Teach Yourself how to code
Who is this guy
- Chris Langton
- Community <3 Speaker for meetups
- Python <3 Django, Pandas, Hadoop
- PHP <3 PHP7 ZF2 CI Doctrine
- Raspberry Pi <3 My fish can sms me!
- Blogger with publications in WDW, Pi Weekly, Openshift
- chrislangton84@gmail.com
- github.com/chrisdlangton
- www.nodewiz.biz
- @chrisdlangton
You have a clever idea
To turn that idea into (something)... consider;
- Is it viable?
- What are your capabilities?
- Is this idea Collaborative?
- Get it done
- Pay for all of this (somehow) [Crowdfund] [Investor] or [Partner]
Obstacles when Outsourcing development
- Good developers already have jobs and queues of freelance and hobby projects
- Good developers are expensive
- Developers will need to understand your project to be interested in it
- You'll spend a lot of time and money on something that might not work
- You won't know what your developers are up to
Alternatively
You can do it yourself
- Hardware is cheap (your home computer can be a server)
- Documentation and resources are abundant
- Open Source can provide tools, resources, and community.
- You know best what you're after
- You'll have fun
You Don't Have To Be A Genius
- It doesn't have to be beautiful
- It can be slow
- It can be buggy
- Gain interest with proof of concept
- All you need is a prototype
Software Engineers Vs Hackers
-
Software engineers practice computer science
They can tell you the most efficient ways to sort a deck of playing cards -
Hackers make things, the science is less important
Do'ers do things, and hackers achive goals by best means available. - But, Software engineers make things too.
- Optimal implementation isnt always the desired outcome.
- Both perspectives are good, and anyone can wear either or both hats.
The Minimum Viable Product
- A proof of concept
- Something to show off to investors
- ... and developers
- ... and designers
- ... and lawyers
- ... and everyone else who'll help make it great
The Minimum Viable Product
Building it yourself will give a deep understanding of your product.
You'll be able to understand and manage what your developers are doing and why.
And they (we) will love you for it.
Software literacy is the new literacy
Code Year
2012 was http://www.codeyear.com/
- Free course in programming
- For non-programmers
- Resources au-go-go
- General Assembly also offers short classes to help you level up in specific areas
- The Programming Fundamentals course will help you get to grips with the practice of programming
Don't be Shy
- You can and should ask questions
- The only dumb questions are ones you dont ask
The Big Picture
How the Web Works
- The Web uses a client-server model
- What we see in the browser is the front-end
- This is the stuff the browser understands
- HTML, CSS, Javascript
- The browser is the client
The Big Picture
How the Web Works
- What you don't see is the back-end
- Processes and databases on computers far away
- This is the server
- The "Internet" doesn't do much — it just passes data from the server to the client
What makes up a website
HTML: Structure
+ CSS: Presentation
+ Javascript: Animation and Reaction
+ Content: Texts
= A Website
What's involved
Choosing Your Tools
- There are hundreds of programming languages
-
C, ASP, BASIC, PHP, Perl, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, C++, Java, xCodeto name a few. - Different dialects for telling computers how to do things
- They all have different strengths and weaknesses
- You'll need to learn atleast one of these in the case of JavaScript, or usually more!
- ... but wait, there's more
Structure
For things to happen data and interfaces need structure
- HTML and CSS is the structure for the presentation of web pages.
-
Plain old XML is alternative for web page presentation structure
XML is also a popular choice for data storage and communication medium. - Yaml, JSON, EDI, Plaintext, CSV, arrays, are also common.
- SQL is a query language to access data from a Databased
- You will need familiarity of most of these for many applications
Goals for Today
- Make friends and ask lots and lots of questions
- Learn HTML
- Learn how to style a website using CSS
- No Javascript
- Understand the Twitter Bootstrap framework
- Use the Bootstrap framework to turn ordinary HTML into beautiful, standardised, mobile-ready HTML
- Upload and deploy your practice website
- Bonus: Find and use Bootstrap themes
Non-technical: Content
-
Just ordinary words like this.
You can read this, and so can your website visitors
Interactivity: JavaScript
- Programming language that adds interactions to your website such as Animations
- confirm('do you want to shutdown?')
- $('body').show();
- $('body').fadeOut();
Design: CSS
-
Cascading Style Sheets
Rules about how a website will look. - .red{color: red}
- .logo{padding-top: 10px}
- footer{width: 100%}
Structure: HTML
Describes the webpage to the browser.
paragraph
Bold text
For next time: Node.js
Node is an insanely popular JavaScript based back-end
- One language for both front-end and back-end
- Millions of NPM modules you can freely reuse
- Includes its own webserver, no need to learn that!
- Best utilises hardware than any other language
- Easy to get started
- Node is similar in design to and influenced by systems like Ruby's Event Machine or Python's Twisted.
Success Stories
These sites were built with Node.js:
- eBay
- PayPal
- Rdio
- Trello
- Wikia
- Yahoo!
What Will Go Wrong?
Everything
If debugging is the practice of removing bugs from software... then programming must be the practice of adding them.
You will have to make mistakes to learn how to fix them
Fixing Things
- You may not understand the error message
- Most problems will have been encountered previously
- So a quick Google search should get you back on track
- If not: congratulations! You found a harder problem
- Debug / Get help!
Additional Resources
Don't be a help vampire
- People are generally very happy to share their knowledge...
- IF you've made a fair attempt to help yourself first
- Read How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
- Read Help Vampires: A Spotter's Guide
- General Rules: Google first, ask questions later. Be polite. Keep trying!
Heroku
- http://www.heroku.com/
- Free, instant hosting
- Scales as needed
- Only pay if your app takes off
- BONUS: Built on Node.js
- Other options: AWS, Redhat Openshift, Nodejitsu.
Happy hacking!
Teach Yourself how to code