// usage: stringStartsWith('qwerty', 'qwe')
function stringStartsWith(str, startStr)
{
return (str.substring(startStr.length, 0) == startStr);
}


// usage: stringEndsWith('qwerty', 'ty')
function stringEndsWith(str, startStr)
{
return (str.substring(startStr.length, (str.length - startStr.length)) == startStr);
}


enjoy, soon i will move my blog over to sixones.com wont be using wordpress though! *i think*

update: i should mention this is the first version of the text, it still needs to be changed to suit beginners but the basic outline is there.

[requirements]

the only thing your going to need to follow this guide is a computer connected to the internet, and access to install applications, eventually we will need a compiler (this will be covered when we get to that point).

[mindset]

learning to program isnt for everyone, it does require your head to look at things in a slightly different perspective to that of a normal person. by this i mean 2 things, it helps if your a curious person this helps when you face problems and you need to find a solution (this could mean hours of googling, or searching through documentation). you will also need to be able to think about things in a logical way, in programming fate and luck will not help you in order for the computer to follow your code it needs to be logical.

[authors]

the whole guide will be written by one of the two authors below, more authors maybe introduced at a later date. if you wish to contribute get in touch!

for those of you that do not know me, im a geek named adam livesley, iv been programming now for 10 years (i was 10ish when i started learning), 4 years commercial work experience in various sectors. over the years i’ve picked up a number of different languages which i consider myself skillful in; C, C++, C#, java, PHP, delphi, assembly, javascript, BASIC, pascal, ruby, F#, actionscript, objective-c and a few others. 

the second author is steve a imperial university student studying electrical engineer. he’s been programming for roughly 11 years now, and knows a range of languages such as; C, C++, assembly, php, java, c#, delphi, javascript, BASIC, pascal, actionscript and a few more.

[the art, the discipline]

when it comes down to it programming is just applied mathematics so it does help if you know your algebra. i always like to think of programming as an art, something that can be a pleasure to do. some tasks can be insanely boring, but others make you think and keep you on your toes. this of course comes down to the developer, if your not trying to enjoy it it wont be very fun.

to put it simple, programming is the art of writing a set of instructions to make a computer preform a task that you want it too. in todays world, theres many different languages in which you can program in, just like there is many different languages in which you can tell your friend to do something. a computer only knows one language and thats binary also known as machine code, binary is not really used to write programs as its incredibly difficult. instead we write our code in a language that is more comparable to english, our code then goes through a compiler / linker / assembler to convert to byte code (or a lower level language).

[generations]

with programming languages there are different generations (levels of abstraction from byte code), generally the higher the generation the simpler a language is to use. first generation programming language requires no compiler, the only real 1st gen language would be machine code. a second generation programming language is assembly. the third generation of programming languages is generally the most desired, most modern languages (C, C++, java, C#) are generally considered to be from the 3rd generation of programming languages.

the fourth generation of languages are usually designed with a specific purpose in mind. a good example would be CSS with the specific purpose being a set of rules on how something should look or SQL with the purpose of providing a language that can be used to query data in a database. the final generation is the fifth generation these languages are based around solving problems using constraints, its generally referred to as constraint programming.

[paradigms]

within the world of programming there are a few paradigms (concept / abstraction of a program), the main two that we will be looking at are procedural and object oriented. there are of course many many more. different languages support different paradigms, some support multiple such as C++. its wrong to think that C++ is a purely object oriented programming since the programs source requires a main() method outside of any namespaces or class structure. the 2 different paradigms are used to structure your code, as well as allowing you to write things a certain way they can also forbid different techniques. 

the first paradigm we will be looking at is procedural programming. procedural programming is usual considered unstructured and simple, the idea is your code follows a simple flow and calls different procedures (or functions, methods, routines, subroutines). the concept is built around the ability to reuse code at different points throughout a program without writing the code multiple times. this is where procedures come into play, procedures contain a series of instructions that should be carried out when the procedure is called.

the second paradigm is object oriented programming, the idea behind object oriented programming or OOP is a programming concept that is organised around objects rather than procedures and data rather than logic. this can include techniques like polymorphism, inheritance and encapsulation. within OOP there’s different patterns that can be followed such as factory, singleton, prototype, proxy, adapter, observer and many many more. these different patterns are there to over come problems in OOP, of course with each solution comes a range of problems.

dont worry if i’ve mentioned words or concepts you dont fully understand yet, we will come back to OOP in more detail abit later on, first you need the understanding of procedural programming.

[notes]

thank science, if this was in way helpful you can encourage me to write more by leaving comments

at least december will be with us soon, by far the best month of the year. the first layers of snow hit in the earth, and its time to gather friends to head to the mountains. this season im hoping to go to bulgaria with sam spend a week or so tearing up the slopes. then hopefully go somewhere mid-season (feb / march), i think my signal board will still be strong enough. though i need to repair the damage from last year, hit a few rocks jumping over streams and such. also need to invest in a new pair of boots, my feet seemed to of growed and my lovely thirtytwo’s are abit small for me now, which is a shame. im tempted to get the new thirtytwo’s exus boa in white, boa is an awesome system means you dont have laces in your boots instead an easy turn dial that tightens the thin metal wire around the boot.

the days keep fading into night, lost through time.

was thinking about writing up a series of programming tutorials, to turn n00bz into programmers and good ones at that. most tutorials around the net, start you off on a simple language like java, really its best to start on a more low level language like C and C++ or assembly if your feeling brave. then when you happily understand the fundamentals of programming the different languages become easier to use and all that really becomes a pain is the different framework names.

again completely changing subjects; shortly i should have subversion repositories for firemint and expose. for other developers that wish to contribute, or developers that prefer to update via subversion and have the bleeding edge builds.

any how, off to see dark knight

before you use either expose or firemint, make sure your comfortable with using beta applications. information on installing each application and download links are below;

http://84degrees.com/firemint/
http://84degrees.com/expose/

knock yourselves out

for the past few weeks, iv been using flock 2 beta as my browser. the more i use it, the more annoyed im getting with it. the UI isnt as nice as the rest of my mac apps, the top bar is insanely cluttered, the youtube media stream messages make it impossible to play a youtube video, the twitter sidebar is utter crap; it never updates and the user flow isnt the best. the idea for the browser is brilliant, i like the idea of being able to drag images from the media bar into a textarea, its nice having twitter right in your browser. the idea’s are all good, but the flocksters have implemented them poorly (yes, i know i use the beta. i should expect bugs, but i get the same problems in flock 1). the flock team seem to be pushing more new features in releases rather than bug fixes and improvements on old features, i guess this is what to expect when projects become commercialised, the dark force of money and greed take priority over a decent product. flock fail.

/rant over

btw, wrote this post from the wordpress iphone app, nice to use though not so desirable for long posts.

sometime in the future (6 hours or so) …

recently iv been changing my life around abit, trying to improve myself!! iv stopped smoking cigarettes, started running, redesigned my blog, renewed some old projects like firemint, started game development and iv started studying AS / A2 advanced maths from a few textbooks. the aim is to make myself better, and to keep improving my knowledge. w00t w00t!

in the game development area i’ve been thinking about some ideas for iphone games. after watching my flatmate play quake (from cydia) i realised a first person shooter really doesn’t work on the iphone. instead a time crisis game style could work quite nicely, since the user doesn’t need to control the movement of the character (as in moving around a map not aiming). time crisis works by moving the user’s character to points around a map, at each point the user can crouch behind an object and fire at a group of enemies. its generally a multiplayer arcade game that uses a gun as a controller, on the iphone the accelerometers could be used to move the cross hair to shoot enemies, a touch on the screen could simply toggle the crouch mode / change weapon.

my second idea is a bit different, simple game where the user controls a spaceship and can move around a 3d environment to shoot down enemies. the accelerometers being used to control movement, touch on the screen controls shooting and weapons. after i told beef, he had the geeky idea to make it star wars themed, user flies an x-wing star fighter and shoots down tie fighters.

might start one of the ideas as an open source project, stick it in cydia or maybe app store depending on how it goes.

on a different note, last night i decided to add multiple mint support to firemint v2. amazingly it wasn’t too much of pain to implement, xD

sssssssssssssssssssssssshhh

expose is almost ready as well, just need to write up some documentation on how to use the api and add in a few more methods for querying data.

the install / download buttons arent working on the moment, im hoping this weekend both firemint + expose can be released.

until there ready enjoy my last.fm tag cloud;

everything about firemint is now here; http://84degrees.com/firemint/

enjoy

firemint v2, will contain extra stats but will require a special pepper to be installed in mint. fully compatible with firefox 3, and flock 2. will post some screenshots soon.