Zen Coding 175
Download Squad has a quick review, with video, of Zen Coding (Google Code project page here), an extremely well-thought-out accelerator for anyone who codes HTML. Its syntax is CSS-like. Zen Coding has been around for a while — here's its author Sergey Chikuyonok's introduction in Smashing Magazine from last November — and it has now picked up support for more than a dozen editing environments, including Notepad++ and TextMate.
don't mock the Notepad++ (Score:4, Interesting)
don't mock the Notepad++....it's very powerful, yet lightweight and unbloated.
I'm sure many slashdotters here also live by the "Notepad++ code"....
Re:don't mock the Notepad++ (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Let's see... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe you should make that, please keep your SQL, PHP, JavaScript, CSS and HTML seperate.
Why not go all the way? (Score:2, Interesting)
z0mg zen! As far as I am concerned it's a nice gimmick. If you are going to 'Zen' up your html, why not go all the way and switch to Haml [haml-lang.com]? You actually code in this CSS-like syntax and let Haml compile it to html for you.
Re:Zen (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I agreed with you, in having been ignorant about anything but the romantic western views on “zen”. :)
So I read up on the actual philosophies behind it. And now I just as much won’t to come near zen, as I don’t want to come near any other religious insanities. (Please bear with me. Or at least read the points, down there where it’s marked bold. Thank you.
See, the goal of Zen, as far as I see, is so get into a “total zero” state. One that they call “enlightement”, but that I call “no different from being a vegetable”. The goal is to seek less and less, and basically just sit there and get into absolute nothingness. Because apparently you don’t exist anyway, as existence is a only defined trough changes (true, but somehow you’re not thinking four-dimensionally, Marty! ^^)
So reaching Zen, is the art of killing your existence, without killing your body.
How in hell is that an ideal? It’s sick. And I don’t say that in a derogatory fashion. I say that, because that is an actual form of repression that mentally ill people use.
See, when we experience horrible things that we can’t fight, we humans tend to go in one of two directions:
1. Build up an inner imaginary world, and explain the horrible experiences trough it, giving it all a sense, and making it “OK” again. In a very mild form, we all have done this. In a medium form, it’s called “religion” (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc). And in the worst form, it’s called by its medical name: schizophrenia.
2. Run away and make it so that that part of reality and you never ever come into contact with each other again. Ever. And if we can’t physically run away, we do so, be hiding away in our mind itself. Blocking us from reality. Of course we all also have done a bit of this once in a while. But we learned to face it again, and came back. But what Zen does, is generalizing it, and making it an ideal. Going as far as physically possible. And thereby removing themselves from our reality. Which is, to us, equal to stopping to exist.
So: No thanks. :)
Re:Zen (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh come on, try to make an effort.
It should be "Zen has nothing to do with spirituality and everything to do with spirituality" or "The student asked about the spirituailty in Zen. 'Lemons', replied the master, and the student was enlightened".
Re:You don't "code" HTML (Score:2, Interesting)
"Code" is a pretty broad concept. Perhaps you should look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code [wikipedia.org]
Any asshat can substitute letters for their corresponding number in the alphabet, but does that make it less of a "code"?
No. Sorry but I am not convinced and this merely strikes me the same as when people argue the term "hacking".
Some can't accept/understand that language evolves, while others merely just want a foothold to create a meaningless sense of superiority.
Which one are you?
Funny thing is, I agree with you somewhat, snd also find other peoples limited perspectives of technology slightly comical, but I'm not about to narrow the definition of a word just to spite them.
Also, I second nebulus4's comment below and think it's more acceptable to call what you're speaking of, programming, and the result, a program, but I guess that words not quite exclusive enough either...
And uhhhh.......big boys? Come on man, seriously. No tech job/expertise makes you one of the "big boys". Try protein shakes.
Re:don't mock the Notepad++ (Score:2, Interesting)
A non-zero price can make it a practical impossibility to use in many organizations because of the paperwork involved.
But not always, and definitely isn't at home.
Since their are many free alternatives available in this category it's easily possible that the pay software is more trouble than it's worth even if it is otherwise superior, as the GPP was implicitly pointing out.
And apparently that's not true for the poster who originally mentioned it.