I think someone made a Python wrapper for the API. Head over to the dev site or have a search on Github if you're looking for a ready-made solution, otherwise the REST API is available.

On an unrelated topic, would anybody be interested in subscribing to /v/masochism with me? </burn>

I think it's best we focus on increasing the speed of this sub first, but I have subscribed in the hope that it will get faster in the future. If anybody is interested in /v/androiddev that would be awesome if you could subscribe as well.

Around 3-4 sounds about right for an application, anything beyond that could probably be refactored. The exception to that would be if you're designing a framework, where it could be very useful to break that rule to provide a cleaner API.

It's always best to print a stacktrace or log an exception than completely swallowing it in my opinion. If something failing doesn't matter to the user, like being unable to display a certain UI component, then it would probably be ok to continue like nothing happened. But if a vital file isn't present then it's not recoverable and you probably want to crash out of the app. I guess it depends on your usecase.

Ruby has a very nice syntax, it's so much nicer than the verbosity of Java (although to be fair, Java 8 is a step in the right direction). I think most people use Ruby on the Rails as a web framework, but it can be used just for scripting.

I decided to start (slowly) learning Ruby because there's a relatively large community, it has a very concise syntax, and the unit testing support is supposed to be really good for Rails. I'm sure it has its disadvantages but I haven't spent enough time to find them.

try {
    someMethodThatThrowsException();
}
catch (Exception e) {
    // TODO
}

This gets bonus 'I don't care' points if it makes it through to production (unfortunately more common than you'd hope).

Medium is pretty good, especially if you're more interested in the design/UI side of things. I guess it depends a lot on what language you lean towards, and how up to date you want to be. Twitter, IRC, and newsletters are all pretty damn good. Android Weekly sums up most of the interesting things happening in the development world in a pretty concise way. I'm sure I probably miss a few things by not looking myself, but it saves a lot of time.

Everything there seems pretty reasonable (and completely common sense) apart from the last paragraph. As long as you're actually willing to keep an open mind on whatever the issue is, you should be able to defend your own views, especially if someone is trying to debate you.

If all code of conducts were just replaced with "Try not to be a dick" the world would be a simpler place.

Usually either metal, post-rock, or some sort of ambient music. It's weird but I find it much easier to concentrate on programming listening to something with lots of white noise, as opposed to something where someone is signing an actual melody. My last three youtube autoplay albums:

Protest the Hero Sikth God is an Astronaut

I would add vertical list dividers, and possibly change the text color to be a bit whiter. It looks pretty clean though, very easy to read the content. (Also I'm famous, my post is in the screenshot).

Is there a subverse for design or anything like that? I'd be interested in finding one if there is.

Probably, somewhere on this earth, someone has done that.

From my experience of the industry so far, I would say that computer scientists working as developers are actually a minority. There are a lot of scientists and engineers, and a few people who have self-taught themselves. Some companies care about the piece of paper, some don't. At the end of the day it usually comes down to whether you can get the work done, not where you came from.

Programming Throwdown is pretty interesting, the episodes are just a broad overview of various languages & their strengths and weaknesses. If you're into Android, Google Developers Backstage & Fragment are both good.

And that's the only 3 I know unfortunately...

IRC can be a pretty nice place to find a community. Same with Github, start looking through open issues on projects you're interested on, ask if they're interested in a PR, rinse and repeat. Or I guess you could try attending some sort of developer conference? Meetup is probably the best idea, just wanted to offer some alternative suggestions that weren't posted already.

We can make industry feel like a welcoming place by discussing and debating these sorts of issues like humans beings. I don't think creating a whole programming language & internet shitstorm over someone's dissertation counts as nice behaviour, regardless of whether I agree with their points or not.

Having different opinions and challenging other people is fine. I just don't see the need to do it in such a passive-aggressive way like this.

It's publicly mocking the work of one individual who wanted to do research on gender in computer science. Why even bother going to this amount of effort to refute something that was previously so obscure? It's not going to make the researcher feel good about themselves, you can just politely disagree, maybe have a civilised discussion about why you think they're wrong, then move on.

Get as much experience as possible, and do a lot of interesting projects in your spare time. Open source is best because prospective employers can view it and assess whether you're any good or not. It's best to do something relatively unique, as anybody can copy a tutorial off an internet to make a nice weather app/to-do list, so it's hard to judge ability from those.

Plus one to the suggestion of software QA. I spent a year as QA in software related to my degree, then blagged a job as an Android developer - I doubt I'd have got it without that experience.

This was really popular on /g/ around a year or two ago, in response to someone writing a dissertation about what a programming language designed by a female would look like. I'm sort of torn on whether it's a good thing, as our industry undoubtedly has a serious gender imbalance (and in some places fairly sexist attitudes), and stuff like this doesn't make the industry any friendlier.

I sort of fail to see what the original research was aiming to achieve. Men and women don't write programming languages, computer scientists do. Gender doesn't really come into it.

There was a major period of 3-4 days where a lot of new users signed up, and over the last week the rate of acquisition has gradually been dying down. I'm extrapolating from the analytics dashboard on the Vulcan app, so take it with a pinch of salt. I don't think the avalanche has really stopped though, it's just slowed down a bit, as I'm still getting around 10x more users each day than I was before The Event.

There is also a secret site that shall not be named. If you ask nicely you might be able to get a beta API invite

Call me a masochist but I'd have to say Java. It's widely used and there are a gigantic number of libraries out there. It has a couple of pain points but is getting better (at least, pure Java is - Android is still stuck with godawful Java 7).

Kotlin looks like the language that Java should have been, I haven't actually done anything with it other than reading the syntax though.

I was going to link to The single most influential book every programmer should read, but it seems like the Stack Exchange Nazis have removed that incredibly useful resource because reasons. I found a list archived below:

Code Complete 2nd Ed -- Pragmatic Programmer -- SICP -- K&R -- R>efactoring -- CLR -- Design Patterns -- Mythical Mammoth -- TAOCP -- Compilers (Dragon Book) -- Head First Design Patterns -- G.E.B. -- Effective C++ -- Programming Pearls -- Code (Petzold) -- Working Effectively With Legacy Code -- Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance -- Peopleware -- Clean Code -- Coders at Work -- Surely You're Joking -- Effective Java -- Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture -- Little Schemer -- The Inmates Are Running The Asylum -- Why's Ruby -- Practice of an Agile Developer -- The Elements of Style -- The Art of Unix Programming -- Joel on Software -- Modern C++ Design -- The Design of Everyday Things -- Test Driven Development -- How To Win Friends And Influence People -- Agile Software Development -- Domain Driven Design -- The Practice of Programming -- Don't Make Me Think -- Writing Solid Code -- Pragmatic Thinking And Learning -- Software Estimation -- Foundations of Programming -- Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs -- The Passionate Programmer -- Facts And Fallacies of Software Engineering -- Getting Real -- The Story About Ping

Everybody should read Clean Code & Don't make me Think.

Was surprised to see that the number one tip wasn't to use git instead </flame>

What VCS(s) does everyone use for day-to-day purposes? I was under the impression that most people were using Git these days.

I am the dev for Vulcan, an Android client for Voat. The currently released version on Google Play version is very barebones and was knocked up in a couple of days, but gets the job done. My development branch is light years ahead - I've implemented login, subverse switching, and followed material design guidelines a lot more. It basically feels like a completely different app. The only problem is that I can't release any of this until the new API comes out, which is incredibly frustrating as I don't know when that will be, and obviously everyone wants to be able to login/comment right now.

Basically, if you want a completely full feature set, the mobile site is your best bet. But there are plenty of apps currently in development, and within a couple of months these are going to provide a much faster & cleaner experience than a web browser.

FYI /v/android might have been a better place for this submission if you're not subscribed already.

I don't really see why Voat would consider moving to X language/framework. It's written in C# and is unlikely to change as doing so would require a massive amount of effort. Besides, I haven't heard any convincing arguments for why Voat should completely rewrite itself other than licensing issues (which can be overcome).

I would suggest learning Java/Android if your end-users are mainly going to be using their phones to enter the data. Using a website is possible but can get very slow on a mobile browser if you're doing anything complicated. I believe there are Javascript frameworks for app development if you don't want to use Java (although I've never used them and wouldn't want to)

Not an active sub, but if anybody is interested in Android, there's v/androiddev. If we could get some activity going there that would be awesome. I guess that most discussions for all languages will probably take place in this subverse until the Voat population absolutely explodes, otherwise we'd just be spreading ourselves too thin.

Whatever the convention of the language/codebase is. If everybody else on the project is using GNU-style brackets, new code will be more understandable if it's written like that.

Having said that, there is a special rung of hell reserved for programmers that don't write XML end tags on new lines like this (it makes adding new attributes so much easier):

<element
    attr1="foo"
    attr2="bar"
/>