DIY software

In the early days of home computers we didn't have operating systems with easy to use menus, icons, and windows. It didn't come with useful software like a word processor, email, web browser, paint program, and so on. Home computers in the 1980s booted up into Basic (except the Jupiter Ace, which had the bizarre Forth language).

You could load software off a cassette tape, but there weren't many tapes around and what was available were mostly games. If you wanted software you mostly had to type it in and this usually meant using the Basic programming language. Typing in listings - and debugging them - is how many people learnt how to program computers.

Things are different now and if you want a program to do a job there is a good chance that you can track one down on the internet. It might even be free. However, you might find that it's not quite perfect for your needs and you might wish it had some feature or other, or it worked in a slightly different way. Why not write your own? Is programming really that difficult?

Writing a program because you can't find the right tool on the internet, or one that's affordable, is just one reason for learning how to program. You could also do it for money and you could either sell the software yourself or work for someone else and get paid to write software. You can also program for fun too.

Despite the complexity of modern computers and operating systems, programming isn't any harder today than it was 25 years ago. The reason is that programming languages have got smarter and provide lots of cool tools to help you with the task. For example, Microsoft Visual Studio enables you to draw applications on the screen using a form designer and then to write code to make the windows, menus, buttons and other objects work. The Visual Studio Express editions of Visual C, Visual Basic and Visual Web Developer are free.

Back in the early days of computers, Basic used to come with the computer and it was free and easy to use. This encouraged lots of people to have a go at programming. Computers don't come with Basic any more but the free Microsoft Visual Basic Express certainly encourages people to have a go. However, it's not that easy for a novice to learn. It's OK once you have gained some experience, but it's hard to get started. For this reason, Microsoft has produced Small Basic.

Small basic is designed to be used by novices and it aims to be simple and easy to use. It's interesting, but like all programming languages, using it isn't that straightforward and you really need to read the 62-page Getting Started Guide. In some ways it is quite interesting and it is quite easy to write simple games, but Visual Basic is much more powerful and the posibilities open to a programmer are so much greater. Anyway, it's worth a look if you have never written a program before and want to dip your toe in the water.

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Weird Mac file copy bug - or is it a feature?

I use both a Mac running OS X and a PC running Windows and sometimes the differences between the way they work can catch you out. It happened recently and I have only just realised what has been going on.

The Windows part of the website is created on a Windows PC and the Mac part is created on a Mac. Of course, I could simply use one or the other to do the whole website, but it's useful to experience both platforms because I write about both the PC and the Mac.

I keep a copy of the website in a folder on each computer. On the PC it's the htdocs folder in C:\Xamp (Xamp is a web server based on Apache and is handy for testing), on the Mac it is also the htdocs folder, but this time it's in Applications\Mamp (Mamp is a web server based on Apache and is handy for testing). The problem is how to keep them in sync.

One way is to drag the htdocs folder to a USB memory drive, take it to the other computer and drag it off. It can be done over the network too. The way Windows and OS X works when you do something like this has caught me out and files have been going missing on the Mac. Is it a feature or a bug?

If you drag a group of files and folders from one place and drop them on another place there is a conflict if the destination contains files or folders with the same names. Both Windows and OS X ask you if you want to replace the destination files and folders with the source, which is fine, but Windows and OS X work differently.

The problem is with subfolders. When the source and destination both contain a subfolder with the same name Windows asks if you want to replace the destination with the source. If you say yes, then the files in the source subfolder are copied to the destination subfolder and files with the same name are overwritten. Files with different names are kept. What you end up with is a folder that combines the files from the source and destination. This is exactly what I wanted.

Do this in OS X and you are asked if you want to replace the subfolder. If you say yes then the folder in the destination is deleted and replaced by the source folder. It really is deleted and it's not moved the the Trash. What you end up with is not a combined folder that contains files from both the source and destination, but just the source.

This isn't what I wanted. and it's how I have been losing files. I assumed OS X would only replace the files in the subfolder with the ones I'm copying from the PC, leaving the ones I'd created on the Mac, so I'd end up with a synced folder. Instead files I'd created for the Mac part of the website were being deleted because the subfolder was being deleted and replaced.

This is obviously something you need to be wary of when copying files and folders to update a destination folder.

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