The Greatest Gift

Our Code will be back in January 2015!

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New Updates Added to Our Code Wiki

Hello all,

I updated Our Code Wiki with some goodies for you learning pleasure.  It’s been a while since I updated, so I added plenty to keep you all busy.  Enjoy and have a great holiday season!

Open2Study’s course UX for Web

CS258 Software Testing Methodology course

CS253 Web Dev: How to Build a Blog course

CS262 Programming Languages: Building a Web Browser course

CS255 HTML5 Game Development course

CS271 Intro to Artificial Intelligence course

CS215 Into to Algorithms course

Reference Guide on Linux Command Line

Reference Guide on Unix

Google’s Guide for Technical Development

Checklist for Responsive Web Design Projects

Stanford’s Practical Unix course

Links to Code School and Google Developers University

If you would like to join as a member of the wiki or contribute, subscribe to Our Code Blog, or check out instructions here.

It’s Computer Science Ed Week!

Computer Science Education Week, designed around promoting comp psi curriculum integration in schools, will take place December 8-14th, 2014.  While it does also fall during finals week here in my region, I wanted to showcase some great events and projects you all can get involved in with celebrating:

Hour of Code: Chances are if you read this blog, you are already coding at least an hour a day.  Why not teach a younger student this week? The site for the non-profit event has some amazing teaching materials and resources for those who would like to pair up as a mentor.  Just to get started, Apple retail stores around the country will be hosting free coding sessions as well. Grab a student and go!

Tuts for Beginners: In addition to hosting Hour of Code, Code.org also offers plenty of tutorials (tuts) for those as young as 4 years old to take advantage of.  K-8th grade students can start with tuts that help them to learn javascript, make games, learn about working with robotics through Lego, and plenty more here.

Harvard X CS50: Those who are familiar with my journey know that this course offered through Harvard is what really got me interested in programming.  I went through CS50 last year and have been learning beyond design ever since. Though an intro course, CS50 is no joke and system requirements do apply. The course is self-paced, free (as a MOOC), and offered year round. Visit EdX here to sign up.

Design a Splash Page: Splash pages are like landing pages; they are simple and function to take the user to one’s portfolio or other links.  Even if you are not ready to develop your own site from scratch just yet, this course will help you design your own splash page in an hour complete with a background, bio, social media button links, and an email subscription option.  You can access the course here through Udemy.

Read and Program: I’m a fan of diving in and learning by doing.  However, I realize that computer sci is like cooking: anyone can follow a recipe (code), but few work hard to become master chefs (programmers). That’s why I try to read popular books on CS themes and theory.  Lately, I’ve been getting more into data structures, but everyone’s different.  Find a book that works best for you by browsing through popular CS titles on goodreads.

Peep a Con: Confreaks, a popular Youtube channel that livestreams and shares tech con sessions, has posted videos from RubyConf2014, Django Con 2014, ArrrCamp 2014, and many others. Watch or attend a conference based on the programming language of your choice to stay up to date about workflows and industry trends.

Live Chat with Jack: Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and Square, will be live chatting with others tomorrow, December 9th, 2014 at 12noon PT.  Click here to watch the chat and participate.

Study: It’s finals week for many of us, so study hard and go all out for your computer science classes.

If you know of any events celebrating Comp Sci Week 2014, let me know.  I may spotlight them in another post this week.

QOTD: Good Luck With Finals Week!

This weekend is the beginning of finals week for me.  Most of my “exams” are projects, templates, and essays I have to write.  It’s quite easy for me to get distracted when I’m bored with studying, but this morning I was put in check with this quote:

“Every minute you spend on blogs, podcasts and screencasts means a minute you don’t spend creating software. “(Pat Maddox)

Ouch! With that said, good luck to all Our Code blog subscribers, readers, and wiki members facing final exams this month.  To those who aren’t, I’m hoping you spend your holiday downtime learning, designing, and developing.

Upcoming Event: Code Until Dawn STL

Aspiring game developer @Marque__ hit me up on Twitter during a tech chat to let me know about a group he’s apart of, Code Until Dawn STL. As I mentioned before, I made it a goal to spread word about events in towns and cities that often don’t get recognition, (as opposed to NYC and San Francisco which always have coding events in progress).

On the last Friday of every month, the group meets for a free form hacking session.  All are welcome, but newbies are encouraged to check out a programming language via Codecademy or TeamTreehouse prior to the event. Come and go as you like, the front door will be open with a simple bell ring, and as the group implies, the event will go on all night.

Here are the future dates planned for Code Until Dawn.  The next event will be hosted on December 19th, 2014 at 5:00pm.

January 23rd, 2015, 5pm

February 27th, 2015, 5pm

March 27th, 2015, 5pm

April 24th, 2015, 5pm

May 22nd, 2015, 5pm

June 26th, 2015, 5pm

Each event is hosted at Lab 1500, an entrepreneurial center in St. Louis.  Click here to get more detailed directions at the group’s meetup site.