Code Crew | Learn How to Code

CODE CREW SUGGESTED READING #11: LEARN iOS DEVELOPMENT

This week’s suggested reading focuses on learning iOS Development. iOS was developed by Apple and is the world's most advanced mobile operating system. Also it supports Apple devices such as the iPad and Apple TV.

iOS is programmed in Objective C, so we recommend that you get familiar with the language before diving head in. To hit the ground running we've included multiple resources and a link to build your first app. 

Below are the links. Happy Coding!

XCode: Download Application for Building Your Apps

Learn Objective C: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide and 6 Days of Objective C

Team Treehouse: Learn To Build iPhone Apps

Code School: Try Objective C and Try iOS

Mobile Tuts: Build Your First App

CODE CREW SUGGESTED READING #10: COURSERA'S INTRODUCTION TO DATA SCIENCE COURSE

This week’s suggested reading focuses on Coursera's "Introduction To Data Science" course. The 8 week course introduces the basics of data science and practical experience extracting value from big data. 

The class consist of lecture videos and four programming assignments: two in Python, one in SQL and one in R. Several members of Code Crew are already enrolled in the course and will be working on assignments during our collaborative sessions. 

Below is the link for the course and the suggested reading.

Introduction To Data Science

CODE CREW SUGGESTED READING #9: REASONS TO LEARN & USE TWITTER BOOTSTRAP

This week’s suggested reading focuses on Twitter Bootstrap a popular framework that makes Front End web development faster and easier. The reading gives us 11 detailed reasons to learn and use the popular resource.

Below is the link. We've also included a video for you to learn how to make a website using the framework. Happy Coding!

11 Reasons to Use Twitter Bootstrap 

Get Started With Twitter Bootstrap

CODE CREW SUGGESTED READING #8: DEPLOYING TO HEROKU

This week’s suggested reading focuses on deploying a basic Rails application to Heroku. Heroku is a cloud platform used to deploy and maintain your applications.

The platform supports many languages and frameworks including Rails, Python, Django, Scala, Java and more. The reading/screencast also touches on the workflow and best practices involved in maintaining your deployment.

Below are the links. Happy Coding!

Deploy A Basic Rails App To Heroku

CODE CREW SUGGESTED READING #7: 21 NESTED CALLBACKS/CSS TRIANGLE GENERATOR

This week’s suggested reading focuses on an embarrassing coding moment that a programmer experienced during their journey.

Below is the article "21 Nested Callbacks" via Hacker News and info about the CSS Triangle Generator. Thanks for the spotting @MaxJacobson.

Happy Coding!!! 

21 Nested Callbacks

CSS Triangle Generator

CODE CREW SUGGESTED READING #6: ESSENTIAL C

The Code Crew Meetup group is currently taking the CS50x challenge and are working through the first few problem sets, which focus on the C programming language.

C is a low-level language that gets a bad rap for being hard to learn when compared to other programming languages. Coming from Ruby, I would have to say that it is slightly more difficult to pick up but really isn't that bad when you wrap your head around the syntax. For anyone that is interested in learning C or wants a good intro to the language then "Essential C" by Nick Parlante, a lecturer at Stanford University and Google employee, is a good read. 

The document is a quick 45 page PDF that provides a high level overview of the important parts of the language. So, check it out and ride the C train with us!

CODE CREW SUGGESTED READING #5: GETTING STARTED RUBY ON RAILS

This week's suggested reading focuses on getting started with Ruby on Rails. Below you will find the full stack download kit for Rails, detailed instructions on how to get started and some free videos and interactive quizzes. 

Happy Coding! Links are below. 

Rails Installer: Getting Up & Running With Rails

Rails for Zombies 

This week’s suggested reading focuses on learning JavaScript properly. Below you will find the link for an article with two roadmaps on how to learn the language and links to awesome resources via Code School, Net Tuts + and .Appendto. 

Happy Coding! Links are below. Special thanks to Code Crew Swabbie <Linda Peng/>!

How To Learn JavaScript Properly

Learn the Basic Building Blocks of jQuery

Level Up Your JavaScript and jQuery Skills With .Appendto

CODE CREW CODE CHALLENGE #3 (PRODUCT OF A POWER OF 5)

5^3 (five raised to the third power) equals 125 and the product of the digits that make up 125 equals 10 (1 x 2 x 5 = 10). Using any programming language of your choice, create a program that will quickly find the product of the digits of 5^100 (five raised to the one-hundredth power). 

BONUS:

CODE CREW SUGGESTED READING #3: A FEW GOOD READS TO IMPROVE YOUR FRONT-END WEB DEVELOPMENT SKILLS

This week's suggested readings have a focus on front-end web development. Below you will find three pretty good articles on how to take advantage of the box-sizing property in CSS and how to write cleaner and more consistant front-end code.

Happy coding! Links are below:

Take Control of the Box Model with Box-sizing

Using White Space for Readability in HTML and CSS

CS50x: A GOOD FREE INTRO COMPUTER SCIENCE COURSE FOR NEWBIES

CS50 is Harvard College's intro to Computer Science course, which is designed for students that have little to no previous programming experience. Harvard and MIT recently launched a site called edX that provides a good amount of free online courses and CS50 now lives there in the form of CS50x. 

The course covers the C, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and SQL languages in addition to important Computer Science concepts that you may not get from programming alone. The coursework can be done on your own time and if you wish to receive a certificate of completion from Harvard all assignments must be submitted by April 15th and the suggested due date for the first assignment is scheduled for the end of this week. However,  just taking the course to complete the assignments and push the code to your GitHub would also be pretty effective.

Here are links to CS50x if you're interested in registering:

CS50x Official Page

CS50x Syllabus

CODE CREW CODE CHALLENGE #2 (WORD COUNT)

Using any programming language you choose, write a program that counts the number of words in a string and outputs the number of times a given word appears in the string. Your program should ignore case and non-word characters and output the number of times a given word appears such that the sentence "I really, really, really love it when my dog licks my cat." will return 3 for the for the word "really", 2 for the word "my", 1 for any other word in the sentence and 0 for any word not found in the sentence.

CODE CREW SUGGESTED READING #2: REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

A regular expression is a pattern that allows you to match (specify and recognize) strings of text like a character, word or pattern of characters.

For example, if I want to search for duplicate telephone numbers in my application I may write a regular expression that matches any non-number character (dashes, parentheses, periods, spaces, etc.) and then write code to strip them from each telephone number so I can compare each phone number as 7 digit strings. 

So if my program asks a user for a home phone number and user1 inserts his phone number as "(212) 555-1234" and user2 inserts his phone number as "718-555-1234", I can use a regular expression to help me write some code to change these inputs to "2125551234" and "7185551234" respectively. 

Say, for example, user3 comes along (who happens to be user1's wife) and inserts her number as "212.555.1234" I can write a regular expression that matches the periods in her number then write code to remove them to convert her number to "2125551234". My program will now know that user1 and user3 have the same exact number.

Just to summarize:

The string "(212) 555-1234" is not equal to the string "212.555.1234" because of the parentheses, dashes, periods and spaces

However, if I write a regular expression to match the parentheses, dashes, periods and spaces and write code to remove them, the two numbers become "2125551234"

and "2125551234" is equal to "2125551234"

To get a better idea of what regular expressions are, Nettus has some pretty good articles and a video tutorial on the subject. They're in JavaScript but the same idea applies to most programming languages; you would just have to check the documentation of the specific language you're using.

Links to the tutorials are below:

Regular Expressions for Dummies (Screencast)

You Don't Know Anything About Regular Expressions (Text)

8 Regular Expressions You Should Know (Text, and pretty useful if you're building an app)

CODE CREW SUGGESTED READING #1:

Taken from the suggested assignments for this week's meetup:

Suggested Things to Do

It may be a good idea to:

Work through Try Git (~15 mins)

Download and install Git on your computer

Set up a GitHub account

Download and install Sublime Text 2

Download and install Google Chrome, if you don't have it already

Probably also:

Watch Computer Programming in 5 Minutes

Watch Basic Command Line Tutorial, and follow along (~5 mins)

Go through the first chapter of one of the books in the "E-book" section of this post

And if you're really feeling brave:

CODE CREW CODE CHALLENGE #1 (PALINDROMES)

Using any programming language of your choice, create a program that checks whether a given string (any word or phrase) is a palindrome, meaning that it reads the same backwards as forwards (see example in the cartoon above). 

Your program should ignore case and non-word characters (anything other than a letter in the English alphabet) such that the phrase "Mr. Owl ate my metal worm!!!!!" will be recognized as a valid palindrome.

FREE CODE SCHOOL SCREENCAST ON AGILE BEST PRACTICES

Our friends a Code School have made a new screencast available that explains the best practices for agile software development. Definitely a good 15 minute video to watch to get familiar with some good agile methodologies. Even for us n00bs...

A FEW GOOD BOOKS: ELOQUENT JAVASCRIPT: A MODERN INTRODUCTION TO PROGRAMMING

Eloquent JavaScript is a nice little book to help you get better with your JavaScript coding skills. I would definitely recommend it as a good intro or something to go through while going through the JavaScript track on Codecademy or a similar site.

The best part about this book is not just that it's a pretty good read, it's free!