Ken Sharpe

Totally agree -- come up with some practical or interesting idea for a program, then just try to do it. You won't know what kind of knowledge you need when you start, so it'll be an adventure of learning. Way more fun and helpful than slogging through tutorials.

In real life application level requirements are just an overview of the functionality the program needs to implement. What it does. Sometimes what it doesn't do. How the users should interact with it. They should be specific, but generally they don't include (pseudo)code.

C++ is the industry standard for engine programming, but a lot of heavy lifting is done by scripting languages like Lua and Python. Also, if you're thinking of web-based games, then you might look at actionscript.

It may not be strictly necessary the the original poster is simply wrong that it will hurt. That's nonsense. Every little bit helps.

Paul Graham talks about hackers as artists. You should google his essays, they are fantastic.

Good idea, Salem.

I think they are both fundamentally important. Those who disagree tend to be mediocre developers, or inexperienced developers.

Link back here with your work in progress, I'm curious how it turns out.

What line throws your exception?

You're not wrong in your thinking. If you believe the link is valuable to your visitors and they they will create business for you, then do it. Focus on your visitors first, then your search engine rank.

You'd need to give us a lot more information. Do the sensors have some kind of firmware API already? What format does it output in?

There is no real ASP .NET OSS equivalent. There are options, as mentioned, like PHP and RoR, but they are not as scalable or pwoerful as the .NET framework. Java is generally considered slower, but it's the common alternative... but it's not open source (yet?)

Yeah, your problem is probably that you're trying to connect to the sql express App_Data database, rather than the the sql server instance you meant to.

Seriously, just start coding. If you hit a problem, google your issue and most of the time, you'll find a solution, if not, ask a specific question on a forum like this one.

If you want to be hired without experience forget certifications. Spend your time actually learning the material and produce some really good work on your own time. When it comes to an interview, talk about the raytracer, or the mp3 management software, that you wrote.

It's not really new. This is how one passes information from a server side language to the javascript. Problem has already been solved, sorry 8)

Not clear -- you want to find 10 words before, and 10 after any keyword, but only if the words are inside a paragraph? Like, the keyword is the firs word in a given paragraph, so you'd only want 10 words after? You just need to search for the line …

Not true. Just wrap that word in a span, give it a class, and give that class a margin in your css.

You're getting yourself a bit confused, Acidburn. ASP .NET and WinForms are two different worlds entirely. ASP .NET is strictly for web-based application development, meaning that everything you display to the user will be a webpage. WinForms is like a more traditional application. I know I'm not answering your original …

You can also just paint the irises black if you're handy with the paint tool.

To create a profile like on myspace, you should go to myspace.com and create a new profile. Silly questions, silly answers?

I've never heard this before, and a priori it seems wrong. Google indexes information by domain name, not IP address. If what you read is true, then a site like [url]http://www.kensharpe.net[/url] might rank very high, then decide to switch web hosts for whatever reason. The site is moved without a …

You're confusing yourself, that's why you can't find anything on google. If you have a VB application that needs to upload something to a server, the the vb application needs to connect to the server, and upload it on its own. It has nothing to do with a php web …

You need to google something called Regex or Regular Expressions.

More than just IE not implementing things, you should be aware that form elements in particular (like drop down lists), have very different support across many browsers. You will not be able to style them all exactly the same no matter how hard you try, so you should design with …

Yeah, javascript can set the scroll bar location, look into that.

Not sure about that serk. It'll work, but it's expensive. Might it be cheaper to have a stored procedure check for the record first, then insert if one is not found?

Anything that sounds tricky won't work. The best way to top the search engines is to write quality content consistently, and for a long time. You can help your chances by having clean, semantic, valid code. If you don't what that means, google all those words and you'll find a …

You probably need a separate print style sheet. Google that.

My understanding is that PercentLoaded is IE specific. Why aren't you doing what most flash videos do, and display the percent loaded actually in the movie?