I know, some people are probably gasping right now, thinking that I’ve already been smacked around with the Geek stick a few times over.
However, when it comes to programing, I’m a total hack. I can usually take a look at code and figure out what it does, and teach myself enough to be dangerous when I need to. But on the whole, I just don’t GET programing. And twice today I’ve really wished that I did.
The first time is when I was working with DabbleDB today. I’m using a form from there to accept photos of STAR DEN members that I’m going we’re creating a collage from amongst other things, sort of like a 2000 Bloggers sort of thing but without the link farming.
Anyway, you can get the data out of DabbleDB in JSON format, and I’m 90% sure that there’s a way for me to code a web page so that it will display all the images that have been uploaded so far. However, for the life of me I just don’t understand JSON at all, and came up empty. Instead, I exported out all the data into Excel, and jury rigged it to turn all the links to html code (img src=blahblahblah) which I then copied and pasted into a web page. Yes it works, but it’s not automated, and everyday I need to go copy and paste new submissions in. Bah.
Then, I read D‘Arcy’s post about trying out Yahoo Pipes and decided to give it a whirl. Wow is that Pipes app sweet. I took a look at some of their samples, and I totally get what you can do with it. Sort of like tinker toys for programmers in a sense. However, the basics of actually creating one are still way beyond me. They have an example of how to query a bunch of search engines and get a single aggregated feed. But it asks for all sorts of query parameters, and I really have no idea what those are or where you find them. Blech.
In college I took Intro to Pascal. I failed it. Then I took it again, and agreed to DJ 5 gigs for free if my boss would write my last few programs for me. He did and I got a C. And that about sums up my programming ability 
I wish I were more geeky. Programmers are cool.
2/15/2007
When Aiden gets older please don’t tell him about your boss doing your homework
me too. I build web pages for our district and I am constantly reminded about how little I know about programming. Self-taught geek educators are at a disadvantage in the world of real geek programmer gods…but we might have one or two more social skills:)
Enjoyed your son’s scrapblog. He is a cutie pie.
Marsha in Palatka, Florida
No kidding. How many times have I wished when looking at something completely wrong tweaking my wordpress files into complete chaos that I had a clue what I was messing with when I attempt to rewrite things. I started my college years as a computer sci-geek. Ended it as an English major. Long live the programming gods! Geek power.
I am also finding hard times with JSON….isn’t it similar to AJAX or how is it different?? My head is about to blow…
2/25/2007
Ajax stands for Asynchronous Javascript And XML. The most prevalent part to Ajax is the asynchronous behavior which allows requests to be handled while the user continues to interact with the site. JSON was designed to replace the XML part of Ajax. The reason being XML is more difficult to parse than JSON.
Imagine something like an address book application. The user is presented with a form of some type where he/she can enter a name, email, phone number, etc… Have you ever stopped to consider just how it is this information is being stored inside the application? The answer is that it is stored inside what we call “data structures”. A data structure is a mathematical representation for storing and retrieving information from a computer’s memory. If you teach math then think discrete mathematics (i.e., graphs, trees, etc…).
Modern programming languages are “Object Oriented” meaning we group common tasks and the data they operate on into components. The reason this is desirable is for reusability. Once an object is created, it can be used over an over again in different applications. One fundamental problem in computer science is how to serialize an object. A computer’s memory is not necessarily sequential. We don’t just start laying data as if it were bricks. We take what’s available and often that means that data is scattered about in a non-linear fashion (thus the need for data structures).
What about when the user hits the “save” button? Our address book application needs to somehow convert this data it has in memory to something it can place on disk or transmit across the network; something sequential. We call this serialization and XML is well equipped for the task. The problem is that transforming the objects data to and from XML can be a bit daunting because the two are represented very differently.
JSON is a way of representing the objects data from the perspective of the programmer. In doing so, we simply tell the language compiler to “evaluate” the text. Any program begins with “code” and so any programming language compiler has to inherently “evaluate” some form of text we refer to as the “language” itself. In the case of Ajax, the language is Javascript. JSON stores the data inside its objects in a way that allows us to simply read it back in as if it were the original code.
From a programming perspective, this allows you ingest the data very easily and get to the goal of the matter which is performing operations on the data.
Retrieving data from a Javascript object is a simple process for anyone with basic programming skills. You don’t have to be a god (trust me, the gods are off doing much deeper things in the field of computer science) all you need is some basic knowledge which should be abundant on the Internet.
If programming really interests you, I suggest picking up a book on Python. It’s a very powerful language that is completely objected oriented and very easy to learn (as far as languages go). Knowing just a little Python would demystify Javascript and JSON and prove to be an extremely handy skill for anyone in your position.
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