Best Programming and Computer Quotes and Sayings

Few weeks ago, I was tweeting a lot of programming quotes and sayings I was reading elsewhere in different websites. I thought why not post all those fantastic cool and funny quotes about computer and programming here so here comes this new blog post. Come and read this quotes once you have finished the overloaded tiresome session of writing technologies :D.

Open source is not communism because it does not force people. --Eric S Raymond in Revolution OS

Wozniak designed Apple II. Ken designed Lisa. Jef Raskin designed Macintosh. Sanders designed Apple III. What did Jobs design? Nothing.

Real programmers don't code in BASIC. Actually, no programmers code in BASIC after reaching puberty.

Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OSs is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.

"I won't program in java anymore. I'm not Marxist and don't believe in classes." --phluid

Knowing what not to use is far better than knowing what to use in programming languages.

A professional programmer is an amateur who never quits. --Morendil

“If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.” – E. Dijkstra

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. -Martin Fowler

One man’s crappy software is another man’s full time job.

The best thing about a boolean is: even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.

A documented bug is not a bug; it is a feature.

C++, where friends can access your privates.

"It's hard enough to find an error in your code when you're looking for it; it's even harder when you've assumed your code is error-free." - Steve McConnell

"The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time." - Tom Cargill

"Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves." - Alan Kay

Amazon became no.1 shopping site coz in the days b4 search giant Google existed,Yahoo would list the sites in their directory alphabetically

"I’ve finally learned what ‘upward compatible’ means. It means we get to keep all our old mistakes."

There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses.

Windows NT addresses 2 Gigabytes of RAM, which is more than any application will ever need. --Microsoft Corporation in 1992 :D

Please contribute some you know or you've heard recently :D

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First Thing To Try When Encountered An Odd Error In Eclipse

Hi everybody, this is always worth trying when you encounter some unknown and odd error while developing applications with Eclipse IDE. You may encounter errors even though every line of your code is syntactically correct and still you can't find what exactly is the error. Sometimes you might spend hours trying to find error but actually there might be no error in your application.

To clean the current project in Eclipse, go to Project -> Clean and it will clean all the compiled stuffs and will give you a fresh start for the compilation. Keep in mind this little trick and you might find useful several times while you are working on Eclipse.


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Common Programming Mistakes Beginner Programmers Do

The beginner programmers make some common mistakes which might be due to the lack of practice and deeper understanding of the language syntax and semantics. Here I am listing some of the common programming mistakes every programmer does when s/he is beginner or new to programming.

Mistake #1: Lack of code modularization
Many beginners just write everything within the main function and end up repeating many statements again and again. Rather than having everything within a single main function, you could separate the certain logic in a separate module known as function and then just call that function when needed. If you haven't heard about function, start with google and learn to write some. You'll not regret learning to make functions.

Mistake #2: Another common mistake is not indenting(Read the section Indentation in programming in wikipedia entry) your code and not writing the proper comments in the places wherever necessary. Lack of proper indentation and comments reduce readability. While many compilers and interpreters do not take care about the indentation and comments, human eyes find it easy to understand the properly indented and commented code. Also, some languages such as python rely on indentation where indentation is a must.

Mistake #3: Another common mistake is to use '=' instead of '=='. I've seen this mistake in a lot of codes done by my beginner friends usually in the conditional statements(such as if else) thus resulting in a completely wrong output many times. FYI, '=' is the assignment operator while '==' is the is equal to operator. Note that when '=' is used, the variable on left side of '=' gets set to the value of the expression on the rights. The assignment operator changes the variable on the left to have a new value, while the equal operator '==' tests for equality and returns true or false.

Mistake #4: Integer and float division is also another common mistake every beginner programmer happens to do. In the language like C, the division such as 5/10 will result in 0 since 5 and 10 both are integers and integer division is done. This might lead to mathematical errors in programming. So be sure to typecast the variables to the proper data type before performing division.

Mistake #5: Another common mistake is the use of uninitialized variables. Beginners forget to assign the values to the variables thus giving unexpected outputs such as garbage values in C. Some languages provide default values (such as 0 or null) for uninitialized variables but still using uninitialized variable is a mistake to avoid. Also, many forget to declare the variables thus producing compiler error.

Mistake #6: Another mistake is to compare the strings in C(strings in C are array of characters) using the is equal to '==' operator. Note that string comparison in C requires use of the library functions such as strcmp(), strcmpi() and their safe alternatives such as strncmp() and strncmpi(). Btw, do not use strcmp() and strcmpi() since they do not check length thus might lead to overflow.

Mistake #7: Using wrong range of array indices is also another common mistakes the beginners do. For example, an array of size 10 should be accessed using indices from 0 to 9, not from 1 to 10. Also, some other languages such as Matlab and Fortran, indices will go from 1 to 10. Just make sure you understand the specifications of the language you are learning.

Mistake #8: Using function calls within the looping condition is another mistake. Lets take an example of the following code snippet:

for (i = 0; i < strlen(str); i++) { //do something }

In each iteration, the strlen() function is being called which can slow down your program. So always avoid such calls within the looping conditions.

int len = strlen(str);
for (i = 0; i < len; i++) { //do something }

Mistake #9: Another mistake is the use of insecure and vulnerable functions. If you are going to use certain function, always make a deep study about it to know whether it is secure or not and if it is not secure, search for its secure alternative. Buffer overflows are one of the things you should always try to prevent. Also, if you are doing PHP or other web-based language, always use the safe functions to avoid common security issues such as SQL Injection, Cross Site Scripting, etc. Always research to write secure codes so that you can prevent hackers breaking your code.

Mistake #10: Finally, beginners tend to leave what they are doing if they can not locate errors and mistakes in their code. Just remember studying and practising is the only key to master any stuff which applies to programming as well. You've got such a big resource like internet, so make extensive use of it and never let you go down. Just read and practise and you'll eventually master yourself.

I hope this post helps beginner programmers out there. :)


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Qt4 Development Using Monkey Studio

Monkey Studio is a free and open-source crossplatform Qt 4 IDE. It is developed using the Qt library itself, meaning it will run on any platform supported by Qt 4. This allows you to work on the same project on multiple platforms using the same IDE. Monkey Studio uses the Qt Project file (.pro) to manage the project, and there are no extra files created.

With a active forum and wiki, Monkey Studio IDE offers pretty cool features for developing Qt4 Apps. Its noticeable features are:

- Monkey Studio also features * Advanced, customizable code editor, based on QScintilla.
- Syntax highlighting for more than 22 programming languages
- Templates wizard - create files or projects from templates
- Code restyling - quickly fix/update style of your code using AStyle
- Qt Designer integration
- Qt Assistant integration

To install MonkeyStudio in ubuntu, open the terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install monkeystudio

For downloads for other platforms and more information, visit official website.


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Remove Warnings & Notices From Psychostats

I was testing the psychostats script today and while testing I found that it displayed lots of warnings and notices that make the script look so bad as the output is totally messed up. This post will help you to fix this problem.

At first, I tried to change the error_reporting and display_errors setting in php.ini file but I could not get rid of those errors. So I then put a line of code as below at the top of index.php file of psychostats. Still no luck. Finally, I navigated to ./includes relative to psychostats root folder where there was a file named class_PS.php. Open this file and type the following line below <php line.

error_reporting(0);

This will suppress all those errors and will make your psychostats look better. I hope this helps.

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Passing variable/arbitrary number of arguments in PHP

Sometimes, we might need to pass arbitrary number of arguments in PHP and probably we might have been using the option arguments feature of PHP for this purpose but we have got yet another function that can be utilized for passing arbitrary number of arguments to your functions.

func_get_args() is a very useful function available to achieve the passing of arbitrary number of arguments. The function returns the array of the arguments passed to the function. The following sample code will clarify.

<?php
function func()
{
 $args = func_get_args(); //array of the arguments passed to the function
 //now we could do anything with them..
 
 foreach ($args as $key => $val)
 {
  echo "Argument $key : $val
";
 }
 
 }
 func();
 func("I love my Nepal");
 func("I love my Nepal", "I love my culture");

?>

Hope it helps some of you out there.


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Batch to C Converter

This small snippet of C source code converts the commands of batch (i.e. the commands you type in command prompt) into the C source code. It was compiled in Dev-CPP and is pretty basic. I hope some of you might find it useful. It just uses the system() command of stdlib.h header file.

Source code:

 /*********************************************  
 * Batch DOS To C Source Code Converter v.1.1 *  
 * Coded by Samar Dhwoj Acharya aka $yph3r$am *  
 * Website => http://techgaun.blogspot.com  *  
 * E-mail meh at samar_acharya[at]hotmail.com *  
 * I know to code: PHP, PERL, C, JAVA, PYTHON *  
 *********************************************/  
 //include header files...  
 #include <stdio.h>  
 #include <conio.h>  
 #include <stdlib.h>  
 #include <ctype.h>  
 #include <string.h>  
 int main()  
 {  
   FILE *fp;  
   char filename[30];     //filename for source code  
   // starting header of outputted file  
   char header[300] = "/*\nBatch DOS command To C Source Converter\nBy sam207 (samar_acharya[at]hotmail.com)\nhttp://www.sampctricks.blogspot.com\nhttp://nepali.netau.net\n*/\n";  
   //all the includes in output file  
   char incs[200] = "#include <stdio.h>\n#include <conio.h>\n#include <stdlib.h>\nint main()\n{\n";  
   //end part of output file  
   char end[50] = "\tgetch();\n}";  
   //for command  
   char cmd[150];  
   printf("\t+----------------------------+\n");  
   printf("\t|BATCH TO C SOURCE CONVERTER |\n");  
   printf("\t|CODED BY SAMARDHWOJ ACHARYA |\n");  
   printf("\t+----------------------------+\n");  
   printf("\nEnter the filename(with .c extension): ");  
   scanf("%s",filename);  
   fp = fopen(filename,"w");  
   if (fp==NULL)  
   {  
    printf("Some error occurred while opening file");  
    getch();  
    exit(1);  
   }  
   else  
   {  
     fprintf(fp,"%s%s",header,incs);  
     printf("\nNow start entering DOS commands: \n");  
     printf("When finished, type 'end' for the end of commands\n");  
     printf("\nStart:\n\n");  
     gets(cmd);  
     while (1)  
     {  
        gets(cmd);  
        if (!strcmp(cmd,"end"))  
          {  
          break;       //if end is typed, get out of loop  
          }  
        fprintf(fp,"\tsystem(\"%s\");\n",cmd);  
     }  
     fprintf(fp,"\tprintf(\"\\n\");");  
     fprintf(fp,"\n%s",end);  
     printf("\n\nFile successfully created");  
     printf("\nNow compile it with any C compiler");  
     printf("\nThanks for using this little app");  
     fclose(fp);  
   }  
   getch();  
 }     

Have fun :)

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Replacing All Instances of a Word in string [PHP]

PHP offers a useful function called str_replace() that can be used to replace every instance of a word in a string. This function takes three compulsory arguments and one optional argument.

The first argument represents the string to be replaced, the second the replacement value and the third the target string. The function returns the modified string.

Example:

<?php
function replace($string)
{
    return str_replace("dog", "samar", $string);
}

$str = "I am dog so you call me dog";
echo $str;
echo "
".replace($str); //call replace function
?>

Output:
I am dog so you call me dog
I am samar so you call me samar

Now, what if you want to work with arrays of words to replace with, for instance, in the censoring tasks. You can write some PHP stuff as below to perform the task.

<?php
function badword_censor($string)
{
    $string = strtolower($string);
    $badwords = array("fuck","bitch","cunt","faggot","penis","vagina","dick","pussy");
// add as per your requirement
    $string = str_replace($badwords,"*censored*",$string);
    return $string;
}
$str = "Fuck you bitch.";
//echo $str;
echo "
".badword_censor($str);
?>

Output:
*censored* you *censored*.

Also, refer to the str_ireplace(), the case insensitive version of this function.
Hope this helps. :)

Edit: Thanks to cr4ck3r for the comments. Updated the post... :)

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