Collecting my attempts to improve at tech, art, and life
Posts in which I hoped to teach and/or learn something, usually computer-related.
Jul 11, 2016
Programming · perl · dancer · learn ·
The PerlDancer team's Dancer2 project is a Perl framework for writing Web applications with less boilerplate code than other Web frameworks. I am slowly exploring what it offers. Feel free to follow along.
Python 2 Babysteps 01 Installing Python 2
Jun 16, 2011 (Updated Jun 21, 2011)
Coolnamehere · python · learn ·
Think of this as Step Zero for the other Python tutorials out there.
Parrot Babysteps 0e - Parrot Namespaces
Oct 11, 2010
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 14 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 0d - The SpaceTrade Project
Aug 2, 2010 (Updated Aug 30, 2010)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 13 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 0c - The Stellar App
Jul 15, 2010 (Updated Jul 15, 2010)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn · space ·
This is part 12 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 0b - Subroutine Params
Jun 15, 2010 (Updated Apr 11, 2011)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 11 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 0a - The Stellar Project
Jun 2, 2010 (Updated Apr 12, 2011)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn · space ·
This is part 10 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 09 - Simple Projects
Apr 29, 2010 (Updated Apr 12, 2011)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 9 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 08 - Testing With Test::More
Dec 16, 2009 (Updated Apr 12, 2011)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 8 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Co-written by Jonathan “Duke” Leto, Parrot core developer and author of Tapir.
Parrot Babysteps 07 - Writing Subroutines
Oct 6, 2009 (Updated Apr 12, 2011)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 7 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 06 - Files and Hashes
Oct 2, 2009 (Updated Apr 12, 2011)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn · space ·
This is part 6 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
This one’s a bit more bloggy than the earlier steps, but that’s just the mood I was in when writing it. You can ignore the commentary and focus on the code if that’s your preference.
Parrot Babysteps 05 - More About Arrays
Sep 29, 2009 (Updated Feb 12, 2010)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 5 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 04 - Adding Command Line Arguments
Sep 17, 2009 (Updated Jul 21, 2010)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 4 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 03 - Simple Control Structures
Sep 11, 2009 (Updated Feb 12, 2010)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 3 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 01 - Getting Started
Jul 12, 2009 (Updated Apr 11, 2011)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 1 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Parrot Babysteps 02 - Variables and Types
Jul 11, 2009 (Updated Jul 21, 2010)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is part 2 of Parrot Babysteps, my ongoing Parrot PIR tutorial.
Jul 11, 2009 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere · perl · learn ·
Nice work! You have begun to learn Perl by writing a complete program which gets input from a user and prints output including a modified version of their input. Yes, there is much more to learn, but you have dipped your toes into the pool. Now you can go out there and start learning about the huge and wild world of Perl programming!
Jul 10, 2009 (Updated May 13, 2019)
Coolnamehere [Parrot Babysteps] · parrot · learn ·
This is the introduction to Parrot Babysteps, my archived Parrot PIR tutorial.
Perl 5 Babysteps 02 - User Input
May 5, 2009 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere · perl · learn ·
Having a program that displays the exact same message every time you
run is nice when it comes to being consistent, but not so entertaining
as a program. “What does it do?” “It prints out my name.” “Oh.”
Let’s make things a little more interesting. We could change the value
of $name in the code, but it might be a little tiresome to do this before
showing it to each new person. How about making the program ask for a name?
User interaction - a neat idea.
Jun 16, 2007 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere · perl · learn ·
I have heard first-time Perl programmers complain about the lack of documentation. This is understandable. They don’t know all the nifty stuff that comes with the standard Perl distribution.
Python Interactive Fiction - 03 Handling Multiple Turns
Jun 14, 2007 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [Python Interactive Fiction] · python · ifiction · learn ·
This is Part 3 of an ongoing series about writing interactive fiction games in Python. By the end of Part 2 we had created a text-based user interface and explored one way of storing multiple scenes. This part will finally bring the needed glue for the player to move between all of the scenes in the story. In other words, we’ll have a game!
Python Interactive Fiction - 02 Tying the Scenes Together
Apr 20, 2007 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [Python Interactive Fiction] · python · ifiction · learn ·
This is the second part of an ongoing series about using Python to create interactive fiction. I hope to show you one fun use of Python while teaching you more about the basics of this language. We started by defining how our game was going to work and creating a set of scenes for play. Next we wrote the code to handle a single round of the game. Today we are going to tie all of our scenes together to make a complete, playable game of interactive fiction. We are going to approach it from an experimental view, playing with different approaches until we find one that makes us happy. Well, one that makes me happy.
Python Interactive Fiction - 01 Handling a Single Round
Apr 19, 2007 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [Python Interactive Fiction] · python · ifiction · learn ·
I think the next step is to write the code for a single round of the game. We’ll limit ourselves to Scene 1 to stay focussed.
Interactive Fiction with Python
Apr 18, 2007 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [Python Interactive Fiction] · python · ifiction · learn ·
The idea for this article came from a coolnamehere reader named Laura. Thanks, Laura! I was looking for good Python ideas.
Mar 17, 2006 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere · xml · learn ·
A mountain of standards and specifications have piled on top of XML over the years, but the core language is still pretty easy to get started in. Because it is a markup language rather than a programming language, there aren’t as many new concepts to learn. If you’ve learned HTML in the past, then XML will be familiar.
REBOL Babysteps - 04 Repeating Yourself
Mar 7, 2005 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [REBOL Babysteps] · rebol · learn ·
Now we know how to do things, and we know how to choose whether or not we will do something. We’re getting close to having some real skills. We just need to get the understanding of one more concept before we reach the first little plateau of programming knowledge. We need to learn how to do a task more than once. Well, besides just running the script again, but that doesn’t really count.
Monitor Your Battery Life With REBOL
Feb 28, 2005 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere · rebol · learn ·
One thing you like to keep track of on your laptop is how much juice is left in your battery. There’s nothing quite like being in the middle of some insane hacking session and watching as the computer suddenly gets tired and blacks out on you. Of course, I’ve already got a handy battery monitor in my KDE panel, but what if I’m not in KDE? Okay, okay, there are handy battery monitors for nearly every desktop environment out there. That’s not my point, though. My point is that I’d like to explore some basic system stuff using REBOL on an Ubuntu 8.10 system. Got it? Okay, good. Now that we’ve settled this little detail, let’s move on.
REBOL Babysteps - 03 Making Decisions
Feb 27, 2005 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [REBOL Babysteps] · rebol · learn ·
In part 1 I gave you a first cautious glance at the REBOL programming language. In part 2 I extended that glance to a peek at the excellent REBOL/View GUI library. Let’s continue learning how to program with Rebol. Today I want to get you started with some structured programming by introducing you to selection structures. Selection structures make it possible to decide whether or not to do something based on a test. Here are a few uses for a simple selection structure.
Perl 5 Babysteps 01 - Getting Started
Jan 4, 2005 (Updated Aug 25, 2011)
Coolnamehere · perl · learn ·
This is part 1 of my ongoing series of Perl Babysteps.
Jan 4, 2005 (Updated Aug 25, 2011)
Coolnamehere · perl · learn ·
Let’s admit it. Perl is everywhere. It powers most of the Internet, in one form or another. What? Your site doesn’t use Perl and CGI? Well, what about the administrative scripts that keep it running smoothly when everyone is snug in their beds? Even a fair chunk of Microsoft IIS servers rely on Perl for administrative tasks. I’m not saying that Perl is being used on every site on the Internet, including yours. I’m saying that Perl is probably being used on any random site you happen to look at on the Internet, including yours.
REBOL Babysteps - 01 Getting Started
Dec 26, 2004 (Updated Apr 9, 2017)
Coolnamehere [REBOL Babysteps] · rebol · learn ·
REBOL is the “Relative Expression-Based Object Language”, and it was developed by Carl Sassenrath. Who is Carl Sassenrath? Why, he’s one of the people responsible for the amazing operating system which powered the Amiga computer. What’s the Amiga? Why, the Amiga was only the incredibly robust and cool computer released by the same company that brought the world’s first personal computer, Commodore. What’s Commodore? Stop bothering me, kid. Just take it from a relative old-timer: the Amiga put a whole heck of a lot of power into a consumer-affordable personal computer, and it wasn’t really matched by other computers for a good five or ten years. Nowadays, I look at REBOL and it feels like the first language I’ve come across to take lessons from past languages and apply them in a new context, rather than just reimplement them with different syntax.
REBOL Babysteps - 02 Getting Started With View
Dec 26, 2004 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [REBOL Babysteps] · rebol · learn ·
I’m sure you thought that getting started was fun, but it really didn’t do anything to show off REBOL. I’d like to go through almost exactly the same process, but this time focussing my attention on REBOL/View. So let’s give it a try!
Dec 25, 2004 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [REBOL Babysteps] · rebol · learn ·
Oct 1, 2004 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere · ruby · learn ·
Thanks to everybody for the positive feedback on the first MIRE. I still have your attention, so I’ll move on to my next exercise. This one is a little more involved than the first, but bear with me - the results should be worth it.
Jul 11, 2004 (Updated Jul 11, 2004)
Coolnamehere · python · learn ·
There are several different approaches to programming, but the one that is easiest for me to grasp is imperative programming. The imperative approach allows you to tell the computer exactly what you want it to do and how you want it done. The best analogy I can think of is a cooking recipe. You have a list of ingredients and a specific set of instructions to follow. Veer from the recipe and you may not be happy with the results. Veer too far from the recipe and your house could burn down.
Mar 10, 2004 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere · ruby · web · learn ·
This article is intended to provide a casual introduction the CGI programming with the Ruby language. You won’t be an expert when you are done, but you will certainly be ready to explore more on your own, and maybe delve into becoming a Ruby/CGI expert.
Ruby Babysteps 01 - First Steps
Jun 23, 2003 (Updated Apr 9, 2017)
Coolnamehere · ruby · learn ·
Ruby is an exciting language with a huge number of features that appeal to advanced programmers. You should not let that intimidate you, though. The language is very easy to get started with, and you can work your way into the more arcane corners.
Jun 12, 2002 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere · python · learn ·
Ok, it’s been over a year since the first step of my Python Babysteps Tutorial. It’s about time to dig a little deeper.
Jan 17, 2001 (Updated Apr 9, 2017)
Coolnamehere · python · learn ·
This is my original Python Babysteps tutorial, which has existed in more or less the same form since 2001. I’ve finally committed to writing a better version