I, Hacker: Part I
It all began with a tweet.
I was wondering if I’d be able to learn PHP before next Demodag, a thing here in Copenhagen where people demo stuff that works.
I’m not a hacker by a longshot. I know basic HTML and CSS and I can just barely construct a Wordpress loop but that’s pretty much the extent of my PHP skills. Javascript? Ruby? Forget about it.
I have a pretty busy schedule so I’ll probably not be able to learn PHP before the next Demodag. But if I keep thinking like that I’ll never learn PHP at all because when am I going to get less busy than I am now? When I retire? So I thought “why not just do it?” I want to build a mashup. It’s probably not going to be ready for Demodag but maybe for the next one or the one after that. It really doesn’t matter that much. This is going to be just as much about the process as about the result.
And to keep me motivated (and to get the community to help debug my crappy code) I’m going to document that process right here on my blog.
Okay, so here’s the initial concept for my mashup: You know how films based on books always suck compared to the book? And how books that are made into films get more popular because of the attention? (I’m not sure that actually happens, but I think it might.) I want to make a site that shows trailers for films based on books and displays a link to buy the book. For now I’ll call it “I Liked the Book Better”.
I spent a couple of hours yesterday researching the APIs I’ll need to make this happen and experimenting with them. And learning a little bit of PHP. Stay tuned for the next post in which I will reveal my progress and show you some actual code that I wrote (with a whole lot of help from our chief developer Johan who has been exceptionally patient so far—Thanks, Johan!)
