What is programming - Learning how to program

You want to know what is programming or you are learning how to program? On my site I will try to teach you how to get started. I'm a full-time professional software developer, so I have a lot of experience programming several programming languages, including C, C#, VB, PHP, Pascal, Java, HTML, CSS, ASP, VBA, Assembly and Access.

I am passionate about programming, but also electronics and I love to learn new things everyday. I'm a technical computer scientist, so I know how electronics and digital circuits work. It's my intention to also explain about electronics and digital logic. I want make video's in the future and show how to build certain simple circuits to help you get started and understand how these circuits work. For the meantime, I will make use of someone elses video's to make things clearer.

Further, I want to explain how you should use certain commonly used software and how you can improve your computing experience. Also, I want to show some useful tools that you should get. I'll explain how these tools work.

I hope you learn something new from my site everyday and would like to hear from you in case I can explain something. Send your message via the contact page.

Do you need have suggestions / ideas for new useful software? Don't hesitate to contact me. I'll try to help and maybe I can make useful software for you. Or maybe we can develop software together.

For more information about how to get started learning how to program, visit the how to learn how to program page on my site.

Useful Internet Explorer tips

Did you know that with the key combinations Ctrl + and Ctrl - you can easily zoom in and out on a webpage in Internet Explorer? I just found out today. Very useful. To reset to a 100% default view just use Ctrl 0. Zooming in and out is also easily done by holding down the Ctrl key while turning the mouse-wheel.

Another nice thing to know is that Internet Explorer has a built in profiler: just press the F12 key. This works in Internet Explorer 8. You can also install the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar.

In the print preview function (click on the printer icon and select print preview), you have some useful settings in case you want print a webpage on the printer. In the preview screen you can zoom the webpage in and out in order to adjust how the pages will be printed.

In Chrome also the F12 button gives insight into the currently loaded webpage.

For Firefox you can install the webdeveloper toolbar.

Great iTunes alternative

Are you tired of iTunes, because it's slow or you just want to manage your iPhone, iPod or iPad much easier like a removable disk? There's a great alternative for iTunes. Click here for more information: sync music from iPod to iPod.

iPhone ringtone maker

Do you want to create your own iPhone, iPad or iPod touch ringtones quickly and easily? Then take a look at this simple program. You can even try it for free! Visit the following page: how do i make an iPhone ringtone.

Music player tip

Of course you like to play music on your iPhone, iPad or iPod. The following tip is very useful. In the default music player app of your device, you can scroll from left to right in order to find a the start of a specific part of your song. This scrolling is not very accurate, so it's a little bit difficult to find the correct starting-position in your song. That's because the scrolling speed is quite fast initially. However, when you tap and hold your finger on the slider and move your finger downwards instead of to the left or right, you're able to adjust your scrolling speed. When you have the desired speed, then scroll to the left or right. This allows to find more accurately the start of a specific part of your song.

Saving battery-life power tip

Always turn Wifi / 3G / Bluetooth off in case you're not using it. For when it is on, your device uses more power. Also turning off location services and your music equalizer saves power.

Clean your internet connection

Recently I installed the OpenDNS server addresses in my home network. It's really wonderful. The DNS servers of OpenDNS are now directing my internet traffic instead of the DNS servers of my provider. I just registered on their site and filled in the categories of webpages I no longer want to show up in my browser and setup the addresses of their DNS servers in my network. It's a peace of mind to know that our children can't go to the most of the wrong sites by accident. Highly recommended and it's completely free. No need for installing software on your computer, just configure the DNS addresses.

Best is to do this on your router secured by a password you only know in case that's possible. My router don't support this, so I had to enter these addresses on each computer in my home network (off course this is less secure). On the site of OpenDNS is explained how this is accomplished. By the way, in case you have to enter the DNS addresses on each computer in the network, it's recommended to disable access to the networksettings by your kids via the group policy editor (gpedit.msc) in case you know how this works.

After all those years on the internet, finally a cleaner internet! For the meantime I'm very happy with OpenDNS. OpenDNS is fast and is also like a community: you can vote for sites in which category they belong. Also you can add new sites that weren't filtered yet. The community will then decide in which category your submitted site will be stored.

I'd love to hear about your opinion in case you'll give it a try. Also when you need assistance.

Free customer-service software download

Above you can see a screenshot of a simple customer-service software developed by me which you may use free of charge and give to your friends.

This software can be useful whenever you have many contacts by phone with your customers and want to make notes for each customer. These notes are stored per day.

You can download this customer-service software for free and you may use it without any limitation.

Eventually I can alter this software to meet your needs, by - for example - making it possible to print reports or coupling a order and invoice system to it.

Learn how digital logic works

Have you ever wondered how digital electronic devices work internally?

Digital logic is fun to learn with a free simulator. Visit the following page for more information to learn what is digital logic.

Design Patterns

Read these short introductions about design patterns and design patterns simplified.

Subversion sourcecode version control

For our sourcecode control we use Subversion, which is an open-source sourcecode versioning tool. When you just work with just one code-base in a software development team it is easy to use. Just commit and update your work against the Subversion repository and resolve any conflicts. Things get more complicated however when you want to start using branching and merging. I investigated this and as a result I wrote the following Subversion TortoiseSVN tutorial. I learned a lot while investigating branching and merging and I recommend reading and follow my tutorial. Feel free to give this tutorial to your friends. I would like to hear from you what your experience with this tutorial is.

There's another free (distributed) sourcecode control system called Mercurial. I've heard it's very powerful and TortoiseHg that can be used with it seems to be similar like TortoiseSVN of Subversion (which is server based). Maybe I'll investigate on it at a later time.

Useful macro for Microsoft Word

Whenever you copy and paste text in a Word document, Word keeps the formatting of the original text and when you paste the text Word shows a little button on which you can click to keep the text only. Personally I find this annoying, for most of the time I want to paste only the text without the formatting. On this site I learned how to create a macro for this and I assigned the ALT+V keyboard combination to this macro. Very useful. Now when I paste text I just press Alt+V and Word is not pasting the formatting of the text anymore. Very convenient to paste only text with a keyboard combination.

What's also annoying is that by default not allways a full menu is shown when you click on a certain menu in Word, Excel, etc..This can be easily solved by right clicking on any toolbar and choosing Customize (or via the menu via View - Toolbars - Customize). Next click on the Options tab and put a check before 'Allways show full menus'. Next click Close.

Develop php applications from within Visual Studio 2010

JCX Software VS.Php lets you build, edit and deploy php applications using the familiar interface of the most popular IDE in the market. Contrary to other PHP IDE products, VS.Php leverages the familiar interface of Microsoft Visual Studio.Net allowing PHP developers leverage all the features Visual Studio.Net provides. No need to learn a new IDE interface or tools.

Working with php projects has never been easier, VS.Php provides rich project management features similar to ASP.Net projects. Because many developers deploy their PHP applications in non-Windows servers, VS.Php also provides deployment support for remote servers where you can deploy your Php application on a click of a button. The PHP editor gives you the most productivity by giving you access to Php built in functions and modules as well as your functions and classes. You can even include PEAR classes in your project and VS.Php will show the symbols in its intellisense feature. While typing parameters VS.Php will guide you through the process by giving you hints on the parameters of the function or method you are working on. And at any given point, VS.Php will highlight any syntax error in your code. You don't have to run the script to find out if you have syntax errors. VS.Php will tell you in real time.

People can't hear you when calling with Skype

I've seen several times that when using a USB webcam with built-in microphone with Skype when you want to call that people can't hear you. It's because Skype is automatically switching back using the default (perhaps non-existing) microphone when you unplug your webcam. When you plugin the webcam again, this setting will remain like that (unfortunately). Maybe they will fix this rather sooner than later. Perhaps it's wise to leave the webcam always plugged in, so you'll probably have less issues.

It's easily solved by going to tools - options - audio settings. Choose the right microphone with the combobox. Often you see a description like webcam microphone when you open the combobox. Choose this microphone and speak some words. The green volumebar will be moving when you've choosen the right microphone. Next important step: click the Save button and you're done.

Computer Q&A

I like the site of Leo Notenboom where Leo explains a lot of common computer related questions and he answers these. See for yourself, I'm sure you'll find a lot of great tips from him. Another site which I like is SchoonePC, however it is in dutch language. Also a lot of useful tips can be found on that site.