http://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns In software engineering, a *design pattern* is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern isn't a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations. On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Erick Njenga <eriknjenga@gmail.com> wrote:

Awesome!

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com> wrote:

...

https://github.com/thomasdavis/best-practices

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Hehe @ Peter, they'd drop out! On 3 April 2013 20:13, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

@Laban, if I could propose to you that we, plus any other interested coder here, come together and offer our combined experience, to noobie programmers in our local colleges and Universities, what would say?

Picture this; a second year student knowing EVERYTHING you know about software development, what would they achieve by 4th year?

On 3 Apr 2013, at 19:12, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com> wrote:

http://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns In software engineering, a *design pattern* is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern isn't a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations.

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Erick Njenga <eriknjenga@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Awesome!

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com> wrote:

...

https://github.com/thomasdavis/best-practices

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-- --

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In addition @Peter, if Laban and the two or three others were to carry out your proposal effectively that might most likely imply they shift their professions to teaching perhaps on a full-time basis. Something else in relation to design patterns: They were created exactly to tackle the problems you have mentioned. That of noobies not having to start dealing with (apparently solved) problems from scratch by standing on the shoulders of Titans. Even before the gang-of-four<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns>and Martin Fowler <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fowler> among others formalized the topic, people were already using the said techniques (patterns) to fix the common problems programmers of the time were experiencing due to mostly design flaws in C / C++ among other compilers / interpreters, generally in O-O programming styles. There are interesting comments on this Slashdot thread [ http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/10/28/2319251/design-patterns] Another thing I tend to see is that the design patterns are used less in most cases than not or at other times coders uses them unknowingly<http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2893451&cid=40213301> . Martin. On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

@Laban, if I could propose to you that we, plus any other interested coder here, come together and offer our combined experience, to noobie programmers in our local colleges and Universities, what would say?

Picture this; a second year student knowing EVERYTHING you know about software development, what would they achieve by 4th year?

On 3 Apr 2013, at 19:12, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com> wrote:

http://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns In software engineering, a *design pattern* is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern isn't a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations.

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Erick Njenga <eriknjenga@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Awesome!

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com> wrote:

...

https://github.com/thomasdavis/best-practices

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-- --

Thanks and Regards, Erick Njenga Nyachwaya, M: +254-725-008-790

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@Laban, I have a pilot target audience in mind, and they tend to be online a lot, so maybe a google hangout can work, let me explore this idea further On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

@Martin, yes and no.

Six years ago, I spent an entire semester break, 4 weeks, cooped up in my dorm room trying to configure php.ini and httpd.conf to talk nicely to each other and to MySQL. Those days, xampp or wamp didnt exist, or at least I didnt know that they did. And when those three did eventually talk to each other, I became a celebrity for a short while in the developer community @ campus.

Now, if only Laban had taken 1 day to show me how and to explain why, I would have spent the rest of that month learning something else, like the benefits of separating PHP code from HTML.

What I am suggesting here is getting a newborn programmer, who knows zilch, and in a matter of 2 weeks, have them know enough to make the rest of their programming path grow at an exponential pace.

And, a programmer who *lectures* programming is totally different from a lecturer who teaches programming.

I've had the chance of working in a local University and observed firsthand the rather pronounced weaknesses of the latter.

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Martin Chiteri <martin.chiteri@gmail.com>wrote:

...

In addition @Peter, if Laban and the two or three others were to carry out your proposal effectively that might most likely imply they shift their professions to teaching perhaps on a full-time basis.

Something else in relation to design patterns: They were created exactly to tackle the problems you have mentioned. That of noobies not having to start dealing with (apparently solved) problems from scratch by standing on the shoulders of Titans. Even before the gang-of-four<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns>and Martin Fowler <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fowler> among others formalized the topic, people were already using the said techniques (patterns) to fix the common problems programmers of the time were experiencing due to mostly design flaws in C / C++ among other compilers / interpreters, generally in O-O programming styles. There are interesting comments on this Slashdot thread [ http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/10/28/2319251/design-patterns]

Another thing I tend to see is that the design patterns are used less in most cases than not or at other times coders uses them unknowingly<http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2893451&cid=40213301> .

Martin.

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

...

@Laban, if I could propose to you that we, plus any other interested coder here, come together and offer our combined experience, to noobie programmers in our local colleges and Universities, what would say?

Picture this; a second year student knowing EVERYTHING you know about software development, what would they achieve by 4th year?

On 3 Apr 2013, at 19:12, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com> wrote:

http://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns In software engineering, a *design pattern* is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern isn't a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations.

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Erick Njenga <eriknjenga@gmail.com>wrote:

...

Awesome!

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com> wrote:

...

https://github.com/thomasdavis/best-practices

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Skunkworks Rules http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94 ------------ Other services @ http://my.co.ke

-- --

Thanks and Regards, Erick Njenga Nyachwaya, M: +254-725-008-790

_______________________________________________ skunkworks mailing list skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke ------------ List info, subscribe/unsubscribe http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------

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-- Regards, Peter Karunyu -------------------

-- Regards, Peter Karunyu -------------------

@Peter, On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

@Martin, yes and no.

Six years ago, I spent an entire semester break, 4 weeks, cooped up in my dorm room trying to configure php.ini and httpd.conf to talk nicely to each other and to MySQL. Those days, xampp or wamp didnt exist, or at least I didnt know that they did. And when those three did eventually talk to each other, I became a celebrity for a short while in the developer community @ campus.

I would differ slightly with you on this because what you have just described are purely system administrative tasks. In an ideal condition a developer should spend time fidgeting with the configurations of a server. If anything, she / he should just press a single button after completing running test his / her test suit and deploy the appliction. Else, someone else should do this.

Now, if only Laban had taken 1 day to show me how and to explain why, I would have spent the rest of that month learning something else, like the benefits of separating PHP code from HTML.

What I am suggesting here is getting a newborn programmer, who knows zilch,

and in a matter of 2 weeks, have them know enough to make the rest of their programming path grow at an exponential pace.

Anyway, I get your point but what I mean is that *coding* is much more than just writing the source instructions to a program. You need to research, think, talk to people if need be (forums/BBs), type, debug, test code, fix problems, publish your sources for others in a VCS, read bug reports, respond to e-mails etc. This is much more involving to be done by a single person in just two weeks. If you can do this (as the novice programmer) you are probably a highly gifted autistic savant. Martin.

And, a programmer who *lectures* programming is totally different from a lecturer who teaches programming.

I've had the chance of working in a local University and observed firsthand the rather pronounced weaknesses of the latter.

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Martin Chiteri <martin.chiteri@gmail.com>wrote:

...

In addition @Peter, if Laban and the two or three others were to carry out your proposal effectively that might most likely imply they shift their professions to teaching perhaps on a full-time basis.

Something else in relation to design patterns: They were created exactly to tackle the problems you have mentioned. That of noobies not having to start dealing with (apparently solved) problems from scratch by standing on the shoulders of Titans. Even before the gang-of-four<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns>and Martin Fowler <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fowler> among others formalized the topic, people were already using the said techniques (patterns) to fix the common problems programmers of the time were experiencing due to mostly design flaws in C / C++ among other compilers / interpreters, generally in O-O programming styles. There are interesting comments on this Slashdot thread [ http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/10/28/2319251/design-patterns]

Another thing I tend to see is that the design patterns are used less in most cases than not or at other times coders uses them unknowingly<http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2893451&cid=40213301> .

Martin.

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

...

@Laban, if I could propose to you that we, plus any other interested coder here, come together and offer our combined experience, to noobie programmers in our local colleges and Universities, what would say?

Picture this; a second year student knowing EVERYTHING you know about software development, what would they achieve by 4th year?

On 3 Apr 2013, at 19:12, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com> wrote:

http://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns In software engineering, a *design pattern* is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern isn't a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations.

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Erick Njenga <eriknjenga@gmail.com>wrote:

...

Awesome!

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com> wrote:

...

https://github.com/thomasdavis/best-practices

_______________________________________________ skunkworks mailing list skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke ------------ List info, subscribe/unsubscribe http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------

Skunkworks Rules http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94 ------------ Other services @ http://my.co.ke

-- --

Thanks and Regards, Erick Njenga Nyachwaya, M: +254-725-008-790

_______________________________________________ skunkworks mailing list skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke ------------ List info, subscribe/unsubscribe http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------

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Stackoverflow does the same thing very well, but you are right, I get your point. Some schools have mentors / guides in their programs who I believe should do this kind of job. Martin. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

Exactly! Now we talking!

In an ideal world, the sys admin will setup all the stuff needed by the developer. But sometimes, the sys admin does not exist, and the said developer needs to *know *how to setup his/her tools and environment.

Plus some recruiters have this annoying habit of testing for subtle sys admin skills in job interviews...

A few weeks ago, I spent an entire day using google-try-error to setup Phing and use it to build some code I have. Now, what if Laban had explained to me in 5mins what things need to be in my PATH for Phing to work ok, that is me acquiring the same *knowledge* in 5mins as opposed to 8hrs, and I would have spent the next 7hrs learning how to make Phing make me tea.

So essentially, what I am proposing is having peeps who have been-there-done-that help those who have not: 1. you-can-get-there-faster-this-way or 2. there-is-not-so-awesome,-go-here-instead

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Martin Chiteri <martin.chiteri@gmail.com>wrote:

...

@Peter,

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com>wrote:

...

@Martin, yes and no.

Six years ago, I spent an entire semester break, 4 weeks, cooped up in my dorm room trying to configure php.ini and httpd.conf to talk nicely to each other and to MySQL. Those days, xampp or wamp didnt exist, or at least I didnt know that they did. And when those three did eventually talk to each other, I became a celebrity for a short while in the developer community @ campus.

I would differ slightly with you on this because what you have just described are purely system administrative tasks. In an ideal condition a developer should spend time fidgeting with the configurations of a server. If anything, she / he should just press a single button after completing running test his / her test suit and deploy the appliction. Else, someone else should do this.

...

Now, if only Laban had taken 1 day to show me how and to explain why, I would have spent the rest of that month learning something else, like the benefits of separating PHP code from HTML.

What I am suggesting here is getting a newborn programmer, who knows

...

zilch, and in a matter of 2 weeks, have them know enough to make the rest of their programming path grow at an exponential pace.

Anyway, I get your point but what I mean is that *coding* is much more than just writing the source instructions to a program. You need to research, think, talk to people if need be (forums/BBs), type, debug, test code, fix problems, publish your sources for others in a VCS, read bug reports, respond to e-mails etc. This is much more involving to be done by a single person in just two weeks. If you can do this (as the novice programmer) you are probably a highly gifted autistic savant.

Martin.

...

And, a programmer who *lectures* programming is totally different from a lecturer who teaches programming.

I've had the chance of working in a local University and observed firsthand the rather pronounced weaknesses of the latter.

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Martin Chiteri <martin.chiteri@gmail.com

...

wrote:

...

In addition @Peter, if Laban and the two or three others were to carry out your proposal effectively that might most likely imply they shift their professions to teaching perhaps on a full-time basis.

Something else in relation to design patterns: They were created exactly to tackle the problems you have mentioned. That of noobies not having to start dealing with (apparently solved) problems from scratch by standing on the shoulders of Titans. Even before the gang-of-four<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns>and Martin Fowler <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fowler> among others formalized the topic, people were already using the said techniques (patterns) to fix the common problems programmers of the time were experiencing due to mostly design flaws in C / C++ among other compilers / interpreters, generally in O-O programming styles. There are interesting comments on this Slashdot thread [ http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/10/28/2319251/design-patterns]

Another thing I tend to see is that the design patterns are used less in most cases than not or at other times coders uses them unknowingly<http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2893451&cid=40213301> .

Martin.

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com>wrote:

...

@Laban, if I could propose to you that we, plus any other interested coder here, come together and offer our combined experience, to noobie programmers in our local colleges and Universities, what would say?

Picture this; a second year student knowing EVERYTHING you know about software development, what would they achieve by 4th year?

On 3 Apr 2013, at 19:12, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com> wrote:

http://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns In software engineering, a *design pattern* is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern isn't a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations.

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Erick Njenga <eriknjenga@gmail.com>wrote:

...

Awesome!

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Laban Mwangi <lmwangi@gmail.com>wrote:

> https://github.com/thomasdavis/best-practices > > _______________________________________________ > skunkworks mailing list > skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke > ------------ > List info, subscribe/unsubscribe > http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks > ------------ > > Skunkworks Rules > http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94 > ------------ > Other services @ http://my.co.ke >

-- --

Thanks and Regards, Erick Njenga Nyachwaya, M: +254-725-008-790

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On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:51 AM, Joseph Wayodi <jwayodi@gmail.com> wrote:

Good internships should get you this too. Or you could join and contribute to a free software project online. It's easier to get mentorship when you're actually working with them.

@Joseph, by the time a student is ready for internship or good enough to contribute to a software project online, they are *already* good enough. But there is that stage from the moment a programmer is born (figuratively speaking), to the moment they are *good enough* to get an internship or contribute to an open source project. It is at this stage where, I theorize, that programmer mortality rate is at its highest. And it is at this stage that mentorship would have the most efficacy.

Sometimes I feel sad when I realize the likes of Smoot<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Smoot>, and other topnotch scientists of our time are lecturers. Same applies for other fields too. Once can only envy their students. Anyway, I have a problem with this list. Very good ideas are fronted, we discuss, +1, like, and then nothing happens. The science TV show idea seems to have died. Can we have a formal physical meetup where we discuss this and other ideas and identify teams to bring the ideas to fruition? On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Joseph Wayodi <jwayodi@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 12:05 PM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

...

@Joseph, by the time a student is ready for internship or good enough to contribute to a software project online, they are already good enough.

But there is that stage from the moment a programmer is born

(figuratively

...

speaking), to the moment they are good enough to get an internship or contribute to an open source project. It is at this stage where, I theorize, that programmer mortality rate is at its highest.

And it is at this stage that mentorship would have the most efficacy.

I get you. But I think it will be a bit harder to motivate outside mentors (who are not the teachers) to do it at this level. But all the best if you manage to do it. _______________________________________________ skunkworks mailing list skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke ------------ List info, subscribe/unsubscribe http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------

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@Peter The largest programmer mortality rates I've seen are in learning the basics... Just after learning "Hello world" full of hope and wonder and then they decide to write the next great OS!!! This usually spirals down hill with reality playing its not so welcome part. Major among the things that most developers lack is the mentor-ship that stackoverflow can't offer. Practical demonstrations and physical contact may be just what these budding programmers need. @BwanaLawi I think in as much as we were exited and contributions started coming in, the initiator seems to have left his brilliant TV idea an orphan. I think the admins/dedicated members might have to start taking in these ideas and fan the flame! I submit that skunks should probably flirt with the idea of growing as a community with more than a mailing list(Think tech meet-ups, open source projects and mentor-ship programs). On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 1:32 PM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes we can. The education system pisses me off so much I am willing to attend and be part of a team to help mitigate it effects.

I am currently in touch with the Dean of a computer science department in one of the local private Universities, and he is in the process of working out some logistics. Quite a nice and progressive dude I must say :-)

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Bwana Lawi <mail2lawi@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Sometimes I feel sad when I realize the likes of Smoot<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Smoot>, and other topnotch scientists of our time are lecturers. Same applies for other fields too. Once can only envy their students.

Anyway, I have a problem with this list. Very good ideas are fronted, we discuss, +1, like, and then nothing happens. The science TV show idea seems to have died.

Can we have a formal physical meetup where we discuss this and other ideas and identify teams to bring the ideas to fruition?

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Joseph Wayodi <jwayodi@gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 12:05 PM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

...

@Joseph, by the time a student is ready for internship or good enough

to

...

contribute to a software project online, they are already good enough.

But there is that stage from the moment a programmer is born (figuratively speaking), to the moment they are good enough to get an internship or contribute to an open source project. It is at this stage where, I theorize, that programmer mortality rate is at its highest.

And it is at this stage that mentorship would have the most efficacy.

I get you. But I think it will be a bit harder to motivate outside mentors (who are not the teachers) to do it at this level. But all the best if you manage to do it. _______________________________________________ skunkworks mailing list skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke ------------ List info, subscribe/unsubscribe http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------

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_______________________________________________ skunkworks mailing list skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke ------------ List info, subscribe/unsubscribe http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------

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-- Regards, Peter Karunyu -------------------

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-- Kore Francis Njenga Running and Walking are only breaths apart.