5 ways to get around "programmers block"

It has happened to us all.

Everything is going swell. Your program is shaping up great. You are writing line after line of good code, almost on autopilot - then BAM. How do you go about doing that? Let's try using gotos instead of a for loop... nope, that's not worked. How about loads of if loops instead of that switch... nope, not compiling. After a while, this can get really frustrating, and make you feel like giving up. I call this programmers block.

5) Google, THEN ask
Try googling the error code you get, or google a certain function. Look at the first two pages of search results, and if you can't find what you are looking for, THEN ask. I cannot emphasize how important it is to properly search before you ask and waste someones time. If you fail to google properly, you will annoy everyone and just get loads of lmgtfy.com replies. A good website to ask for help is http://stackoverflow.com/ - the community over there is really friendly.

4) Get inspiration
Go to freecode.com or pastebin.com and search for a program that is similar to yours, or has an interesting way of doing a certain thing. Remember, never copy and paste code. You will not learn from this, and next time you come across a similar problem you will become stumped again.

3) Rewrite the program a different way
This can be a frustrating option, but sometimes its the only way. Sometimes you don't have to rewrite the whole program, but instead re-structure it.

2) Get some sleep
This suggestion may seem a little bit strange, but studies have shown that sleeping can help you make decisions. Just sleep, or even forget about the project for a few days - when you next come to the project you may find a solution that has been strikingly obvious, but you never thought about it.

1) Learn more
All programmers are still learning, even the really experienced ones. Read about more functions and library.I recommend buying a book about the language you are writing in above guides on the internet. The books are usually higher quality than a .pdf on the internet as anyone can write a .pdf, but a book must be of a certain standard to be published. Also, you can read a book anywhere, but need a to be in front of a computer to be on the internet.

It is really important that you don't give up. You will feel good once you have beaten programmers block, and it will prove a valuable learning experience for future encounters.

Thanks for reading :)

IM spammer

Sup :) This has got to be the most difficult program I have ever written.It is an Instant Messager Spammer that I wrote quite a while ago. It took me many hours and questions on stack overflow. Its worth it though, because usually the harder and more time consuming a program is, the more satisfaction you get at the end. Oh yeah, and a spammer is really funny, I almost crashed one of my friends computers while spamming him.

I tried to use some C style writing for this one, as I thought it would be good practice. My dad had an old book about C (He doesn't program, I have no idea why he had it), and after a few minuets reading I thought I should probably practice some. It took some adjustment to get used to things like "scanf" and "printf" instead of "cin <<" and "cout >>". The TypeMessage() function was the most difficult to write, but then again it is the main part of the program.

Anyway, yeah, check out the source code at http://pastebin.com/8iry9xEk. You can download it in the downloads section, along with source codes and descriptions for my other programs.

Thanks for reading :)

PS. We have a twitter account. Follow @teenprogramming. Thanks :)

What is 'the cancer that is killing /b/'?

Every day, patriotic 'oldfags' complain about 'newfags' ruining 4chan's random board. Anything that contains a meme or a smiley face will cause a shitstorm of people posting "Back to reddit". In fact, /b/ has been redesigned to curb shit posting, and 'bring /b/ back to its roots'. Now, you cannot change your name, and you have an ID within a thread. Of course, this didn't change anything, and /b/ is still full of ponies and rage comics.

But are bronies and Redditors really killing /b/? No. The people who are killing /b/ are people who have been lurking the site for a few months and consider themselves oldfags. For some reason, wasting years of your life on that image board is seen as a good thing in the 4chan community, and if you haven't spend days in the basement on /b/ then you are an outcast. Anyway, /b/ has turned into an oldfag pissing contest, with people leaping at the chance to prove how much of their lives they have spend on the site.

Oh yeah, and bronies.

The best programming language

"What is the best programming language?"
"Which programming language shall I learn?"

These question is asked on Yahoo Answers at least three times a day.

Me and my friend was debating this question the other day. His name is Conor. Anyway, Conor writes in Java, and he was claiming Java was the best, as it is easy to write GUI and it is easy to learn etc etc. I disagreed, saying that the C languages are better as they are faster, less memory intensive and a better standard library.

Then, I had another debate with another friend called Callum. He uses flash, and he says Actionscript is the best as it is super easy to make games. I dismissed this, saying that Actionscript isn't even a real programming language.

Then, I had ANOTHER one with my brother, who doesn't program but at one point he 'wrote' in Scratch. He said scratch is the best beginner programming language, but I disagreed saying its OK for children to introduce them to the world of programming, but python is much better as it is actually something you can write in and it is still really easy.

So what is the best programming language?

There isn't one. Java and Actionscript are best for writing games, or anything with graphics. Python is best for quickly and easily writing a program that will do an equation for you, Scratch is good for animating and introducing people to programming, and the C languages are best for writing console programs or text games. It depends on what you want the program to do.

Thanks for reading :)

Starting out with C++

C++ looks really difficult to learn. So many parenthesis, semi-colons, numbers; what do they all mean? Why is there a hash there? What does 'x' do?

This is exactly what I was thinking when I read some C++ source code. My dad tried to learn it ages ago, but he "couldn't get his head around it". Being the younger me, I always liked to one up my dad. I already had a pretty good grip on Python and LUA, and decided to learn to write in C++. We were all beginners at the start - however, most people have college courses and seminars to teach them to program.

I had a .pdf file I downloaded off the internet.

It was brilliant though. I would definitely recommend it to anyone starting out with C++. It was clear-cut, easy to understand, and it taught me to program (it can be found at http://www.cplusplus.com/files/tutorial.pdf). Every day I would spend atleast 2 hours a day infront of a computer screen reading and programming.

C++ has many many advantages:
-Stable has hell
-Faster than the road runner when his laptop battery is on 5%
-Versatile and flexible
-Portable
-Garbage collection
-Object orientated

It can get very frustrating though. The error messages you can get are very unhelpful (compiler-dependent).

Is C++ a good language to learn? IMHO, yes. It is probably the best of the C languages, but you should consider learning Java. I don't know anything about Java though, and can't say anything about it.

Thanks for reading :)

Python - good or bad?

Hello again :)

This blog is only 4 days old, and yet its already reached 1000 hits! And it's all thanks to you guys, thanks for viewing :) You may have noticed I have made a downloads page, where you can get my programs without needing a compiler.

Anyway, Python - some people love it, some people hate it. Its a very simple but versatile language, and anything you can do with C++ you can do with python. Personally, it was the first programming language I ever learnt. It introduced me into the world of programming, and for that, I owe it a lot. I would recommend it to any beginner programmers.

It, however, is not flawless. It only has one IDE, and it is very memory intensive. Also, it 'compiles' to a .pyc file that can only be run from computers that have Python installed (you can get a tool called PY2EXE, but this is very unstable).

Despite this, it is very very easy to learn and can easily introduce you to a C language or Java; and its far far better than the alternative beginner programming language, Scratch. Scratch is fine for children and very young programmers, but its more of a game than a programming language.

Thanks for reading :)

Lobster pots game- saving highscores

Sup :)

It was the end of term and in maths we celebrated by playing a game called "Lobster pots". It was actually pretty fun (I screwed up and failed) but at the end of class I thought it would be a good idea to spend a portion of my holiday sitting in front of a computer programming.

It was easy, there is nothing complicated in here - however, it was the first program I ever wrote that wrote to a text file. I wrote it a few months ago, and I'm not being big headed or anything but I'm pretty proud of myself. I managed to make it concise and efficient (the whole thing is in 86 lines, a few of those are blank), but it has it's flaws. Check it out - any feedback is appreciated :)

The source can be found here:
http://pastebin.com/hCJMpTXj

An explanation of the game can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/onthefuture/A912494

Thanks for reading :)

2011 4chan's /b/ VS 9gag battle

Man, this was funny as hell.

People suddenly started posting about how angry they were that 9gag was stealing and "monetizing" their memes, even though basically every site on the cheezeburger network do this. A thread came up about DDOS'ing 9gag, which excited all the wannabe skids that lurk 4chan. Of course, since anyone who is actually good with computers left 4chan long ago, and I think they managed to take down the store for a few minuets.

After they realized that this wasn't working, they decided to flood the vote page with gore.
That worked. 9gaggers were scarred. I thought this was a bit too far, but 4chan have destroyed people in the past.

Where were Reddit and Funnyjunk in all this? There were a few threads about how "The enemy of our enemy is our friend" and that they should go to Reddit and funnyjunk for help. This didn't work though, as 4chan tend to stupidly hate every single site on the net (even 4chan) and it didn't kick off.

The whole thing is stupid, IMO. Memes should be enjoyed, and people need to make money. 9gag is actually ok, Reddit and funnyjunk are awesome (apart from the bronie posts everywhere)

Thanks for reading

OnionIB - The deep web - is it really that bad?

When I used to lurk the internet, I used to read loads about how mysterious and creepy it was down there. I read about assassination plots, drugs, child porn, phreakers and genital mutilation etc. I was very interested (Yeah, I know, someone who was 12 should spend more time doing other things but whatever) and decided I would pluck up the courage to go down there.

I downloaded TOR, got the .onion for the hidden wiki, pressed enter and hoped for the best...

... is that it?
It just looks like Wikipedia. *Scroll Scroll* Urrgh, that's a link to jailbait. I don't want to go on that. *Scroll Scroll* Ooh. Black Market. Looks cool, lets check this out. *Click* *Scroll Scroll* Weed? I was expecting warheads and guns! *Click* *Scroll Scroll* Penis panic. Sounds delicious. Right, this is boring, and I have some homework to do *Click X*

All in all? Its not that bad. It's not some secret underground community, full of dark'n'edgy mega hackers. The only things that you can actually find down their are drugs and child porn. The internet tends to big up things that are slightly controversial, such as TORNet and 4chan.

Thanks for reading :)

10 ways to become a better programmer

10) Pretend that the next person to read your code is an angry psychopathic killer that knows where you live.
I am being a bit of a hypocrite here, as my code is often unreadable and badly commented. It is important to have readable code, especially if you are sharing it or publishing it, or going back to it later. Every programmer has started a project, came back 2 weeks later and found it difficult to understand what the hell they wrote.

Oh yeah, and try and limit your use of goto's. People seem to hate those.

9) Pretend that the next person to use your program is an angry psychopathic killer that knows where you live.
In the end, your program is written for the user. The program needs to be concise, and easy to use. If you are putting your program online or even selling it, you must always always include a readme.

8) Staying up till the early hours of the morning buzzed on coffee is never good for your code.
For me, staying up late drinking red bull makes me write very bad code very fast.

7) Quality, not quantity.
As I have said before, the amount of lines in a code is not a valid measure of how good a program is. Infact, its probably better if you don't write so many lines. Concise code is better than huge code. Use switches instead of loads of if's, and for loops rather than repeating things etc.

6) You will never learn everything about a programming language.
There is no person who knows everything about a programming language. There is always always more to learn. Sign up for an account on http://stackoverflow.com/ - the community there is very helpful.

5) You will become frustrated, and feel like giving up on some projects. Don't.
Google is your best friend, and if you can't find what you are looking for, ask. The feeling you get when you see your code finally compile. Besides, most of the time its usually something small and easily remedied.

4) Try and learn some new languages.
A lot like normal languages, generally people who know more languages are better at communicating. Also, they can easily go to new places. It is a good idea to get various types of programming languages under your belt, such as Python, Java and C++.

3) Never copy and paste code.
Its good to read and learn from more experienced programmer's source code, but just copy and pasting it from the internet means you learn nothing. See if you can re-write it in a more efficient or clever way. If you must copy and paste it, at least make sure you understand it.

2) Programming should be fun.
Especially for a teenage programmer who is not being paid, programming should be fun and an enjoyable hobby. Programming is a fun thing to do; it improves your maths and logic skills, kills time, and nothing beats the feeling you get when you see "Linking ->" in the output window after hours of writing.

1) Practice makes perfect!
You learn more from experience then you do from reading. Try different things out see if they work. See if you can replace those goto's with a for switch, or a do while switch.

Thanks for reading!

Spacebar 2000 cheat

If you haven't played Press The Spacebar 2000, you can find it here:
http://www.zimm-co.com/PressTheSpaceBar/pressthespacebar2000.html

Anyway, people from my school play that game loads. And the undisputed champion was my friend Josiah. But when he posted this on Facebook:

Then I knew I was going to have to beat him. Originally I tried to do it legit, but couldn't beat 40. Then I remembered C++'s keybd_event function. I opened up visual C++ and got to work straight away.

It worked, but it could be better. What if my one program opened up loads of other programs that spammed the space key for 5 seconds, then closed? I wrote one that opened a batch file, and that batch file opened up 10 programs that spammed the spacebar. I know it's not efficient, but I did write this in a matter of 20 minuets with the goal objective being to cheat the game.

The source code can be found here:
http://pastebin.com/6JUm0B44

P.S. Soon I will put up compiled full programs, for those who don't have compilers.

Anonymous is a huge hacker collective, with hundreds of twitter accounts and even more people joining in on raids and DDOS attacks.


Some members have very noble motives. Anon twitter accounts talk of helping the poor and stopping corrupted politicians. They raise awareness of fundraising activities and give important, unbiased news.
Heck, they even took down child porn websites on the OnionIB.

But Anonymous is a collective. It is a very varied and diverse group. It has its sick bastards and trolls. You have to keep on mind that they originated on the boards of 4chan, and anyone who frequents the image board can tell you that it is definitely not a friendly site.

This is shown by the arrest of "Sabu". The FBI thought they chopped off the head of Anonymous, but Anonymous doesn't even have a head. Check out the suit.

They did destroy Lulzsec, however.

Then they are those who "join" anonymous just to feel big and important. These happen to be the same people that are "killing /b/". They will hear about how anonymous are super |_33T hackers and rush over to 4chan to post ponies. Some anons also have a serious messiah complex going on, aswell.

Do I consider myself as an Anon? No. While I do respect most of Anonymous and follow anon accounts on twitter, and monitor threads that report on the progress of DDOS attacks on raids, I don't join in (Apart from that raid on 9gag, but that was just for the giggles XD).

Anyway, that's just my opinion. The opinions on anonymous are very varied, but most people seem to respect them.

P.S. More source code to come.

Sup :)

This is the biggest program that I have ever written, at 2016 lines long. Of course, the amount of lines in a code should not be a was of measuring how good a program is, and in fact this code is very, very bad. And besides, most of the code is basically inefficient repetition.

Enough criticizing of my own program.

The code is easy to read, and relatively simplistic. If you have any basic grasp of C++ you will understand it.

I will be making improvements, such as an encryption key, and saving space (I'm sure I will find a way to put the whole thing in a for loop)

The source can be found here:
http://pastebin.com/apU5Zi0b

Health warning: The program is written by a novice 14 year old programmer. The source may cause manic psychosis, comatose or even death in experienced programmers.

Welcome to TheTeenProgrammer! In this blog I will be discussing computers, C++, and other nerdy stuff. I will be putting up my source code and downloads. So far, I have written an text crypter (and a decrypter to go with that), a lobster pots game, spacebar 2000 cheat, and an IM spammer. I have written a lot more, but most of my other programs are just little things to test out algorithms and methods. I will go into more detail about each one later.

Thanks for visiting!