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Programming

Getting Started with IntelliJ IDEA - A more complete solution

Whether or not you've done applications programming you've probably heard about how the framework of choice is JavaFX. This isn't the most friendly approach for people who are just getting started, fresh out of Prog 1 or even Prog Fund.

Let me tell you that there's a better way.

IntelliJ Idea, for free with your university email does all the setup for you. It automatically installs the correct Java version. It gives you a starter project for JavaFX and has advanced features like automatic imports and inbuilt documentation.

Rather than spending weeks messing around trying to get the right versions of Java and antiquated versions of JavaFX to work together you can simply avoid all the fuss and get a better experience for it.

Introduction to Rust

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Hi! This blog post is a follow-up to the Rust Workshop that ran on the 16th of August 2022.

This post should cover the same concepts, while also providing links to relevant resources and further reading, where necessary. I will be explaining the concepts in terms of C/C++ and Java, so a general understanding of both is recommended.

Introduction to Git

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Whether or not you've heard of git before you should know that it's a skill that's almost universal when it comes to programming. An essential skill for anyone just getting started to the most skilled of experts, the ultimate headstart for getting your first developer gig or simply for organising your own projects.

Git is a piece of software designed to accomodate the massive amount of changes that occur in projects involving an insane amount of code being changed by many people all at once.

If you've ever done group work you'll have had this problem at some point where two people try to edit the same paragraph and it just ends up as a jumbled mess of randomly placed characters.

Git records everyone's changes line by line, making it easy to see what's been changed, when it's been changed and by whom whilst at the same time making sure your files don't end up like this.

Blazingly Fast Abstractions using Generics

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Earlier this year, I had an interesting conversation with another ProgSoc member about the performance benefits of generics compared to abstract interfaces. So I thought I might as well make my first blog post here about that!

This post mainly applies to compiled languages such as C#, C++, Rust, and possibly Java, however Java appears to use dynamic dispatch significantly more than necessary.

I will be using C# for demonstration, and I'll try to keep it simple and relevant to other languages also.