For me, my first language that I sat down and learned in a formal setting was Java. However, I had TI, Casio, and HP calculators, as well as an Atari 800 that I would fiddle with, and program. So, Basic was really the first language that I toyed with. I just never sat down, and took the time to “learn” it.

So, for all the programmers, coders, script kiddies and developers out there, what is the 1st programming language that you learned? If applicable, leave a comment specifying the system that you learned the language on.

The initial reason this blog was put up, back in September 2005, was to provide an archive to Perl, Python and PHP (thus, the “Pthree”). It was to take a look at those languages from a scripting point of view. Being fairly new in all 3, I thought this would provide great tutorials to those languages for those who are also new to those languages. More importantly, it was to keep me working with those languages to improve my programming prowess. Well, it took a different direction, and it didn’t take long either.

I’d like to go back to what this blog was initially designed for, and provide my experience in looking at those three languages. However, I admit that I am intimidated by the expertise of those out in the “real world”. I fear that my experiences will be ridiculed by those of greater experience and knowledge. However, I’m going to take a step in the dark, and brave the journey. Starting tomorrow, the overall content of the blog will be in respects to Perl, Python and PHP with touches of Ruby and Bash all on GNU/Linux systems, primarily Ubuntu. Of course, comments are always open, and I encourage those of higher knowledge to help me identify what to fix or improve with my code. I plan to have a post up per day at a minimum.

This means that I’ll need a good syntax highlighter for my blog. I have been using Geshi, and like it so far, but it needs a little tweaking. If anyone knows of a solid syntax highlighter, which cover the above languages, for the WordPress platform, I’m all ears.

I hope you enjoy the direction this blog takes.

Okay, here’s the thing.  I am now hosting the OALUG site on my Ubuntu web server.  No big deal.  I am hosting 3 other sites as well.  Being a web admin is not that bad.  Lately, however, I need to set up a mail and DNS server for the OALUG group.  I’ll get to that in another post as to why.

First, I asked a friend what packages I needed and what needed to be done, as he has done it before.  He gave me the link to an excellent howto, and for the most part, everything went smoothly, until I began installing packages I already had installed, like MySQL.  Don’t ask.

Everything started breaking.  First it was MySQL, then PHP, then Apache2.  Then, after updating the repositories in my source.lst file, 280 packages broke, including the Linux kernel, the Ubuntu desktop, and a top more.

As you can see, MySQL, PHP and Apache2 are working just fine now, I hope (I’ll really find out if this post doesn’t submit).  All the packages that I broke, I have fixed.  But I was up until 2:30 in the freaking morning fixing them.  And that was before I even had the chance to get my web server as it was before all this mess.

Now, before all you Microsoft advocates come out of the woodwork saying, “We told you so Aaron.  Windows is easier and less cryptic to use than Linux”, I have to say that I have learned a ton.  And, despite the lack of sleep, the 300 new gray hairs, and ulcers that I developed, it was actullay, in an odd sort of way, fun.  I got to see deep inside the server.  I edited config files, changed all sorts of permissions, added, removed and readded packages, and really got to know a lot better how my Linux server works.  I wouldn’t trade that for an easy GUI that handles everything for me.

Am I finished?  No, I still have a little more to go.  And I will probably break more packages on the way, but, I will learn more than if I purchased a program to do to the job for me.  And I will be more qualified as a Linux/UNIX system admin.  I would never apply for such a job.  The stress would kill me, but my qualifications have just jumped through the roof.

Do you see it? Look harder. No? How about now?

Apparently you don’t see it, so I’ll show you even a closer view.

That’s right. The character that the browser uses to recognize PHP code from regular HTML code is the ‘?’ which happens to conveniently sit right next to the SGML characters as well as the shift button used for all three. What character does ASP/ASP.NET use? Oh, that’s right- it’s the modulus character ‘%’ which sits halfway across the keyboard. Lazy? Better believe it! Please tell me of a coder who isn’t. Please provide me the name of a programming software distributor/company who isn’t. Programming is all about convenience.

That reminds me. Doesn’t Microsoft, the Great Company who provided us with the convenience of ASP/ASP.NET, give us the ‘\’ when navigating through the OS? Yup. UNIX/Linux/Mac/Every-other-non-IBM-or-MS-OS uses the ‘/’ which conveniently sits next to ‘.’ on the keyboard.

This is why PHP is superior to ASP/ASP.NET and why UNIX/Linux/Mac/Every-other-non-IBM-or-MS-OS is superior to Windows.

< ?php
    $email= "webmaster@example.com";                // store the email address in a string variable
    $length = strlen($email);                         // get the length of the email address

    for ($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++)                  // work your way through each character of the email address
        $obfuscatedEmail .= "&#" . ord($email[$i]); // get the deicmal ASCII value of the character
?>

Fairly striaght forward, I think. Merely get the email address from a form on an HTML page, and store it in a variable called $email. Then, get the length of that email address and store that result in $length. Finally, using a for loop, step our way though the email address character by character until we have reached the email address character length, getting the ASCII value and appending “&#” to the beginning of each character. That result is stored in a variable called $obfuscatedEmail.