marlyse.comme, myself and my life
Saturday, April 12, 2003
Learning curve
This is turning out to be quite… interesting. PHP [PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (a server-side scripting language)] and MySQL [a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user and robust SQL relational database server (SQL stands for Structured Query Language, a programming language)] on my drive and all sounds plain foreign and strange to me.
PHP installed just fine - www.entropy.ch has excellent Installation Instructions for it. The other page (same site) for the MySQL download seems just as simple but left me with some problems. Wes, a friend, is debugging via an online chat-server. Slow process - probably time to dive into Apple’s Remote Access as I don’t want to buy and install Timbuktu for little usage I’d have of it.
These times now remind me of the times back when I and my Newton where one - and more important data was residing on the Newton then on the desktop (e.g. serial numbers). Synch options between the various applications and the desktop barely existed (if at all). PalmDesktop’s synch at the time was a joke in some respect, plus I was not using standard PIM software to begin with, which again complicated things and wasn’t PalmDesktop’s fault. So there I was with all this data and using all kinds of means to get the data from my Newton to the desktop, best results with terminal emulators, one of the best being even in AppleWorks… version 3 I think it was then. And that time reminds me then of my very first internet data transfers, also with terminals and simple applications and one had to know things about handshake, bits and pary and the like and everything was so very, very crude!
Throughout I manage to bite myself into these strange code related things (and not just WYSIWYG clickings, but into a non-visual surface - non-visuall UI but a think UI instead), not grasping it only glimpsing it but still hooked and determinded to somehow get it to work how I want it to work. Same with an AppleScript I modify. I understand enough to somehow wade through it, excited to get it finally to work and do exactly how I imagined it (or feeling completely drained out if not).
And all of this leading back to my first steps with code, when my Dad tought me some basic BASIC so I could write a tiny application which would allow me to get my Kabbalah results, which was a pain doing it by hand! How frustrating, already then I did not truly grasp it, but only always just enough to do it. And this is how I feel all over again :shade_hmm:.
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