

Ask HN: Making an information site for Computer Engineers? - jff

I'm a computer engineering student, in my 4th year. While doing some lab work the other day, my friends and I were struck yet again by how little useful information is available to CE students online. We needed schematics for a Brent-Kung adder, but <i>we couldn't find anything</i>. The same thing happens when you search for info on, say, VHDL.<p>This gave me an idea. "I've got four years worth of notes and knowledge, as do my friends in the program. Why not put them online, aimed at CE students?" All the info would be checked and approved before going online.<p>My question is, how should I structure things? I like simplicity--I write C, I use Plan 9, I write my papers in troff. That makes me want to write an HTML site, static, with subsections put together by myself or other approved creators. Since my intention is to provide the notes and useful information from myself and a few friends, this does not seem unreasonable.<p>I know what you're all thinking right now--"just make a wiki". Well, I've also considered doing that, but it just doesn't seem like the right fit, for reasons I can't quite explain.<p>As someone who typically doesn't worry about the web, I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to do this, what sort of technology to use, etc.
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showerst
What about six months down the road when you want to add a new section to the
bottom of every single page, or when next year rolls around and you want to
change the 'copyright 2009' to 'copyright 2010'?

Realistically, you're going to need some kind of basic dynamic capability, and
once your site grows beyond 20+ pages you'll save more time than the time it
takes to learn it.

Sounds like you don't need much, and PHP (or really any dynamic language I've
seen) has an 'include' directive for adding headers and footers and would take
you all of two seconds to learn (beware, there's a ton of bad code out there.
The good resources have been discussed in many other HN posts.)

For the super-basic stuff any dynamic language will do fine, so just mark it
up in whatever stack you're comfortable with the tools for (I'd recommend PHP,
Python, or Ruby in increasing orders of complexity for a basic site.)

You might also consider a real CMS in case you want to bring more non-
technical people on, or add authentication later. Wordpress is fairly full
featured on the editor, has user privileges, and I believe it has plugins to
support LaTeX and other Math markup easily. Again, any leaders in the space
should be fine for what you want to do.

On the actual code side, mark it up in strict html or xhtml, test it in at
least FF/IE6/IE7/Safari, and try to seperate your CSS into classes in external
file(s) as much as possible so you can change your design later with less
headaches. If things are set up right, adding a css stylsheet for mobile would
be trivial, which might be nice for times when you need a formula at the
library.

I hear good things about the book 'Head First HTML' from beginners, and if
you're at any high level with computing you should breeze through it.
Alternately, just get a CMS and file a style you like and be done with it.

In your case, I'd argue that there's an explicit tradeoff between simplicity
of the code and simplicity of the final implementation. If you want a basic
site with slim, clean code, you're going to have to do some learning. If you
want a quick deployment that 'just works', you could do it in a few hours, but
have less control over the elegance of the solution.

P.S.: Cool idea. I'd bet you could even charge for some of it, if you were so
inclined.

~~~
Shamiq
_I hear good things about the book 'Head First HTML' from beginners, and if
you're at any high level with computing you should breeze through it._

I whole-heartedly recommend this book as an introduction to HTML. It covers
HTML, XHTML, and CSS in enough breadth and depth to get you started for most
applications.

Of course, it won't make you into the best web designer out there, but it's a
wonderful resource for edification purposes.

------
Shamiq
When you say "approved before going online" do you mean you will get
permission from the professors? I believe some legal issues may arise when you
publish the notes from a college class you paid for.

Though most, if not all, of my professors don't mind if we put our notes out
there, there may be eventualities you'll want to consider before doing this
ostentatiously good deed.

 _Edit: I was referring to
this:<http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/prof-sues-note.html> _

~~~
jff
No, I meant approved by me, as in I check to make sure the info is ok.

To the best of my knowledge, nothing stops you from walking into any lecture
and listening. There are no rules (at least at any sane school I know of)
against sharing notes. I don't intend to say "This is from course 0306-123,
Computer Engineering on Rails", just have sections like "VHDL" and specific
informative bits under that.

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weaksauce
I like this idea! I am going through a computer science and engineering
curriculum at university right now and this type of site with VHDL and other
CE subjects would be very useful. Maybe have some kind of forum as well so
that some kind of discussion could take place? After you find a post that is
worthy of a sticky you could then put it up as part of the main site.

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psyklic
You're right there isn't much information. However, the homebrew
computers/electronics scene unfortunately hasn't regained its earlier interest
levels.

Why? Tools that CEs use largely aren't available to the general public, and
the learning curve for electronics (and expense required for materials) is
higher than most are willing to undertake.

~~~
peregrine
You can download Altera Quartus II Web Edition for free. Which is VHDL and
Block Diagrhams and chip programming(if you have the chips) and a ton more
then I even know about.

[http://www.altera.com/products/software/quartus-ii/web-
editi...](http://www.altera.com/products/software/quartus-ii/web-edition/qts-
we-index.html)

------
enomar
If you only want to share this with a few people, try Google sites or docs.

If you want many people to find and use your information, put it on Wikipedia.

Both of these are free, easy and the information won't disappear when you get
bored of the project.

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epall
I love it! I'm a computer engineering student, as well, and I would even pay
for such a resource.

