Code Justin

Ho Ho Ho

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays, will post again soon!

Want to wish everyone a late night Happy Thanksgiving!

I was lucky enough to attend two meals =]

Welcome back to Code Justin!

It’s been about a month since my blog was hacked.  I still haven’t heard from the hosting company so any hope of recovering old blog comments is now gone.  The good news is that I have finished reposting all my old posts.  Though the posts do not have comments, pictures or polls anymore they still have all the original text.  Most links to my old posts are now broken so I apologize ahead of time for anyone coming in from a dead link.  This time around I will be doing my own backups so I won’t ever lose my database again.

For those that are new to Code Justin, The blog is meant to be a place for developers to share their thoughts and also a place for myself to share my projects/ideas.  Previous to the blog being hacked it was getting a steady amount of traffic and was receiving a good amount of comments.  The blog was helping newer programmers with all the useful advice from the comments.  I want to get Code Justin right back on track and begin building up an active community again!

If you’re curious to know a little bit more about myself, I just turned 19 and I’m an editor/moderator for DZone (a popular developer site).  I love to program and I hope to one day make a living out of it.  Right now I freelance on the side and I’m also developing my first commercial product.

So if you’ve got an RSS reader or even an internet browser you can subscribe to my blog for updates on my future posts!  You never know… you just might like them.

It’s been a few months since the last blog ‘goal’ was hit which was 100 readers.  I happen to glance over at my comment total last night and seen I was at 499 approved comments so I figured I would post to the fact the blog is staying on track with its original intention.  I had hoped for the blog to become a place of discussion and have users commenting so we could create a good reference point for future programmers with similar questions/debates.  Plus I get to show off all my nerdy news =)

So cheers to 500 comments and I can’t wait till the blog hits 1,000!

As you might have known from my last post I got a little C pocket reference book.  Though there are not any real examples/tutorials it does provide  short descriptions for the basic principles, so I plan to tinker with it.  The lowest level language I know is Java which isn’t very low.  After a quick google search I found a few comparisons/speed tests for C vs X language.  In most cases it was over 2x faster than dynamically typed langauges.  With that kind of speed boost you could preform long operations faster.

Now my mind set is still fairly abstract when I try to learn about lower-level concepts.  I’m curious to know when it is a good idea to program something in C compared to a higher level language (like Python).  What all tasks are usually handled by C over say Python?  Off the top of my head I assume any long math operations or generators would be best written in C but what others things would you take the time to write in C over Python assuming you want to still have a fairly speedy development time?

Since DZone has connections with O’Reilly, a popular technical book publisher, I requested a few small reference books for review.  Well I just got them in today and so far I’m impressed.  I happen to get a freelance job over the week end and I ended up using the CSS reference book a few times.  I got a reference book for HTML, CSS, and C.  I will be reviewing them as I go read over them.  I will also be reviewing some of the books I got the other week soon.

As for my posting I haven’t had much to talk about.  My programming life has been pretty dull and I’ve mainly been learning more about web technologies.

Another bit I would like to mention is my Java auto backup program.  A few weeks ago I found myself needing some simple form of local version control.  Well since I wanted to learn more about Swing I decided to try out the Netbeans IDE and go to town.  The very same day I had a simple backup program which I have been using and modifying over the past few weeks to meet my needs.  I might polish it up and release it for you guys or add a few more features and release it as shareware (or freeware with pro version).

Hopefully I will have more to post about in the coming days so if you want to read my future posts I recommend you subscribe to my blog!

Over the past few weeks I have been doing some little freelance jobs and one of the things that surprises me is how unpredictable a job can be.  Due to my low reputation on freelancing sites I have only been able to come up with small jobs.  Mostly editing poorly coded PHP scripts and PSD to HTML/CSS.

I never expected to get paid well but I didn’t want to get paid dirt.  So far I’ve done around 5 small jobs and only one of them paid well.  The others have all paid little for the amount of work involved.

In cases where you have no work and you need to accept lower paying jobs… do you work just as hard on them as you would a higher revenue project?  I’m finding it harder and harder to put forth top-notch work for little reward.  Part of my problem is simply accepting lower paying jobs but that’s for another post (low paying gigs).  Don’t get me wrong I still do above average work but at what point do I balance quality with pay?  I try hard on my projects in hopes for return work but I have gotten none yet.

A good example of some of the hassle I’ve put up with would be a ’simple’ job last week.  I was contacted to edit a dating script that was made in PHP,  I open the files and I was about to cry.  The code was just so messy and made no sense (no comments and the naming conventions did not help).  After what was literally hours of swimming through code I found and made the changes requested.  Two out of about the ten changes requests could not be done (well within reasonable limits).  It would require me to make a full fledged app for him which was never agreed upon (from the way the guy described his changes it was as if he already had the app).  I explained to him that I could not create him a full app for his price and he seemed to understand.  I then made some revisions to the changes I made since he changed his mind and then I was nice enough to cut out half the price.  Which I should add that the price for the job was only $20.  I accepted the job becuase from what I was told this script would be easy to edit.  I required him to pay half upfront ($10)  and after I made the 3rd round of revisions for him (he changed his mind again) I told him that I could not do any more changes for him for free since the changes being made are due in part to him changing his mind (not my code or finished product).  He got pretty upset and began yelling at me.  I remained professional and was nice to him the entire time he was venting.  I was waiting for him to calm down so I could explain to him that I have actually put in over 7 hours of work for only $10 and even made him a free banner.  I was also going to offer him a refund since there was no pleasing him but he signed off.  Well needless to say I now have a paypal claim for $10…  I’m actually going to fight it and try to keep him from getting the $10 refund since my work was more than justified.

So getting back on topic, freelancing seems to be a viable way for me to make a few extra bucks for now but I’m just wondering how much work I should put into small jobs like script changes or single web pages.  If the price is below what I’m asking (which is way below what I want) should I still put in 100% effort or is it justified to just do an average job?  I myself would love to do work on a professional project with a decent timeline but that isn’t happening right now so I’m faced with people that think $10 is enough to code the next facebook.

My whole ‘theory’ to this is a bit simple right now… if the client feels that $10 is enough for a job then I will provide him with only $30 worth of work at which point I wont try hard any more.  So say I get a PSD to HTML/CSS project for only $15… instead of trying to optimize the template for faster loading I will just skimp on most parts (though the finished project will look the same).  Since it seems like most clients don’t understand/appreciate the extra work anyway at the low-end of the market.

What are your thoughts on the whole thing?   Leave them in the comment section below.

Programming books seem to hold little value after a few years on the market.  There are some exceptions to this like ‘C Programming Language‘ which I just seen on Barnes & Noble shelves for over $50.  Obviously programming -not computer science- books aren’t like your grandmothers romance novels that hold the same value 20 years later.  A programming book can basically be judged by the version of the language it teaches which brings the question to play – What do you do with ‘obsolete’ books?

Well one solution I assume is to send them to outlet stores.  For what ever reason I stopped into an outlet store (I might go to 2 times a year) and when I walk in I see stacks of programming books.  After a bit of sifting I found some gems that were unbelievably cheap.  The books are new and some have a little damage but nothing major.

I happen to snatch up the books below all for under $50.

(Pictures of programming books)

I happen to find an old Computer Science book yesterday.  If I get bored enough I might crack it open and check it out.  It’s called “Computer Science – An Overview” from 1988.  I would post a picture but I couldn’t find one on the net so I’ll take one sometime.

Have a nice Labor Day Weekend!

Funny Labor Day Photo
(Don’t forget to subscribe)

It has been a few posts since I talked about my programming status so today I will go over my current thoughts on where I’m at with programming and my plans for the future.

I haven’t been doing much in the way of projects besides a few simple flash games and I’m currently working on a simple automatic backup program written in Java.  Most of my time programming has been spent learning the basics of socket servers/network programming.

As for college I will be holding off till the spring (at least) because I’m waiting on a decision for a grant which would pay for most of my tuition.  Besides my daily work on DZone I have nothing but free time.  I have been going over a lot of different ideas in my head over the past few weeks for a serious project.  Since I have so much free time I would like to go at a serious project, serious project meaning that it would be able to support me financially through college.

I don’t want to write down my thoughts on each idea because it would be a very large wall of text but I will briefly go over a few of the options I thought would make the most business sense overall.
(No real order)

* Children’s multiplayer virtual world/game
* Hosted Flash chat software targeted at businesses
* Board game maker – print out board games that you make with a simple editor
* Premium video programming tutorials
* Lots of simple shareware applications

Most of my ideas don’t last long because I discard them fairly quickly when I find something I don’t like.  The thing about that list is that I don’t have any real passion for any idea on it.  The few ideas I have had passion for require too many resources (art, code, time, money, ect) so I’m finding it hard to balance business with passion.

I’m still thinking every day about this and so far I have failed to come up with an idea that makes me excited.  I’m open to any advice/opinions which you can leave in the comment section below and if you would like to see what idea I settle with you can subscribe to my blog for updates.