Android Question This is the best online forum for coding!

Danamo

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Licensed User
Sorry in advance if this is an inappropriate comment or the wrong place to post it...

I just want to say thanks to all the experts in this B4A forum. I'm not as smart or educated as others, and I sometimes ask dumb/novice questions. In other forums such as for Windows or Visual Studio, etc, where I've asked questions I've sometimes received condescending or rude responses suggesting I "shouldn't be coding" or "that's a dumb way to do that" and statements of that nature.

Here in this forum I've always received helpful responses for every question I asked, and have not been treated with disdain for asking what to other smarter people are dumb or obvious questions. I really appreciate that!

I also like the entrepreneurial aspect of this forum; how some of the experts are willing to provide specific technical assistance to my projects in return for modest PayPal donations. I don't do programming for a living but just as a hobby to keep my mind active in my senior/retirement years because I love gadgets and coding, but nonetheless my little projects are important to me - even if not of any commercial value or of interest to anyone else - and I appreciate all the friendly help I get here.

Also, B4A makes it possible for less-skilled/amateurs such as myself who know some old school BASIC to actually make their own smart phone apps without the steep learning curve necessary for Java, C, and other languages, and that is awesome and way cool! B4A is worth every penny of it's very reasonable purchase price and I thank it's creator Erel for making it available.
 
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Brian Dean

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Longtime User
Danamo - you are absolutely right. I rarely put questions on the forum, but I scan through it several times a day and almost every time pick up some useful pointer that is new to me; some useful tip that is worth remembering for the future. And like you I am often surprised by the patience shown to newcomers who may be trying hard but who one would hope might have got themselves a little better prepared. I also look at StackOverflow from time to time. That is a pretty good forum too, but still not as good as this one in my opinion. And even DonManfred, who does get a little short-tempered at times, must still get the prize (after Erel, of course) for most effort spent in the cause of helping the less fortunate.
 
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emexes

Expert
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Danamo said:
"that's a dumb way to do that" and statements of that nature
Click to expand...
Any expert who says that, is no expert. Many breakthroughs have come about because somebody unconstrained by convention has approached the problem from a "dumb" perspective.

I still remember in my teens when an electronics friend showed me a 6809 monitor program he'd written, which had something like:
B4X: 
LD A, State
CMP A, 2
JEQ SkipStuff
CMP A, 3
JEQ SkipStuff
CMP A, 4
JEQ SkipStuff
CMP A, 5
JEQ SkipStuff
* do stuff *
SkipStuff:
and I looked at it for a long time, then our conversation was:

M: hang on, how many states do you have?
F: five
M: like, 1, 2, 3 ,4 ,5?
F: yeah
M: so what you're really doing here is: if State equals 1 then do this?
(very long pause)
F: yeah
F: you wouldn't believe how long that bit took me to write - I thought you'd be super impressed
M: I am
 
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LordZenzo

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Longtime User
this is a good forum, very active, I often visit it too in search of help and advice, you don't even need to ask, almost everything has been written just search, but here I noticed a behavior that does not exist in other forums, I noticed that some posts are deleted, this is unforgivable, I would accept it only for criminal posts, but never for polemical posts
 
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Erel

B4X founder
Staff member
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It is quite rare that a post is deleted (for non-technical reasons). I guess that you are referring to a post that was deleted a few minutes ago. That post included a personal attack that was completely not appropriate. The post was deleted and there will also be other consequences as this is a recurring behavior. The forum guidelines are listed here: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/forum-guidelines.55632/

They are usually not enforced very strictly however there is less tolerance towards personal attacks.
 
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LordZenzo

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Longtime User
yes, but also to my post many months ago, I think that deleting is not a good practice, if anything you can put an "inappropriate" across the whole post or other, without deleting but pointing out that it is not good
 
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rabbitBUSH

Well-Known Member
Licensed User
ABSOLUTELY, this is a great forum in which sometimes you wonder if you learned anything from a posting -> like blockchain the other day (Phew), did I take a free trip to Harry Potter Land, or, just another shot down the rabbit hole?
the over riding thing is :
you'll encounter a GREAT attitude from everyone, led by the great Octopus @Erel [tentacles everywhere], HUGE helpfulness, Lots of patience, and every now and again A grumpy one who still speaks to you in the morning.... ..when you don't get it B4X guys will keep going in as

I wonder how @Erel does it - if there's not an octopus there then there's a BIG datafarm in there ......... take that Google.....

hats off to @Erel and community...............​
 
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rabbitBUSH

Well-Known Member
Licensed User
my goodness @emexes you *remembered that code sequence but then I guess it is an unusual one. [ah the days of real DOS and machine code; h wait I have B4x now silly me] i guess that was outback lateral thinking : that "special way of being Australian" yeah I'm south african

HEY but lets not forget @klaus probably also a subject of #5 above -> both @klaus and @DonManfred will still respond to your next "silly posting"

But, you know, they all just want to see evidence that you're learning and applying their inputs

So, @Brian Dean : like you I am retired (except I need to supplement income) welcome down the rabbit hole with me........
 
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emexes

Expert
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rabbitBUSH said:
my goodness emexes you *remembered that code sequence
Click to expand...
I remember 100% that it was a 6809, because he loved that processor whereas I had no experience with it, other than giving some general assembly programming tips. It might have been 4 or 5 or 6 states, but it was along those lines, hence the "something like" proviso.

but then I guess it is an unusual one
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Not as unusual as you might think ;-/

I have seen a lot of code where my first comment is: well, at least it's working, so that's a good start...

There is a large spectrum of coding styles from concise-but-complex to clear-but-verbose and many different opinions about which point on that spectrum is the best.

I tend towards using descriptive and readable variable names like CustomerPanel rather than the more concise pnlCst; on the other hand, I do give the old I, J and K index variables of Fortran a bit of a workout.

And it took me a few years, but I eventually realised that what I was mostly doing was emulating Ye Olde BASIC type suffixes $ % ! # etc but using the name of the type in full, especially for non-simple types. Reverse Hungarian Notation, I guess you could call it.
 
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emexes

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emexes said:
he loved that processor whereas I had no experience with it
Click to expand...
Same guy, but ten years later, he was doing his doctorate* in music, called me up and said he had another programming problem, was I interested in giving him a hand?

Heck, yeah!

To this day I still don't know what I was programming. My total knowledge of music is encapsulated in: there are 12 evenly-spaced semitones in an octave, and one of the notes is 440 Hz. I still don't understand why the notes are labelled A..G with seemingly-random sharps and flats, rather than just 12 notes A..L.

Anyway, so this was something to do with note frequency combinations (chords?) that sound good, and he had some theory about certain ratios being better than others. He showed me a couple of combinations that he'd calculated by hand; I'd do some programming; we'd mull over why it was wrong. Early next morning, we had his list, selected from some homongous search space that would have taken him decades to do by hand.

I also remember that half-way through, he wondered aloud why the ratios weren't constant, and I randomly said well, maybe it's something to do with that inner-ear spiral thing and the frequencies line up on each turn or something, like maybe that's why some people are musical and some aren't.

Another long pause, then he said "Sh*t, yeah". I don't know how far he got with that idea, but he was pretty excited at the time.


* edit: or possibly his masters, because his doctoral thesis is dated five years later (maybe it just took a while to complete)
 
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DawningTruth

Active Member
Licensed User
How that is seriously fascinating from one who does understand those beautiful keys. Wow! What is his dissertation called?
 
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Star-Dust

Expert
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Longtime User
I could not read the deleted post , could you please rewrite it?
Thank you

N. B. Obviously I was joking
 
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