I find that Java and C are very hard to learn because you spend so many lines describing how something should be done (implementation) instead of what actions should be done. I love these kinds of sites for learning new languages: http://tryhaskell.org/ http://tryruby.org/ http://jsbin.com/ http://perltuts.com/try https://www.pythonanywhere.com/try-ipython/ http://writecodeonline.com/php/ -Justin On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Cary Gordon listu...@chillco.com wrote: This is an interesting and frustrating conversation. Most modern languages are capable of doing almost anything. They all have strengths and weaknesses. I have worked in many languages starting in Fortran, and, while I have favorites, I like the fact that I can be productive and efficient by concentrating on one language at a time. Because my day job is mostly Drupal, for me that language is PHP. When I started, I was working with ColdFusion (ok, maybe not really a language), Java (meh), and Python (++). I didn't love PHP or choose it, but I appreciated that it could do what I needed it to do. At the time, that work included a lot of XML manipulation. I think that PHP has a good toolset for dealing with XML. I am sure that there may be something better, but that really does not matter, since my team has sufficient facility with PHP to complete anything we take on and the experience and resources to do it with economy and efficiency. We haven't abandoned everything else. We use Python for server management — its AWS libraries sealed that deal — finally displacing Perl, and Ruby for DevOps (why this gets capitalized at all, I have no clue) and deployment. Solr keeps us vaguely in touch with Java. This boils down to: If it is your decision and you have a tool you prefer, use it. Thanks, Cary On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Ethan Gruber ewg4x...@gmail.com wrote: The language you choose is somewhat dependent on the data you're working with. I don't find that Ruby or PHP are particularly good at dealing with XML. They're passable for data manipulation and migration, but I wouldn't use them to render large collections of structured XML data, like EAD or TEI collections, or whatever. Ethan On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 8:52 AM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.edu wrote: This is a terribly distorted view of Ruby: If you want to make web pages, learn Ruby, and you don't need to learn Rails to get the benefit of Ruby's awesomeness. But, everyone will have their own opinions. There's no accounting for taste. For anyone interested in learning to program and hack around with library data or linked data, here are some places to start (heavily biased toward the elegance of Ruby): http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Working_with_MaRC https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+books https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+tutorials http://rdf.rubyforge.org/ Jason Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:43 AM, John Fereira wrote: I have been writing software professionally since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time. I'll agree that there are a few aspects of Perl that can be confusing, as some functions will change behavior depending on context, and there was a lot of bad code examples out there.* ... but I'd recommend almost any current mainstream language before recommending that someone learn PHP. If you're looking to make web pages, learn Ruby. If you're doing data cleanup, Perl if it's lots of text, Python if it's mostly numbers. I should also mention that in the early 1990s would have been Perl 4 ... and unfortunately, most people who learned Perl never learned Perl 5. It's changed a lot over the years. (just like PHP isn't nearly as insecure as it used to be ... and actually supports placeholders so you don't end up with SQL injections) -Joe -- Cary Gordon The Cherry Hill Company http
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Feb 18, 2013, at 11:17 AM, John Fereira wrote: I suggested PHP primarily because I find it easy to read and understand and that's it's very commonly used. Both Drupal and Wordpress are written in PHP and if we're talking about building web pages there are a lot of sites that use one of those as a CMS. And if you're forced to maintain one of those, then by all means, learn PHP ... but please don't recommend that anyone learn it as a first language. ... and I'd like to say that in my mention of Perl, it was only because there's going to be the workshop ... not that I'd necessarily recommend it as a first language for all people ... I'd look at what they were interested in trying to do, and make a recommendation on what would best help them do what they're interested in. I've looked at both good and bad perl code, some written some very accomplished software developers, and I still don't like it. I am not personally interested in learning to make web pages (I've been making them for 20 years) and have mostly dabbled in Ruby but suspect that I'll be doing a lot more programming in Ruby (and will be attending the LibDevConX workshop at Stanford next month where I'm sure we'll be discussing Hydra). I'm also somewhat familiar with Python but I just haven't found that many people are using it in my institution (where I've worked for the past 15 years) to spend any time learning more about it. If you're going to suggest mainstream languages I'm not sure how you can omit Java (though just mentioning the word seems to scare people). It's *really* easy to omit Java: http://www.recursivity.com/blog/2012/10/28/ides-are-a-language-smell/ ... not to mention all of the security vulnerabilities and memory headaches associated with anything that runs in a VM. You might as well ask why I didn't suggest C or assembler for beginners. That's not to say that I haven't learned things from programming in those languages (and I've even applied tricks from Fortran and IDL in other languages), but I wouldn't recommend any of those languages to someone who's just learning to program. -Joe (ps. I'm grumpier than usual today, as I've been trying to get hpn patched openssh to compile under centos 6 ... so that it can be called by a java daemon that is called by another C program that dynamically generates python and shell scripts ... and executes them but doesn't always check the exit status ... this is one of those times when I wish some people hadn't learned to program, so they'd just hire someone else to write it)
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
There is *no* ideal first language. PHP is fine. Perl is fine. All of them are terrible in their own ways. ;-) Any of them will give you an idea of how programming logic works, if you want to stop there. If you don't, you mustn't stick with just one language. They all have their problems, and the only way to know how they complement each other is to learn how different languages work. You will find your favorites. You will grow to hate some of them. Have fun, Hugh On Feb 18, 2013, at 12:37 , Joe Hourcle onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov wrote: On Feb 18, 2013, at 11:17 AM, John Fereira wrote: I suggested PHP primarily because I find it easy to read and understand and that's it's very commonly used. Both Drupal and Wordpress are written in PHP and if we're talking about building web pages there are a lot of sites that use one of those as a CMS. And if you're forced to maintain one of those, then by all means, learn PHP ... but please don't recommend that anyone learn it as a first language. ... and I'd like to say that in my mention of Perl, it was only because there's going to be the workshop ... not that I'd necessarily recommend it as a first language for all people ... I'd look at what they were interested in trying to do, and make a recommendation on what would best help them do what they're interested in. I've looked at both good and bad perl code, some written some very accomplished software developers, and I still don't like it. I am not personally interested in learning to make web pages (I've been making them for 20 years) and have mostly dabbled in Ruby but suspect that I'll be doing a lot more programming in Ruby (and will be attending the LibDevConX workshop at Stanford next month where I'm sure we'll be discussing Hydra). I'm also somewhat familiar with Python but I just haven't found that many people are using it in my institution (where I've worked for the past 15 years) to spend any time learning more about it. If you're going to suggest mainstream languages I'm not sure how you can omit Java (though just mentioning the word seems to scare people). It's *really* easy to omit Java: http://www.recursivity.com/blog/2012/10/28/ides-are-a-language-smell/ ... not to mention all of the security vulnerabilities and memory headaches associated with anything that runs in a VM. You might as well ask why I didn't suggest C or assembler for beginners. That's not to say that I haven't learned things from programming in those languages (and I've even applied tricks from Fortran and IDL in other languages), but I wouldn't recommend any of those languages to someone who's just learning to program. -Joe (ps. I'm grumpier than usual today, as I've been trying to get hpn patched openssh to compile under centos 6 ... so that it can be called by a java daemon that is called by another C program that dynamically generates python and shell scripts ... and executes them but doesn't always check the exit status ... this is one of those times when I wish some people hadn't learned to program, so they'd just hire someone else to write it)
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
-Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 12:37 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 18, 2013, at 11:17 AM, John Fereira wrote: I suggested PHP primarily because I find it easy to read and understand and that's it's very commonly used. Both Drupal and Wordpress are written in PHP and if we're talking about building web pages there are a lot of sites that use one of those as a CMS. And if you're forced to maintain one of those, then by all means, learn PHP ... but please don't recommend that anyone learn it as a first language. And the reason that I suggested PHP is that one is more likely going to be *forced* to learn PHP because it's so much more commonly used than something like Haskell, or R, or even Python. I've looked at both good and bad perl code, some written some very accomplished software developers, and I still don't like it. I am not personally interested in learning to make web pages (I've been making them for 20 years) and have mostly dabbled in Ruby but suspect that I'll be doing a lot more programming in Ruby (and will be attending the LibDevConX workshop at Stanford next month where I'm sure we'll be discussing Hydra). I'm also somewhat familiar with Python but I just haven't found that many people are using it in my institution (where I've worked for the past 15 years) to spend any time learning more about it. If you're going to suggest mainstream languages I'm not sure how you can omit Java (though just mentioning the word seems to scare people). It's *really* easy to omit Java: http://www.recursivity.com/blog/2012/10/28/ides-are-a-language-smell/ I generally take articles like that with a large heaping of salt when it's fairly obvious that someone is biased against a specific language but that article seems to be more about using an IDE than using Java. In any case, I really didn't start using an IDE (I wrote all my code using a unix text editor) until several years after I learned Java. You might as well ask why I didn't suggest C or assembler for beginners. That's not to say that I haven't learned things from programming in those languages (and I've even applied tricks from Fortran and IDL in other languages), but I wouldn't recommend any of those languages to someone who's just learning to program. I remember when Pascal used to be the language of choice (actually, I remember when it was Basic) as an instructional programming language, but I cut my programming teeth using assembly language (more like the raw octal representation) and Fortran before I learned C. -Joe (ps. I'm grumpier than usual today, as I've been trying to get hpn patched openssh to compile under centos 6 ... so that it can be called by a java daemon that is called by another C program that dynamically generates python and shell scripts ... and executes them but doesn't always check the exit status ... this is one of those times when I wish some people hadn't learned to program, so they'd just hire someone else to write it) I feel your pain. I've had plenty of days like that as well.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Not to be too pragmatic about it, but it is worth noting which languages are used in the wilds beyond the confines of our libraries. http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html I know everyone has their own style, but I would push newbies towards object-oriented languages, such as C# or Java first. Working in an enforced object-oriented programming [OOP] environment seems like an excellent first step. Moving from either of those languages to Ruby (which is more compatible with procedural programming) is quite simple then. Clearly I am preaching from the pulpit of OOP though. Mark / UF -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of John Fereira Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 1:17 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 12:37 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 18, 2013, at 11:17 AM, John Fereira wrote: I suggested PHP primarily because I find it easy to read and understand and that's it's very commonly used. Both Drupal and Wordpress are written in PHP and if we're talking about building web pages there are a lot of sites that use one of those as a CMS. And if you're forced to maintain one of those, then by all means, learn PHP ... but please don't recommend that anyone learn it as a first language. And the reason that I suggested PHP is that one is more likely going to be *forced* to learn PHP because it's so much more commonly used than something like Haskell, or R, or even Python. I've looked at both good and bad perl code, some written some very accomplished software developers, and I still don't like it. I am not personally interested in learning to make web pages (I've been making them for 20 years) and have mostly dabbled in Ruby but suspect that I'll be doing a lot more programming in Ruby (and will be attending the LibDevConX workshop at Stanford next month where I'm sure we'll be discussing Hydra). I'm also somewhat familiar with Python but I just haven't found that many people are using it in my institution (where I've worked for the past 15 years) to spend any time learning more about it. If you're going to suggest mainstream languages I'm not sure how you can omit Java (though just mentioning the word seems to scare people). It's *really* easy to omit Java: http://www.recursivity.com/blog/2012/10/28/ides-are-a-language-smell/ I generally take articles like that with a large heaping of salt when it's fairly obvious that someone is biased against a specific language but that article seems to be more about using an IDE than using Java. In any case, I really didn't start using an IDE (I wrote all my code using a unix text editor) until several years after I learned Java. You might as well ask why I didn't suggest C or assembler for beginners. That's not to say that I haven't learned things from programming in those languages (and I've even applied tricks from Fortran and IDL in other languages), but I wouldn't recommend any of those languages to someone who's just learning to program. I remember when Pascal used to be the language of choice (actually, I remember when it was Basic) as an instructional programming language, but I cut my programming teeth using assembly language (more like the raw octal representation) and Fortran before I learned C. -Joe (ps. I'm grumpier than usual today, as I've been trying to get hpn patched openssh to compile under centos 6 ... so that it can be called by a java daemon that is called by another C program that dynamically generates python and shell scripts ... and executes them but doesn't always check the exit status ... this is one of those times when I wish some people hadn't learned to program, so they'd just hire someone else to write it) I feel your pain. I've had plenty of days like that as well.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
First, I have not been programming nearly as long as any of you - just shy of 20 years now. I learned to program in C++ first. Then Java. Then Assembly. I use none of them now, but I still implement some habits and principles I learned from those in the languages I use now. It probably isn't the best path for you, but it was my path. My recommendation to those interested in coding, either professionally or as a hobby, is to find your passion - find an application you can immediately have an impact on, and see the result - and then get picky with the language, if you must. For me, at least, the most infuriating thing was not having an application to apply whatever new skill I picked up on. On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Sullivan, Mark V mars...@uflib.ufl.eduwrote: Not to be too pragmatic about it, but it is worth noting which languages are used in the wilds beyond the confines of our libraries. http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html I know everyone has their own style, but I would push newbies towards object-oriented languages, such as C# or Java first. Working in an enforced object-oriented programming [OOP] environment seems like an excellent first step. Moving from either of those languages to Ruby (which is more compatible with procedural programming) is quite simple then. Clearly I am preaching from the pulpit of OOP though. Mark / UF -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of John Fereira Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 1:17 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 12:37 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 18, 2013, at 11:17 AM, John Fereira wrote: I suggested PHP primarily because I find it easy to read and understand and that's it's very commonly used. Both Drupal and Wordpress are written in PHP and if we're talking about building web pages there are a lot of sites that use one of those as a CMS. And if you're forced to maintain one of those, then by all means, learn PHP ... but please don't recommend that anyone learn it as a first language. And the reason that I suggested PHP is that one is more likely going to be *forced* to learn PHP because it's so much more commonly used than something like Haskell, or R, or even Python. I've looked at both good and bad perl code, some written some very accomplished software developers, and I still don't like it. I am not personally interested in learning to make web pages (I've been making them for 20 years) and have mostly dabbled in Ruby but suspect that I'll be doing a lot more programming in Ruby (and will be attending the LibDevConX workshop at Stanford next month where I'm sure we'll be discussing Hydra). I'm also somewhat familiar with Python but I just haven't found that many people are using it in my institution (where I've worked for the past 15 years) to spend any time learning more about it. If you're going to suggest mainstream languages I'm not sure how you can omit Java (though just mentioning the word seems to scare people). It's *really* easy to omit Java: http://www.recursivity.com/blog/2012/10/28/ides-are-a-language-smell/ I generally take articles like that with a large heaping of salt when it's fairly obvious that someone is biased against a specific language but that article seems to be more about using an IDE than using Java. In any case, I really didn't start using an IDE (I wrote all my code using a unix text editor) until several years after I learned Java. You might as well ask why I didn't suggest C or assembler for beginners. That's not to say that I haven't learned things from programming in those languages (and I've even applied tricks from Fortran and IDL in other languages), but I wouldn't recommend any of those languages to someone who's just learning to program. I remember when Pascal used to be the language of choice (actually, I remember when it was Basic) as an instructional programming language, but I cut my programming teeth using assembly language (more like the raw octal representation) and Fortran before I learned C. -Joe (ps. I'm grumpier than usual today, as I've been trying to get hpn patched openssh to compile under centos 6 ... so that it can be called by a java daemon that is called by another C program that dynamically generates python and shell scripts ... and executes them but doesn't always check the exit status ... this is one of those times when I wish some people hadn't learned to program, so they'd just hire someone else to write it) I feel your pain. I've had plenty of days like that as well.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
To be pedantic, Ruby and JavaScript are more Object Oriented than Java because they don't have primitives and (in Ruby's case) because classes are themselves objects. Unlike Java, both Python and Ruby can properly override of static methods on sub-classes. The Java language made many compromises as it was designed as a bridge to Object Oriented programming for programmers who were used to writing C and C++. -Justin On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Sullivan, Mark V mars...@uflib.ufl.eduwrote: Not to be too pragmatic about it, but it is worth noting which languages are used in the wilds beyond the confines of our libraries. http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html I know everyone has their own style, but I would push newbies towards object-oriented languages, such as C# or Java first. Working in an enforced object-oriented programming [OOP] environment seems like an excellent first step. Moving from either of those languages to Ruby (which is more compatible with procedural programming) is quite simple then. Clearly I am preaching from the pulpit of OOP though. Mark / UF -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of John Fereira Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 1:17 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 12:37 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 18, 2013, at 11:17 AM, John Fereira wrote: I suggested PHP primarily because I find it easy to read and understand and that's it's very commonly used. Both Drupal and Wordpress are written in PHP and if we're talking about building web pages there are a lot of sites that use one of those as a CMS. And if you're forced to maintain one of those, then by all means, learn PHP ... but please don't recommend that anyone learn it as a first language. And the reason that I suggested PHP is that one is more likely going to be *forced* to learn PHP because it's so much more commonly used than something like Haskell, or R, or even Python. I've looked at both good and bad perl code, some written some very accomplished software developers, and I still don't like it. I am not personally interested in learning to make web pages (I've been making them for 20 years) and have mostly dabbled in Ruby but suspect that I'll be doing a lot more programming in Ruby (and will be attending the LibDevConX workshop at Stanford next month where I'm sure we'll be discussing Hydra). I'm also somewhat familiar with Python but I just haven't found that many people are using it in my institution (where I've worked for the past 15 years) to spend any time learning more about it. If you're going to suggest mainstream languages I'm not sure how you can omit Java (though just mentioning the word seems to scare people). It's *really* easy to omit Java: http://www.recursivity.com/blog/2012/10/28/ides-are-a-language-smell/ I generally take articles like that with a large heaping of salt when it's fairly obvious that someone is biased against a specific language but that article seems to be more about using an IDE than using Java. In any case, I really didn't start using an IDE (I wrote all my code using a unix text editor) until several years after I learned Java. You might as well ask why I didn't suggest C or assembler for beginners. That's not to say that I haven't learned things from programming in those languages (and I've even applied tricks from Fortran and IDL in other languages), but I wouldn't recommend any of those languages to someone who's just learning to program. I remember when Pascal used to be the language of choice (actually, I remember when it was Basic) as an instructional programming language, but I cut my programming teeth using assembly language (more like the raw octal representation) and Fortran before I learned C. -Joe (ps. I'm grumpier than usual today, as I've been trying to get hpn patched openssh to compile under centos 6 ... so that it can be called by a java daemon that is called by another C program that dynamically generates python and shell scripts ... and executes them but doesn't always check the exit status ... this is one of those times when I wish some people hadn't learned to program, so they'd just hire someone else to write it) I feel your pain. I've had plenty of days like that as well.
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
I've heard similar good things about Codecademy from a friend who recently wanted to start learning programming along with his teenage son. It seems like a good gateway drug :) I introduced my 11-year-old to the Javascript-based animation tutorials on Khan Academy and he found them really fun. I have him use IRB to calculate his math homework. I don't care which, if any, language he prefers. It's more important to me that he's able to think under the hood a bit about computers, data, and what's possible. I've been thinking alot about how to introduce not only my kids, but some of our cataloging/technical staff to thinking programmatically or computationally[1] or whatever you want to call it. For me, Ruby will likely be the tool - especially since it's so easy to install on Windows now, too. In her wisdom, Diane Hillman (I think), pointed out the need for catalogers to be able talk to programmers. Personally, that's what I'm after... to equip people to think about problems, data, and networks differently, e.g. No, you really don't have to look up each record individually in the catalog and check the link, etc. 1. http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/ Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Matthew Sherman [matt.r.sher...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:18 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?) Getting back to the original point so noting some nice starting tools, I find http://www.codecademy.com to be a decent starting spot for those of us without much computer science background. I am not sure what professional developers think of the site but I find it a helpful to tutorial to start getting a basic understanding of scripting, Ruby, JavaScript, Python, JQuery, APIs, ect. Hope that helps. Matt Sherman On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.eduwrote: This is a terribly distorted view of Ruby: If you want to make web pages, learn Ruby, and you don't need to learn Rails to get the benefit of Ruby's awesomeness. But, everyone will have their own opinions. There's no accounting for taste. For anyone interested in learning to program and hack around with library data or linked data, here are some places to start (heavily biased toward the elegance of Ruby): http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Working_with_MaRC https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+books https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+tutorials http://rdf.rubyforge.org/ Jason Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:43 AM, John Fereira wrote: I have been writing software professionally since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time. I'll agree that there are a few aspects of Perl that can be confusing, as some functions will change behavior depending on context, and there was a lot of bad code examples out there.* ... but I'd recommend almost any current mainstream language before recommending that someone learn PHP. If you're looking to make web pages, learn Ruby. If you're doing data cleanup, Perl if it's lots of text, Python if it's mostly numbers. I should also mention that in the early 1990s would have been Perl 4 ... and unfortunately, most people who learned Perl never learned Perl 5. It's changed a lot over the years. (just like PHP isn't nearly as insecure as it used to be ... and actually supports placeholders so you don't end up with SQL injections) -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Good advice. Sometimes you have to look for opportunities to learn new skills. Awhile back I was asked by a colleague to write a program to process some research data (it was actually related to something I've worked on) and since it was going to be a one off program I decided to use a noSQL database (MongoDB) in the implementation even though I could have used something I was more familiar with. I haven't used MongoDB since but at least I'm familiar with it enough now that I won't be starting from scratch if I'm forced to use it later. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Mark Pernotto Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 1:38 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? My recommendation to those interested in coding, either professionally or as a hobby, is to find your passion - find an application you can immediately have an impact on, and see the result - and then get picky with the language, if you must. For me, at least, the most infuriating thing was not having an application to apply whatever new skill I picked up on.
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
I am going to second and third and fourth www.codeschool.com. I know codecademy gets a lot of love, but I'm pretty sure that's only because people don't know about Code School. I would turn to NetTuts courses for PHP, especially Laravel 4 (greatest PHP-thing ever), but that's *only because Code School focuses more on Ruby than PHP.* Not to belabor the point ... - well, yes, to belabor it: www.codeschool.com for the win. Michael / Front-End Librarian at www.ns4lib.com and The Web for Libraries Weekly -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of James Stuart Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 2:23 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?) I'll put a rec out for CodeSchool. They started mostly with ruby, but they've expanded into a wide array of courses (only a few of which are free). But they're slick, well thought-through affairs, and Try Ruby/Rails for Zombies is still I think the best introduction to Rails out there. http://www.codeschool.com/ On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 2:04 PM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.eduwrote: I've heard similar good things about Codecademy from a friend who recently wanted to start learning programming along with his teenage son. It seems like a good gateway drug :) I introduced my 11-year-old to the Javascript-based animation tutorials on Khan Academy and he found them really fun. I have him use IRB to calculate his math homework. I don't care which, if any, language he prefers. It's more important to me that he's able to think under the hood a bit about computers, data, and what's possible. I've been thinking alot about how to introduce not only my kids, but some of our cataloging/technical staff to thinking programmatically or computationally[1] or whatever you want to call it. For me, Ruby will likely be the tool - especially since it's so easy to install on Windows now, too. In her wisdom, Diane Hillman (I think), pointed out the need for catalogers to be able talk to programmers. Personally, that's what I'm after... to equip people to think about problems, data, and networks differently, e.g. No, you really don't have to look up each record individually in the catalog and check the link, etc. 1. http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/ Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Matthew Sherman [matt.r.sher...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:18 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?) Getting back to the original point so noting some nice starting tools, I find http://www.codecademy.com to be a decent starting spot for those of us without much computer science background. I am not sure what professional developers think of the site but I find it a helpful to tutorial to start getting a basic understanding of scripting, Ruby, JavaScript, Python, JQuery, APIs, ect. Hope that helps. Matt Sherman On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.edu wrote: This is a terribly distorted view of Ruby: If you want to make web pages, learn Ruby, and you don't need to learn Rails to get the benefit of Ruby's awesomeness. But, everyone will have their own opinions. There's no accounting for taste. For anyone interested in learning to program and hack around with library data or linked data, here are some places to start (heavily biased toward the elegance of Ruby): http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Working_with_MaRC https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+books https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+tutorials http://rdf.rubyforge.org/ Jason Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:43 AM, John Fereira wrote: I have been writing software professionally since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time. I'll agree that there are a few
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
On 2/18/2013 2:04 PM, Jason Stirnaman wrote: I've been thinking alot about how to introduce not only my kids, but some of our cataloging/technical staff to thinking programmatically or computationally[1] or whatever you want to call it. Do you have an opinion of the google 'computational thinking' curriculum pieces linked off of that page you cite? For instance, at: http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/lessons.html Or at: http://www.iste.org/learn/computational-thinking/ct-toolkit
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
On 2/18/13 12:53 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: On 2/18/2013 2:04 PM, Jason Stirnaman wrote: I've been thinking alot about how to introduce not only my kids, but some of our cataloging/technical staff to thinking programmatically or computationally[1] or whatever you want to call it. Do you have an opinion of the google 'computational thinking' curriculum pieces linked off of that page you cite? For instance, at: http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/lessons.html I looked at the Beginning Python one[1], and I have to say that any intro to programming that begins with a giant table of mathematical functions is a #FAIL. Wow - how wrong can you get it? On the other hand, I've been going through the Google online python class [2] and have found it very easy to follow (it's youtubed), and the exercises are interesting. What I want next is more exercises, and someone to talk to about any difficulties I run into. I want a hands-on hacker space learning environment that has a live expert (and you wouldn't have to be terribly expert to answer a beginner's questions). It's very hard to learn programming alone because there are always multiple ways to solve a problem, and an infinite number of places to get stuck. kc [1] http://tinyurl.com/bcj894s [2] https://developers.google.com/edu/python/ Or at: http://www.iste.org/learn/computational-thinking/ct-toolkit -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
I'm not advocating the Google CT lessons as the best way to learn Python. Karen, I really like your hacker space idea. Anyone else know of an online environment like that? Another option is maybe a Python IRC channel or a local meetup discussion list. For example, we have a really good Ruby meetup group here in KC that meets once a month. I also know between meetings that I can go to the mail list to get help with my Rails questions. I am interested more in the Google CT lessons in the Data Analysis and English-Language subjects as entry points into how to think differently about your work and about this thing you're hunched over for 8 hours a day. Sure, those lessons focus heavily on spreadsheet functions, but that's a familiar way to introduce the concepts. I think it could also be adapted to Ruby, Python, whatever. Jason Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Karen Coyle [li...@kcoyle.net] Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 3:25 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?) On 2/18/13 12:53 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: On 2/18/2013 2:04 PM, Jason Stirnaman wrote: I've been thinking alot about how to introduce not only my kids, but some of our cataloging/technical staff to thinking programmatically or computationally[1] or whatever you want to call it. Do you have an opinion of the google 'computational thinking' curriculum pieces linked off of that page you cite? For instance, at: http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/lessons.html I looked at the Beginning Python one[1], and I have to say that any intro to programming that begins with a giant table of mathematical functions is a #FAIL. Wow - how wrong can you get it? On the other hand, I've been going through the Google online python class [2] and have found it very easy to follow (it's youtubed), and the exercises are interesting. What I want next is more exercises, and someone to talk to about any difficulties I run into. I want a hands-on hacker space learning environment that has a live expert (and you wouldn't have to be terribly expert to answer a beginner's questions). It's very hard to learn programming alone because there are always multiple ways to solve a problem, and an infinite number of places to get stuck. kc [1] http://tinyurl.com/bcj894s [2] https://developers.google.com/edu/python/ Or at: http://www.iste.org/learn/computational-thinking/ct-toolkit -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
As far as python goes, this has a quick sense of pacing, and has a lot of interactive exercises, while building something pretty useful in the end. https://www.udacity.com/ (CS101) It goes into a little bit more theory then I think is useful for some folks, but it's still a great resource. On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote: On 2/18/13 12:53 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: On 2/18/2013 2:04 PM, Jason Stirnaman wrote: I've been thinking alot about how to introduce not only my kids, but some of our cataloging/technical staff to thinking programmatically or computationally[1] or whatever you want to call it. Do you have an opinion of the google 'computational thinking' curriculum pieces linked off of that page you cite? For instance, at: http://www.google.com/edu/**computational-thinking/**lessons.htmlhttp://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/lessons.html I looked at the Beginning Python one[1], and I have to say that any intro to programming that begins with a giant table of mathematical functions is a #FAIL. Wow - how wrong can you get it? On the other hand, I've been going through the Google online python class [2] and have found it very easy to follow (it's youtubed), and the exercises are interesting. What I want next is more exercises, and someone to talk to about any difficulties I run into. I want a hands-on hacker space learning environment that has a live expert (and you wouldn't have to be terribly expert to answer a beginner's questions). It's very hard to learn programming alone because there are always multiple ways to solve a problem, and an infinite number of places to get stuck. kc [1] http://tinyurl.com/bcj894s [2] https://developers.google.com/**edu/python/https://developers.google.com/edu/python/ Or at: http://www.iste.org/learn/**computational-thinking/ct-**toolkithttp://www.iste.org/learn/computational-thinking/ct-toolkit -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
I have been writing software professionally since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kyle Banerjee Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 12:28 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? BTW, I think perl gets the short shrift as a utility language. People hate it because it's ugly, but for data manipulation and analysis, it's very practical.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:43 AM, John Fereira wrote: I have been writing software professionally since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time. I'll agree that there are a few aspects of Perl that can be confusing, as some functions will change behavior depending on context, and there was a lot of bad code examples out there.* ... but I'd recommend almost any current mainstream language before recommending that someone learn PHP. If you're looking to make web pages, learn Ruby. If you're doing data cleanup, Perl if it's lots of text, Python if it's mostly numbers. I should also mention that in the early 1990s would have been Perl 4 ... and unfortunately, most people who learned Perl never learned Perl 5. It's changed a lot over the years. (just like PHP isn't nearly as insecure as it used to be ... and actually supports placeholders so you don't end up with SQL injections) -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Jason Griffey grif...@gmail.com wrote: The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities This is what it boils down to. C4l is dominated by linux based web apps. For people in a typical office setting, the technologies these involve are a lousy place to start learning to program. What most of them need is very different than what is discussed here and it depends heavily on their use case and environment. A bit of VBA, vbs, or some proprietary scripting language that interfaces with an app they use all the time to help with a small problem is a more realistic entry point for most people. However, discussion of such things is practically nonexistent here. IMO, the first step to removing the magic around coding is to help people recognize opportunities provided by the tools they're already using every day. Once they realize there is no magic, they can pick up anything they like. kyle
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Feb 15, 2013, at 8:22 AM, Kyle Banerjee wrote: On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Jason Griffey grif...@gmail.com wrote: The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities This is what it boils down to. C4l is dominated by linux based web apps. For people in a typical office setting, the technologies these involve are a lousy place to start learning to program. What most of them need is very different than what is discussed here and it depends heavily on their use case and environment. A bit of VBA, vbs, or some proprietary scripting language that interfaces with an app they use all the time to help with a small problem is a more realistic entry point for most people. However, discussion of such things is practically nonexistent here. Well, as you mention that ... I'm one of the organizers of the DC-Baltimore Perl Workshop : http://dcbpw.org/dcbpw2013/ Last year, we targeted the beginner's track as a sort of 'Perl as a second language', assuming that you already knew the basic concepts of programming (what's a variable, an array, a function, etc.) Would it be worth us aiming for an even lower level of expertise? -Joe ps. Students the unemployed are free ... $25 before March 1st, $50 after; will be April 20th at U. Baltimore. We're also in talks with a training company to have either another track of paid training or a separate day (likely Sunday); they wouldn't necessarily be Perl-specific.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Joe Hourcle onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.govwrote: Last year, we targeted the beginner's track as a sort of 'Perl as a second language', assuming that you already knew the basic concepts of programming (what's a variable, an array, a function, etc.) Would it be worth us aiming for an even lower level of expertise? Yes. Check out Boston Python Workshop and Railsbridge, which both assume no prior expertise (e.g. you've never seen a command line), and which regularly draw dozens of attendees. --ay
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
I would suggest any attempt to teach people to code should begin with Software Carpentry http://www.software-carpentry.org/about/90seconds.html. An important point here is that there are many misconceptions about programing and teaching that won't stand up to empirical investigation. http://software-carpentry.org/4_0/softeng/ebse.html I'm afraid on that score, Perl is not a good choice for a first language (nor is VBScript or VBA). I know people won't like me for saying that but there is hope of getting past religious wars if we insist on evidence over opinion. Chris On 2/15/2013 8:59 AM, Joe Hourcle wrote: On Feb 15, 2013, at 8:22 AM, Kyle Banerjee wrote: On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Jason Griffey grif...@gmail.com wrote: The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities This is what it boils down to. C4l is dominated by linux based web apps. For people in a typical office setting, the technologies these involve are a lousy place to start learning to program. What most of them need is very different than what is discussed here and it depends heavily on their use case and environment. A bit of VBA, vbs, or some proprietary scripting language that interfaces with an app they use all the time to help with a small problem is a more realistic entry point for most people. However, discussion of such things is practically nonexistent here. Well, as you mention that ... I'm one of the organizers of the DC-Baltimore Perl Workshop : http://dcbpw.org/dcbpw2013/ Last year, we targeted the beginner's track as a sort of 'Perl as a second language', assuming that you already knew the basic concepts of programming (what's a variable, an array, a function, etc.) Would it be worth us aiming for an even lower level of expertise? -Joe ps. Students the unemployed are free ... $25 before March 1st, $50 after; will be April 20th at U. Baltimore. We're also in talks with a training company to have either another track of paid training or a separate day (likely Sunday); they wouldn't necessarily be Perl-specific.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Feb 15, 2013, at 9:00 AM, Lin, Kun wrote: Wow, Interesting. But I am not fun of Perl. Is there other workshop? I don't know of any full workshops in the area, but there are plenty of monthly or semi-monthly meetings of different groups: Python: http://dcpython.org/ R : http://www.meetup.com/R-users-DC/ Groovy: http://www.dcgroovy.org/ Drupal: http://groups.drupal.org/washington-dc-drupalers Hadoop: http://www.meetup.com/Hadoop-DC/ Ruby: http://www.dcrug.org/ ColdFusion: http://www.cfug-md.org/ For those not in this area, see: http://www.pm.org/groups/ http://wiki.python.org/moin/LocalUserGroups http://r-users-group.meetup.com/ http://groups.drupal.org/ http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/community/user-groups/ http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/User_groups http://coldfusion.meetup.com/ -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Yes please! I'd sign up in a heart beat. ___ Andrea Medina-Smith Metadata Librarian NIST Gaithersburg andrea.medina-sm...@nist.gov 301-975-2592 Be Green! Think before you print this email. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 8:59 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 15, 2013, at 8:22 AM, Kyle Banerjee wrote: On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Jason Griffey grif...@gmail.com wrote: The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities This is what it boils down to. C4l is dominated by linux based web apps. For people in a typical office setting, the technologies these involve are a lousy place to start learning to program. What most of them need is very different than what is discussed here and it depends heavily on their use case and environment. A bit of VBA, vbs, or some proprietary scripting language that interfaces with an app they use all the time to help with a small problem is a more realistic entry point for most people. However, discussion of such things is practically nonexistent here. Well, as you mention that ... I'm one of the organizers of the DC-Baltimore Perl Workshop : http://dcbpw.org/dcbpw2013/ Last year, we targeted the beginner's track as a sort of 'Perl as a second language', assuming that you already knew the basic concepts of programming (what's a variable, an array, a function, etc.) Would it be worth us aiming for an even lower level of expertise? -Joe ps. Students the unemployed are free ... $25 before March 1st, $50 after; will be April 20th at U. Baltimore. We're also in talks with a training company to have either another track of paid training or a separate day (likely Sunday); they wouldn't necessarily be Perl-specific.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Hi Chris, Well, BASIC style language is my first language. It is pretty easy for someone to start with. Kun -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Chris Gray Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 9:17 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? I would suggest any attempt to teach people to code should begin with Software Carpentry http://www.software-carpentry.org/about/90seconds.html. An important point here is that there are many misconceptions about programing and teaching that won't stand up to empirical investigation. http://software-carpentry.org/4_0/softeng/ebse.html I'm afraid on that score, Perl is not a good choice for a first language (nor is VBScript or VBA). I know people won't like me for saying that but there is hope of getting past religious wars if we insist on evidence over opinion. Chris On 2/15/2013 8:59 AM, Joe Hourcle wrote: On Feb 15, 2013, at 8:22 AM, Kyle Banerjee wrote: On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Jason Griffey grif...@gmail.com wrote: The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities This is what it boils down to. C4l is dominated by linux based web apps. For people in a typical office setting, the technologies these involve are a lousy place to start learning to program. What most of them need is very different than what is discussed here and it depends heavily on their use case and environment. A bit of VBA, vbs, or some proprietary scripting language that interfaces with an app they use all the time to help with a small problem is a more realistic entry point for most people. However, discussion of such things is practically nonexistent here. Well, as you mention that ... I'm one of the organizers of the DC-Baltimore Perl Workshop : http://dcbpw.org/dcbpw2013/ Last year, we targeted the beginner's track as a sort of 'Perl as a second language', assuming that you already knew the basic concepts of programming (what's a variable, an array, a function, etc.) Would it be worth us aiming for an even lower level of expertise? -Joe ps. Students the unemployed are free ... $25 before March 1st, $50 after; will be April 20th at U. Baltimore. We're also in talks with a training company to have either another track of paid training or a separate day (likely Sunday); they wouldn't necessarily be Perl-specific.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Great! Thanks for providing such a useful information. I was actually want to learn node.js. Anybody know anything about it? Thanks Kun Lin Catholic University of America -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 9:31 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? On Feb 15, 2013, at 9:00 AM, Lin, Kun wrote: Wow, Interesting. But I am not fun of Perl. Is there other workshop? I don't know of any full workshops in the area, but there are plenty of monthly or semi-monthly meetings of different groups: Python: http://dcpython.org/ R : http://www.meetup.com/R-users-DC/ Groovy: http://www.dcgroovy.org/ Drupal: http://groups.drupal.org/washington-dc-drupalers Hadoop: http://www.meetup.com/Hadoop-DC/ Ruby: http://www.dcrug.org/ ColdFusion: http://www.cfug-md.org/ For those not in this area, see: http://www.pm.org/groups/ http://wiki.python.org/moin/LocalUserGroups http://r-users-group.meetup.com/ http://groups.drupal.org/ http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/community/user-groups/ http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/User_groups http://coldfusion.meetup.com/ -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Folks: This 'everybody-should-learn-to-code' theme has gone around the block so many times it's amazing that it still has legs. And I still don't buy it (this was part of my keynote at C4L two years ago). I'm all for people learning to code if they want to and think it will help them. But it isn't the only thing library people need to know, and in fact, the other key skill needed is far rarer: knowledge of library data. Not all librarians or catalogers have these skills--knowing how to catalog does not necessarily translate into real knowledge of the data itself and how it is structured and how it works (and doesn't). It certainly helps to have some experience of cataloging, but is not necessarily required. Karen Coyle knows library data inside and out and has never been a cataloger. She also knows more coding than I ever will, but that combination is rare. More useful, I think, is for each side of that skills divide to value the skills of other other, and learn to work together. I've never found it necessary to take classes in coding of any kind to learn how to work with developers (which is just as well since there were few if any opportunities for me to do so). Knowing the data as well as I do gives me a very good sense of what is possible when working with a developer, and the good ones know how important my skills are. Jason Griffey spoke in this thread about 'owning your abilities'--and I think that's what I'm trying to assert here. If I were advising a new-ish librarian (and I do that regularly) I would suggest that they learn more about RDF and OWL, about vocabulary development in a variety of contexts. That's where I see the gaps, not with a dearth of librarian coders. Diane On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 9:17 AM, Andromeda Yelton andromeda.yel...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Joe Hourcle onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.govwrote: Last year, we targeted the beginner's track as a sort of 'Perl as a second language', assuming that you already knew the basic concepts of programming (what's a variable, an array, a function, etc.) Would it be worth us aiming for an even lower level of expertise? Yes. Check out Boston Python Workshop and Railsbridge, which both assume no prior expertise (e.g. you've never seen a command line), and which regularly draw dozens of attendees. --ay
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Kyle, Along those lines, I'd say the first place I started learning to be a coder was writing Excel functions. It was where I learned, in a very basic way, the ideas of looping through a set, defining and using variables and constants, etc. The first time I successfully completed an hours worth of data report drudgery in a few minutes, I was hooked. But more importantly, I started thinking differently. The data I dealt with every day suddenly became much more usable and malleable; I really understood the value of naming conventions, structured data, etc. Yes I had (and still have) a lot more to learn, but as Jonathan Rochkind puts ithttp://bibwild.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/computational-thinking-getting-started/, I had begun thinking computationally about the the everyday problems in my library. I wouldn't have self-identified as a coder then, but that shift in thinking certainly started me on the path to becoming a coder. Chad On Feb 15, 2013 8:22 AM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Jason Griffey grif...@gmail.com wrote: The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities This is what it boils down to. C4l is dominated by linux based web apps. For people in a typical office setting, the technologies these involve are a lousy place to start learning to program. What most of them need is very different than what is discussed here and it depends heavily on their use case and environment. A bit of VBA, vbs, or some proprietary scripting language that interfaces with an app they use all the time to help with a small problem is a more realistic entry point for most people. However, discussion of such things is practically nonexistent here. IMO, the first step to removing the magic around coding is to help people recognize opportunities provided by the tools they're already using every day. Once they realize there is no magic, they can pick up anything they like. kyle
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Yes. Exactly. It's like saying you can't go to the doctor or hire a lawyer without a bit of medical or law school. Doctors and lawyers need to be able to explain what they're doing. Another skill that would be useful is understanding databases, by which I do not mean learning SQL. Too many people's idea of working with data is Excel, which provides no structure for data. Type in any data in any box. There is none of the data integrity that a database requires. Here my ideal is Database Design for Mere Mortals which teaches no SQL at all but teaches how to work from data you know and use and arrive at a structure that could easily be put into a database. It's not just data, but data structure that needs to be understood. I've seen plenty of evidence that people who build commercial database-backed software don't understand database structure. Chris On 2/15/2013 9:45 AM, Diane Hillmann wrote: Folks: This 'everybody-should-learn-to-code' theme has gone around the block so many times it's amazing that it still has legs. And I still don't buy it (this was part of my keynote at C4L two years ago). I'm all for people learning to code if they want to and think it will help them. But it isn't the only thing library people need to know, and in fact, the other key skill needed is far rarer: knowledge of library data. Not all librarians or catalogers have these skills--knowing how to catalog does not necessarily translate into real knowledge of the data itself and how it is structured and how it works (and doesn't). It certainly helps to have some experience of cataloging, but is not necessarily required. Karen Coyle knows library data inside and out and has never been a cataloger. She also knows more coding than I ever will, but that combination is rare. More useful, I think, is for each side of that skills divide to value the skills of other other, and learn to work together. I've never found it necessary to take classes in coding of any kind to learn how to work with developers (which is just as well since there were few if any opportunities for me to do so). Knowing the data as well as I do gives me a very good sense of what is possible when working with a developer, and the good ones know how important my skills are. Jason Griffey spoke in this thread about 'owning your abilities'--and I think that's what I'm trying to assert here. If I were advising a new-ish librarian (and I do that regularly) I would suggest that they learn more about RDF and OWL, about vocabulary development in a variety of contexts. That's where I see the gaps, not with a dearth of librarian coders. Diane
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Adding to what Chad says, most folks I know who work in offices that have some of their functions in a computing environment (and that includes libraries) get their first taste of programming by learning how to use the macro language for whatever software supports their job. Building on that seems to me to be a great place to start. This can include (ugh!) Excel macros, then building to exporting the data and doing more free range operations, and then on to using consumer-level database technology (Filemaker, Access). I think people respond best to learning a tool with immediate application to their job rather than some abstract notion of programming. They also can more easily justify the learning time when there is an immediate application. kc On 2/15/13 7:01 AM, Chad Nelson wrote: Kyle, Along those lines, I'd say the first place I started learning to be a coder was writing Excel functions. It was where I learned, in a very basic way, the ideas of looping through a set, defining and using variables and constants, etc. The first time I successfully completed an hours worth of data report drudgery in a few minutes, I was hooked. But more importantly, I started thinking differently. The data I dealt with every day suddenly became much more usable and malleable; I really understood the value of naming conventions, structured data, etc. Yes I had (and still have) a lot more to learn, but as Jonathan Rochkind puts ithttp://bibwild.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/computational-thinking-getting-started/, I had begun thinking computationally about the the everyday problems in my library. I wouldn't have self-identified as a coder then, but that shift in thinking certainly started me on the path to becoming a coder. Chad On Feb 15, 2013 8:22 AM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Jason Griffey grif...@gmail.com wrote: The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities This is what it boils down to. C4l is dominated by linux based web apps. For people in a typical office setting, the technologies these involve are a lousy place to start learning to program. What most of them need is very different than what is discussed here and it depends heavily on their use case and environment. A bit of VBA, vbs, or some proprietary scripting language that interfaces with an app they use all the time to help with a small problem is a more realistic entry point for most people. However, discussion of such things is practically nonexistent here. IMO, the first step to removing the magic around coding is to help people recognize opportunities provided by the tools they're already using every day. Once they realize there is no magic, they can pick up anything they like. kyle -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 5:59 AM, Joe Hourcle onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov wrote: Last year, we targeted the beginner's track as a sort of 'Perl as a second language', assuming that you already knew the basic concepts of programming (what's a variable, an array, a function, etc.) Would it be worth us aiming for an even lower level of expertise? Yes. The hardest part is getting started. If you know the basic stuff, you know which questions to ask. If you don't, you won't even know what you need to figure out -- this makes the problem overwhelming. For the past few months, I've been working with someone who started out not even knowing what a variable was and had never seen a console window. Now she's using arrays, hashes, regexes, functions etc to do some really cool stuff that the uni really values. If she had only known what she needed to get started, she would have figured out everything on her own long ago. BTW, I think perl gets the short shrift as a utility language. People hate it because it's ugly, but for data manipulation and analysis, it's very practical. On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 6:45 AM, Diane Hillmann metadata.ma...@gmail.comwrote: I'm all for people learning to code if they want to and think it will help them. But it isn't the only thing library people need to know, and in fact, the other key skill needed is far rarer: knowledge of library data... ...More useful, I think, is for each side of that skills divide to value the skills of other other, and learn to work together Well put. No amount of technical skill substitutes for understanding what people are actually doing -- it's very easy to write apps that nail any set of specifications and then some but are still totally useless. Even if you never intend to do any programming, it's still useful to know how to code because it will help you know what is feasible, what questions to ask, what is feasible, and how to interpret responses. That doesn't mean you need to know any particular language. It does mean you need to grok the fundamental methodologies and constraints. Just as techies who don't understand the workflow of the people they're trying to help will have a heck of a time doing the right thing, people who don't understand anything about what others do to help them will have difficulty communicating what they need in first place. kyle
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Hi all To follow-up on some of the threads about what to learn and where and when... As a non-coder cataloguer I've found it useful to take advantage of our Lynda.com accounts here and take a few courses to fill out my understanding of what coders are doing and also to understand some concepts around databases. I use databases every day but I think we spent one class on databases back in library school (way back in 1995!). The courses are brief, concise, easy to understand and great for learning some of the jargon. I'm sure there are probably some free courses out there that do similar things. The Lynda.com ones are: Foundations of Programming: Fundamentals http://www.lynda.com/JavaScript-tutorials/Foundations-of-Programming-Fundamentals/83603-2.html Foundations of Programming: Databases http://www.lynda.com/Programming-tutorials/Foundations-Programming-Databases/112585-2.html In fact it would have been great to have done the Foundations of Programming: Databases before reading the FRBR entity-relationship model! Some people learn well from finding a problem and just doing; I learn well from having some understanding of the big picture and the vocabulary and then I know how to ask questions or where I need to focus for a specific problem. For example, I understood the Code Year stuff (http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/code-year) a lot better after taking the Lynda.com JavaScript Essential training. I needed to hear someone explain the overall concepts and why it was used in order to understand the problems that code year was throwing at me. So, depending on how you learn you may need explanations before hands-on and you made need to hear and see those explanations rather than read them. To comment on Karen's question about macros -- at the moment I do very simple ones in Macro Express for our cataloguing module but I really want to do more! Next I'm going to learn about web design, communications etc. so that I can better follow along and perhaps comment on the BIBFRAME stuff! So much fun stuff to learn. By the way, I've been away from the code4lib mailing list for a LONG time because I've had enough keeping up with autocat-l and rda-l but after following the c4l13 conference on twitter I thought I'd come back! Hoping to see some of you again if we have another Code4Lib North. Cheers, Alison Alison Hitchens Cataloguing Metadata Librarian University of Waterloo Library ahitc...@uwaterloo.ca 519-888-4567 x35980
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
I'm so glad to be seeing this conversation happening. As we're considering what things need to be taught and where and by whom, I hope LITA can be a part of this as well. I'm currently a member of the LITA Education Committee and Cody Hanson is our LITA Board liaison. We're very interested in developing more education targeted at all of the levels mentioned: librarians who might need a little more understanding of the glowing screen, beginning coders who've never seen command line and are interested in trying, intermediate people who may have some foundation but are looking for something more advanced, and especially considering the absolutely packed preconferences, some 300/graduate/advanced courses as well. As current Program Planning Chair for LITA, this summer we have a Intro to Python Preconference at ALA that Andromeda and the LITA Code Year IG has been spearheading. More details on that are coming soon on the LITA Blog and I'll try to remember to share them here. But that can only capture people who are able to attend in person in June. We have a lot of other months to reach people. If you're interested in developing something with LITA or you have an idea of someone I should contact to start building a class/workshop/etc, please contact me. -- Abigail Goben Assistant Information Services Librarian and Assistant Professor University of Illinois at Chicago Library of the Health Sciences - Chicago (M/C 763) 1750 W. Polk Street Chicago, Illinois 60612 312.996.8292
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Feb 15, 2013, at 12:27 PM, Kyle Banerjee wrote: On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 6:45 AM, Diane Hillmann metadata.ma...@gmail.comwrote: I'm all for people learning to code if they want to and think it will help them. But it isn't the only thing library people need to know, and in fact, the other key skill needed is far rarer: knowledge of library data... ...More useful, I think, is for each side of that skills divide to value the skills of other other, and learn to work together Well put. No amount of technical skill substitutes for understanding what people are actually doing -- it's very easy to write apps that nail any set of specifications and then some but are still totally useless. Even if you never intend to do any programming, it's still useful to know how to code because it will help you know what is feasible, what questions to ask, what is feasible, and how to interpret responses. That doesn't mean you need to know any particular language. It does mean you need to grok the fundamental methodologies and constraints. And the vocabulary (which Alison also mentioned, but for those who read Stranger in a Strange Land know that 'grok' was also associated with understanding the language to be able to explain what something was.) I've had *way* too many incidents where the problem was simply mis-communication because one group was using a term that had a specific meaning to the other group with some other intended meaning. I even gave a talk last year on the problem: http://www.igniteshow.com/videos/polysemous-terms-did-everyone-understand-your-message And one of the presenters earlier that night touched on the issue, for scientists talking to politicians and the public: http://www.igniteshow.com/videos/return-jedis-so-what-making-your-science-matter It takes more than just people skills to coordinate between the customers the software people.* Being able to translate between the problem domain's jargon and the programmers (possibly via some requirements language, like UML), or even just normalizing metadata between the sub-communities is probably 25-50% of my work. As a quick example, there's 'data' ... it means something completely different if you're dealing with scientists, programmers, or information scientists. For the scientists, metadata vs. data is a legitimate distinction as not all of what programmers would consider 'data' is considered to be 'scientific data'. -Joe * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGS2tKQhdhY
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Nice start on a list. I added the directory links to the wiki page for new coders. I bet there are more that could be added. http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/One_recommended_tool/resource_for_n00bs#Meetups_and_User_Groups On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 9:30 AM, Joe Hourcle onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.govwrote: On Feb 15, 2013, at 9:00 AM, Lin, Kun wrote: Wow, Interesting. But I am not fun of Perl. Is there other workshop? I don't know of any full workshops in the area, but there are plenty of monthly or semi-monthly meetings of different groups: Python: http://dcpython.org/ R : http://www.meetup.com/R-users-DC/ Groovy: http://www.dcgroovy.org/ Drupal: http://groups.drupal.org/washington-dc-drupalers Hadoop: http://www.meetup.com/Hadoop-DC/ Ruby: http://www.dcrug.org/ ColdFusion: http://www.cfug-md.org/ For those not in this area, see: http://www.pm.org/groups/ http://wiki.python.org/moin/LocalUserGroups http://r-users-group.meetup.com/ http://groups.drupal.org/ http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/community/user-groups/ http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/User_groups http://coldfusion.meetup.com/ -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
If you want to call yourself a librarian, just do it. There's no pope of librarianship to tell you otherwise. On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332 -- Sent from my GMail account.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
I dub thee...LIBRARIAN!! If it looks like a librarian, and talks like a librarian, and does librarian stuff, then I'd say it is one :) Michele -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Devon Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 10:10 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? If you want to call yourself a librarian, just do it. There's no pope of librarianship to tell you otherwise. On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Feb 14, 2013, at 8:57 AM, Karen Coyle wrote: EVERYONE should know some code. see: http://laboratorium.net/archive/2013/01/16/my_career_as_a_bulk_downloader But it's hard to find the classes that teach coding for everyone. This would be a good thing for c4l'ers to do in their institutions. How to write the short script you need to do something practical. Also, how to throw a few things into a database so you can re-munge it or explore some connections. We need those classes. We need to turn a room in the library into a hacker space for the staff. A learning lab. I just realized that the e-mails from Chris Erdmann a couple of weeks back were *not* on code4lib ... he's running a class on programming for librarians (specifically for processing data), and in a couple of weeks, they're going to have a workshop on interfaces at Harvard. See below. Also, a blog post from last month arguing that all librarians should know how to program: http://altbibl.io/dst4l/109/ -Joe ps. personally, I *hate* the term coder ... one, it make me think 'code monkey', and what I do is much more involved than that (analyst, architect, sysadmin, dba, programing, debugging, tech support, etc.). If I had a MLS, I might be a 'Systems Librarian', but I have a MIM (Info. Management ... still an LIS degree, but not the same accreditation); It's still easier to tell the library community that's what I am, and it's easier to explain what I do to the science by telling them I'm a 'data librarian'.* Two, 'coding' is a relatively minor skill. It's like putting 'typist' as a job title, because you use your keyboard a lot at work. Figuring out what needs to be written/typed/coded is more important than the actual writing aspect of it. As for titles, over the years, I've had the job title of : Programmer/Analyst Systems Analyst Software Engineer UNIX Engineer Multimedia Applications Analyst Short Guy with Beard (which was only funny because there was a much shorter guy with a more impressive beard) Web Developer Webmaster (back when it meant the person who administered the service, not the person who made the website) System Administrator ... etc. (I've had a lot as the university I worked at tied titles to pay rate, so every promotion required getting new business cards; right now, I work for a contractor, and the contractor gives me different titles than what NASA has me down as ... it's important what roles that I play, and the work that I do than what category someone's lumped me in. If you're going to insist on it, I'd rather it be broad, like 'techie' than just a 'coder'.) * and to make it more confusing, my company's title for me is 'Principal Software Engineer', but I don't meet the requirements to be an engineer. I went to an ABET accredited engineering program, but never took the EIT/FE or PE tests. So I try to avoid the 'engineer' titles, too. Begin forwarded message: From: cerdm...@cfa.harvard.edu Date: February 7, 2013 6:57:37 AM EST To: pam...@listserv.nd.edu Subject: [PAMNET] Liberact Workshop and Data Scientist Training for Librarians Reply-To: cerdm...@cfa.harvard.edu Good morning! Just a reminder to those thinking about interactive technologies in libraries, this workshop may be of interest: http://altbibl.io/liberact/ Also, we just started a course called Data Scientist Training for Librarians. Follow along here: http://altbibl.io/dst4l/blog/ Please forward to interested colleagues. Best regards, Christopher Erdmann, Head Librarian Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Begin forwarded message: From: cerdm...@cfa.harvard.edu Date: January 25, 2013 5:06:58 PM EST To: pam...@listserv.nd.edu Subject: [PAMNET] Liberact Workshop Feb 28 - Mar 1 @ Harvard Reply-To: cerdm...@cfa.harvard.edu To individuals interested in interactive technologies in libraries, this event is for you. The Liberact Workshop aims to bring librarians and developers together to discuss and brainstorm interactive, gesture-based systems for library settings. An array of gesture-based technologies will be demonstrated on the first day with presentations, brainstorming and discussions taking place on the second day. The workshop will be held at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and takes place February 28 - March 1. Visit the Liberact Workshop website to learn more: http://altbibl.io/liberact To register, visit the Eventbrite page for the workshop: https://liberact.eventbrite.com We hope you will join us! Christopher Erdmann, Martin Schreiner, Lynn Schmelz, Susan Berstler, Paul Worster, Enrique Diaz, Lynn Sayers, Michael Leach
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 10:30 AM, Joe Hourcle onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov wrote: Two, 'coding' is a relatively minor skill. It's like putting 'typist' as a job title, because you use your keyboard a lot at work. Figuring out what needs to be written/typed/coded is more important than the actual writing aspect of it. Any skill is minor if you already have it. :-) As others have pointed out, learning even a tiny, tiny bit of code is a huge benefit for librarians. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities. Just understanding the logic behind code means that librarians have a better understanding of what falls into the possible and impossible categories for doing stuff with a computer and anything that grounds decision making in the possible is AWESOME. The presentation that started this discussion (Andromeda's lightning talk) had a lot of other undercurrents in it, but a large part of it comes back to impostor syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) and owning your own abilities. Librarians are, by and large, a quiet and understated lot, and that rarely does us favors when it comes to people understanding what we do and our actual talents and skills. Jason
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Good points. One could make the argument that reductive logic is a core skill for both coders and librarians. Thanks, Cary On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Jason Griffey grif...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 10:30 AM, Joe Hourcle onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov wrote: Two, 'coding' is a relatively minor skill. It's like putting 'typist' as a job title, because you use your keyboard a lot at work. Figuring out what needs to be written/typed/coded is more important than the actual writing aspect of it. Any skill is minor if you already have it. :-) As others have pointed out, learning even a tiny, tiny bit of code is a huge benefit for librarians. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities. Just understanding the logic behind code means that librarians have a better understanding of what falls into the possible and impossible categories for doing stuff with a computer and anything that grounds decision making in the possible is AWESOME. The presentation that started this discussion (Andromeda's lightning talk) had a lot of other undercurrents in it, but a large part of it comes back to impostor syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) and owning your own abilities. Librarians are, by and large, a quiet and understated lot, and that rarely does us favors when it comes to people understanding what we do and our actual talents and skills. Jason -- Cary Gordon The Cherry Hill Company http://chillco.com
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
I usually say I am a technologist. Even though I used to be a software engineer (in industry, where it occasionally resembled engineering, for better and worse), as a manager I don't look at or write much code any more, but I am still a technologist. And in some contexts I claim to be a user experience person. Though I have worked in library technology for over ten years, I don't have the degree or the job classification (nor indeed the desire) to be called a librarian. In my work context, at least, it would be a misrepresentation. YMMV, Mark On 2/13/13 7:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Or systems thinking - I'm a coder and one of my primary mentors was a librarian. We share more passions than differences - about information, structure, pattern, detail - and about making libraries better for everyone. - Mark Mark Bussey Data Curation Experts m...@curationexperts.com 612.524.8484 On Feb 14, 2013, at 9:52 AM, Cary Gordon wrote: Good points. One could make the argument that reductive logic is a core skill for both coders and librarians. Thanks, Cary On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Jason Griffey grif...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 10:30 AM, Joe Hourcle onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov wrote: Two, 'coding' is a relatively minor skill. It's like putting 'typist' as a job title, because you use your keyboard a lot at work. Figuring out what needs to be written/typed/coded is more important than the actual writing aspect of it. Any skill is minor if you already have it. :-) As others have pointed out, learning even a tiny, tiny bit of code is a huge benefit for librarians. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities. Just understanding the logic behind code means that librarians have a better understanding of what falls into the possible and impossible categories for doing stuff with a computer and anything that grounds decision making in the possible is AWESOME. The presentation that started this discussion (Andromeda's lightning talk) had a lot of other undercurrents in it, but a large part of it comes back to impostor syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) and owning your own abilities. Librarians are, by and large, a quiet and understated lot, and that rarely does us favors when it comes to people understanding what we do and our actual talents and skills. Jason -- Cary Gordon The Cherry Hill Company http://chillco.com
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Hello, It now seems that the Librarian of Congress is the Pope of Librarianship Thanks, Cornel Darden Jr. MSLIS Librarian Kennedy-King College City Colleges of Chicago Work 773-602-5449 Cell 708-705-2945 On Feb 14, 2013, at 9:09 AM, Devon dec...@gmail.com wrote: If you want to call yourself a librarian, just do it. There's no pope of librarianship to tell you otherwise. On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332 -- Sent from my GMail account.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Cornel Darden Jr. corneldarde...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, It now seems that the Librarian of Congress is the Pope of Librarianship methinks not as the Bodleian predates the LoC by a small amount :) http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/about/history Dave Caroline Thanks, Cornel Darden Jr. MSLIS Librarian Kennedy-King College City Colleges of Chicago Work 773-602-5449 Cell 708-705-2945 On Feb 14, 2013, at 9:09 AM, Devon dec...@gmail.com wrote: If you want to call yourself a librarian, just do it. There's no pope of librarianship to tell you otherwise. On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332 -- Sent from my GMail account.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Even though I did not attend the conference, I have had this same conversation many times with people trying to describe what I do.Systems Specialist (my actual job title) I also think is appropriate for the job many of us do, but is highly confusing (even to some of the staff I work with). System Developer I think fits for some when working with a multitude of systems within a library and is easier to understand. My favorite though is just Library IT - to me it is simple, all-encompassing, and because I do not have an MLIS(or similar) degree I do not run the risk of snubbing actual Librarians by calling myself one. One of the problems I think that technology staff in a library face, as far as a title or descriptor goes, is that having a technology degree really does not confer meaningful titles unless you are working with something specific - you *can* be a programmer or a developer or even more specific a web developer but when you work with a mix of things like web programming, administrating and supporting an ILS system, general technical support, and project manager you get more into general technologist territory, and there really in my opinion anyway, no single way to describe that. Sorry if this was tl;dr - I went on a bit of a ramble and couldn't stop myself :) David M. South Library Systems Specialist Pumerantz Library Western University of Health Sciences 909.469.8229 dso...@westernu.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Maccabee Levine Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 4:23 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
I too am a Library Systems Specialist and I think that title fits perfectly well to the job I do. When I took on the position in the first place I assumed it was just about fixing things, wrong! I have had to learn a lot of 'Librarian' type stuff in order to be in a position to advise my director in IT related issues. I also need to understand what Librarians and Circ staff do in order to provide them with the services they need to do their jobs. So although I am an IT Systems guy as per job title I also look at myself as a library person without the title. Stuart Forrest PhD, ACM Member Library Systems Specialist Beaufort County Library Beaufort SC 29902 843 255 6450 sforr...@bcgov.net http://www.beaufortcountylibrary.org/ For Learning, For Leisure, For Life. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of David South Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 12:11 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? Even though I did not attend the conference, I have had this same conversation many times with people trying to describe what I do.Systems Specialist (my actual job title) I also think is appropriate for the job many of us do, but is highly confusing (even to some of the staff I work with). System Developer I think fits for some when working with a multitude of systems within a library and is easier to understand. My favorite though is just Library IT - to me it is simple, all-encompassing, and because I do not have an MLIS(or similar) degree I do not run the risk of snubbing actual Librarians by calling myself one. One of the problems I think that technology staff in a library face, as far as a title or descriptor goes, is that having a technology degree really does not confer meaningful titles unless you are working with something specific - you *can* be a programmer or a developer or even more specific a web developer but when you work with a mix of things like web programming, administrating and supporting an ILS system, general technical support, and project manager you get more into general technologist territory, and there really in my opinion anyway, no single way to describe that. Sorry if this was tl;dr - I went on a bit of a ramble and couldn't stop myself :) David M. South Library Systems Specialist Pumerantz Library Western University of Health Sciences 909.469.8229 dso...@westernu.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Maccabee Levine Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 4:23 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Nuh-uh, remember that whole Reformation thing? On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 11:51 AM, Dave Caroline dave.thearchiv...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Cornel Darden Jr. corneldarde...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, It now seems that the Librarian of Congress is the Pope of Librarianship methinks not as the Bodleian predates the LoC by a small amount :) http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/about/history Dave Caroline Thanks, Cornel Darden Jr. MSLIS Librarian Kennedy-King College City Colleges of Chicago Work 773-602-5449 Cell 708-705-2945 On Feb 14, 2013, at 9:09 AM, Devon dec...@gmail.com wrote: If you want to call yourself a librarian, just do it. There's no pope of librarianship to tell you otherwise. On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332 -- Sent from my GMail account.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Thu, 14 Feb 2013, Jason Griffey wrote: On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 10:30 AM, Joe Hourcle onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov wrote: Two, 'coding' is a relatively minor skill. It's like putting 'typist' as a job title, because you use your keyboard a lot at work. Figuring out what needs to be written/typed/coded is more important than the actual writing aspect of it. Any skill is minor if you already have it. :-) As others have pointed out, learning even a tiny, tiny bit of code is a huge benefit for librarians. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how code translates into instructions for the magic glowing screen they look at all day. Even a tiny bit of empowerment in that arena can make huge differences in productivity and communication abilities. Just understanding the logic behind code means that librarians have a better understanding of what falls into the possible and impossible categories for doing stuff with a computer and anything that grounds decision making in the possible is AWESOME. It's true ... and learning lots of different programming languages makes you think about the problem in different ways* But equally important is knowing that's it's just one tool. It's like the quote, 'when you have a hammer, everything's a nail'. ... and more often than people realize, the correct answer is not to write code, or to write less of it. I remember once, I had inherited a project where they were doing this really complex text parsing, and we'd spend a month or so of man-hours on it each year. My manager quit, so I got to meet with the 'customer'.** I told her some of the more problematic bits, and some of them were things that she hadn't liked, so used it to push back and get things changed upstream. The next year, I was able to shave a week off the turn-around time. For the last few years, I've been dealing with software that someone wrote when what they *should* have done was survey what was out there, and figure out which one met their needs, and if necessary, adapt it slightly. Instead, they wrote massive complex systems that was unnecessary. And now we've got to support it, as there isn't the funding to convert it all over to something that has a broad community of support. (and I guess that's one of my issues against 'coders' ... anyone who writes code should be required to support it, too ... I've done the 'developer', 'sysadmin' and 'helpdesk' roles individually ... and when some developer makes a change that causes you to get 2am wakeup calls when the server crashes every night for two weeks straight,*** but they of course can't roll back, because 'but it's in production now, as it passed our testing'.) -Joe ps. I like Stuart's 'Library Systems Specialist' title for those who actually work in libraries. pps. Yes, I should actually be writing code right now. * procedural, functional, OO, ... I still haven't wrapped my head around this whole 'noSQL' movement, and I used to manage LDAP servers and *love* heirarchical databases. (even tried to push for its use in our local registry ... I got shot down by the others on the project). ** we were generating an HTML version of the schedule of classes based on the export generated from QuarkXPress, which was used to typeset the book. The biggest problem was dealing with a department code that had an ampersand in it, and the hack that we did to the lexer to deal with it doubled the time of each run. (and they made enough changes year-to-year that the previous year's script never worked right out the bat, so we'd have to run it, verify, tweak the code, re-run, etc.) *** they never actually fixed the problem. I put in (coded?) a watchdog script that'd check every 60 sec. if ColdFusion was down, and if so, start it back up again. So only the times when the config got corrupted did I have to manually intervene. By the time I was fired (long story, unrelated), it was crashing 5-10 times a day.
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Andreas Orphanides akorp...@ncsu.eduwrote: Nuh-uh, remember that whole Reformation thing? You nailed *what* to the door?
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
I just say I work in libraries -- that describes anyone with or without the degree. It's not as concise, but it conveys the right idea. I see no reason to preface anything you say with what you don't have. If people require your resume to decide if your ideas are any good, it's just not a good sign. kyle On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
I'm not in Chicago, and I didn't see this talk, so maybe I'm way off base, but isn't a coder a programmer, or even a software engineer? Last time I checked, programmer/software engineer is a clear, well-established and well-respected occupation (and generally far better paid than most Librarians, at least outside of the library world). Why can't library coders claim the title of programmer/software engineer? Truly curious, Shirley On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Hello, I think all Librarians should know some code. What ever happened to the polymath distinction that came along with the territory, for librarians. And now that information science has been included, along with an information environment that will be dominated by everything digital; how can we continue in this profession without knowing how to code. I think many are against the idea because they don't want to learn or even feel they can't. Thanks, Cornel Darden Jr. MSLIS Librarian Kennedy-King College City Colleges of Chicago Work 773-602-5449 Cell 708-705-2945 On Feb 13, 2013, at 7:33 PM, Shirley Lincicum shirley.linci...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not in Chicago, and I didn't see this talk, so maybe I'm way off base, but isn't a coder a programmer, or even a software engineer? Last time I checked, programmer/software engineer is a clear, well-established and well-respected occupation (and generally far better paid than most Librarians, at least outside of the library world). Why can't library coders claim the title of programmer/software engineer? Truly curious, Shirley On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Shirley, I would hesitantly call myself a coder. I would _never_ call myself a software engineer. I am also a librarian. I think what Andromeda was probably arguing (not that I would deign to put words in her mouth) was that we should get over our imposter syndrome and stand up for our skills. Jason On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 7:33 PM, Shirley Lincicum shirley.linci...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not in Chicago, and I didn't see this talk, so maybe I'm way off base, but isn't a coder a programmer, or even a software engineer? Last time I checked, programmer/software engineer is a clear, well-established and well-respected occupation (and generally far better paid than most Librarians, at least outside of the library world). Why can't library coders claim the title of programmer/software engineer? Truly curious, Shirley On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
If a person writes programs -- code, then one is a coder. It's as simple as that, whether one has a computer science degree or not. I have always been puzzled by the self-consciousness betraying a lack of confidence that librarians suffer about what they do. Is Librarianship a profession? seems to be a perpetually unanswered question that I have never seen anywhere else. Chemists, doctors and lawyers don't seem to have this sort of second guessing themselves about what they do. Why should those in the library profession? Andromeda's short presentation was a good one. Peter -Original Message- From: Jason Griffey grif...@gmail.com Sent: Feb 13, 2013 8:44 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? Shirley, I would hesitantly call myself a coder. I would _never_ call myself a software engineer. I am also a librarian. I think what Andromeda was probably arguing (not that I would deign to put words in her mouth) was that we should get over our imposter syndrome and stand up for our skills. Jason On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 7:33 PM, Shirley Lincicum shirley.linci...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not in Chicago, and I didn't see this talk, so maybe I'm way off base, but isn't a coder a programmer, or even a software engineer? Last time I checked, programmer/software engineer is a clear, well-established and well-respected occupation (and generally far better paid than most Librarians, at least outside of the library world). Why can't library coders claim the title of programmer/software engineer? Truly curious, Shirley On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332
Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
Shambrarian: Someone who knows enough truth about how libraries really work, but not enough to go insane or be qualified as a real librarian. (See more at http://m.urbandictionary.com/#define?term=Shambrarian) More information available at http://shambrarian.org/ And Dave Pattern has published a handy guide to Librarian/Shambrarian interactions (DO NOT bore the librarian by showing them your Roy Tennant Fan Club membership card) http://daveyp.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/librarianshambrarian-venn-diagram/ Tongue firmly in cheek, Owen On 14 Feb 2013, at 00:22, Maccabee Levine levi...@uwosh.edu wrote: Andromeda's talk this afternoon really struck a chord, as I shared with her afterwards, because I have the same issue from the other side of the fence. I'm among the 1/3 of the crowd today with a CS degree and and IT background (and no MLS). I've worked in libraries for years, but when I have a point to make about how technology can benefit instruction or reference or collection development, I generally preface it with I'm not a librarian, but I shouldn't have to be defensive about that. Problem is, 'coder' doesn't imply a particular degree -- just the experience from doing the task, and as Andromeda said, she and most C4Lers definitely are coders. But 'librarian' *does* imply MLS/MSLS/etc., and I respect that. What's a library word I can use in the same way as coder? Maccabee -- Maccabee Levine Head of Library Technology Services University of Wisconsin Oshkosh levi...@uwosh.edu 920-424-7332
