Andrey Vystavkin Blog

Quite interesting article from Stroustrup (unfortunately dated by 1999), however still topical. Here is a small list of concepts a person should be considered. The the approach to a new language, which:

– proceeds from the concrete to the abstract,
– presents language features in the context of the programming and design techniques that they exist
to support,
– presents code relying on relatively high-level libraries before going into the lower-level details (nec-
essary to build those libraries),
– avoids techniques that do not scale to real-world applications,
– presents common and useful techniques and features before details, and
– focus on concepts and techniques (rather than language features).

As well, as some interesting comparisons of C and C++ languages in his article.

Programming c++, Programming, Tips

Nowadays, I was forced to work at the office doing Web Dev using Windows machine. It caused real headaches to setup some of the things from scratch to make in work like on my old Linux machine.

I haven’t thought that vim’ll look so weird from the Windows side, however gVim alternative seemed more adecvate, but the problem got me googling at the point of setting up correct fonts for the themes.

An old fonts vim plugin cause lots of errors, so I had to use SVN to get latest fixes for the Fonts.vim plugin. You can check it in the trunk of the repository; it worked perfectly for me, just copy-paste it to your \plugins\ directory, and play around the font-size.

Links, Linux Fonts, gvim, LAMP, Tips, Windows

As the project grows I had to work on some more complex queries to provide users with better searching facilities.

In this case, you might use two options:

• Straightforward find() function from App::Model (where you’ll have to handle the outpu of data yourself, and trying to fit the search results in your websites layout)
• Use Pagination functionality (which is designed for handling big chunks of data for you)

A simple example: from a small search menu, I need to get the data about item’s price, its type etc, so at this point, find() solution would look like:

Once you set results array in the view template, it will cause you few hours on how to rearrange data presentation, meanwhile you can use Pagination:

And in the view you might add some code like:

Last lines of the code would manage the results listing for you, which has to be defined in your Controller:

Done, now you can easily handle your search outputs.

Linux, etc cakephp, IT, pagination, Tips

Working with CakePHP1.2 I had to implement some AJAX techniques in the framework, mainly dealing with onChange behavior of the form components, here is a small example of how we can use multiple selectboxes.

Note: For simplicity reasons, I didn’t include queries, and just used option-arrays:

This is just a simple layout for calling AJAX methods, without database, sofisticated layout handling, routes etc (for these reasons we got CakePHP API, and CakePHP GoogleGroup)

The actual form would look like:

As the result, once you change the default value of the first select box, the second one automatically calls the controller’s method, which renders the values (gets the option list from the view file) and renders it in AJAX manner

.

etc Add new tag, ajax, cakephp, coding, frameworks, Tips

If you don’t know what’s Vim, then:

1. You’re Windows IDE’s fan
2. You’ve never used Linux

An option “you’re using Emacs” is not included - you would have definetely known Vim. You’d hate it for the sake of “holly wars”.

I’m not an Emacs lover, neither those huge IDE’s with bunch of boxes, bookmarks, you name it. Most of these things are useless when you need to code something fast, so I just stuck with Vim: simple, light, fast, and have a lot of functionality. Here are just few tips of speeding up coding process I’ve been using lately:

If you got some repetitive function calls or anything you’re not bothered to print just fire up:

Comments:

Printing

or

will paste initial comment pattern.

Minus another dozen of lines to be typed.

Text search:

You can

which will enable incremental search for you, or use regexp, like:

will find you “agent” in current file.

Using ftp:

These are just basics, Bram Moolenaar, the developer of Vim, got a good article on how to optimize your work with Vim, and David Rayner with his page of Vim tips. Compulsory to learn for Vim beginners!

Linux Linux, Tips, vim

Finally, I’ve got time to fix this bug.

After upgrading my Internet Explorer 6 up to the seventh version, Add/Remove window in Control Panel wasn’t loading. After a bit of googling the problem was solved:

After it, everything loads fine now. The only disadvantage - you’ve got your Internet Explorer 6 back

Links, etc bugs, OS, Tips, Windows