Kode for All – by Don Burks
Don
(7 comments, 24 posts)
This user hasn't shared any profile information
Home page: http://www.vankoder.com
Posts by Don
Major Player in the TYTC Space
0As my faithful(?) readers have no doubt noticed, I have embraced the Teach Yourself To Code movement that has blossomed in 2012 by trying to report on a number of the resources that I have come across on the web for teaching yourself various bits of programming. Well, another one has popped up on my radar and I am very impressed with the offering and selection. I would like to introduce you to Programr.
The thing that is most impressive to me about Programr is that they have a wide variety and selection of languages. From their front page, I see:
- C++
- Java (Swing and Design Patterns)
- C#
- VB
- PHP
- Ruby
- Python
- JS (includes jQuery)
- iOS
- Flex (includes Flash)
- J2EE (includes JSP, Servlets, Struts, and Spring)
- AJAX (not really a language, but important to learn for any web development)
- SQL
- Android
Now that is a huge variety. I have looked at some of the PHP lessons, that being a language I speak fluently, and while they aren’t so much “courses” as “demonstrations of coding techniques”, most of the code looks sound. Again, it has to be stressed, because I have had this discussion on other forums (I’m looking at you, LinkedIn), that the code you are going to find on this site, the examples you are going to see, are not going to be the high-level super-optimized coding practices that you would expect from a senior developer with a software company.
These are introductory lessons, designed to get you familiar with the concepts of a language. And any site where you can get introduced to that much technology, ostensibly from people who know those languages well and want to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with you is a site that I am going to bookmark and keep an eye on.
All that being said, my one big criticism so far with Programr is that there is no explanations, and the code is typically not commented. The examples are quite short, usually less than 50 or so lines of code, so they are easy to understand. Still, if you are interested in getting exposed to a large number of languages, then I highly recommend checking out Programr.
Even MORE TYTC Goodness
1Just wanted to throw out another ‘Teach Yourself To Code’ (TYTC) resource which I found today on Hacker News:
Unclassroom, who are taking it to the next skill level by teaching PHP. As well, if you fill out their short survey, you will get a free credit towards one of their courses.
(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Unclassroom in any way, I just think that the TYTC movement is cool, and want to get as many resources out to people as I can.)
UPDATE: Krishna from Unclassroom has commented below and will extend anyone a one-time code for one of their classes, if you contact him directly at krishna@unclassroom.com and reference this blog posting.
MANY MANY thanks to Unclassroom for extending this offer.
FURTHER UPDATE: Unclassroom has provided me some promo codes. Please feel free to contact me directly for them.
Object Constructors vs. Object Literals – Theory and Practice
01 month ago
I have noticed recently some discussions about the comparison/contrast between object literals and objects created by a constructor. In the spirit of getting some information out there for people looking to better their skills in JavaScript and jQuery, I’ll go through some of the benefits of each method. (more…)
More TYTC Goodness!
0
Ultimately, the onus is on you to determine what’s going to be the best avenue for you to take to learn to code what you want to code (web pages, SaaS, applications, mobile apps, missile guidance systems). But with the plethora of tools that are out there, finding the resources you need can now be labelled ‘easy’.
Commentary on ‘Learn to Code’ sites
13 months ago
Alright, loyal visitors. It’s been forever since I’ve posted, but that’s because I’ve been hard at work on a new venture, the fruits of which will benefit all of us here, because I have been expanding my skills and will happily share those yummy tidbits with you. However, I wanted to take this opportunity to weigh in on one of the “big” movements I have seen in late 2011 and early 2012, the ‘Teach Yourself To Code’ (TYTC) movement.
Fixing Common jQuery Animation Mistakes
0I’ve seen people making the same mistake again and again when I’ve been helping on the jQuery IRC channel, and so I wanted to take the opportunity to write about it a bit to hopefully help clarify what the right way to handle the situation is. Basically, the trap people get themselves into is they want to fade in or out an element on the page, and then apply a CSS class to it. There is a right and a wrong way to do this.
jQuery Notification Plugin
1jQuery BART is a notification plugin for jQuery, or more appropriately an ‘annoyification’ plugin. Bart, of course, is a popular character from a long-running TV show who is well-known for things like spiky hair, yellow skin, and of course, being good at attracting attention to himself. As the purpose of this plugin is to present content on the page that will attract the user’s attention, it seemed to be a fitting name. If you feel that it’s an appropriate name, then all the better. However, if you feel, as some might, that I am trading heavily on the brand of the above-mentioned show(which I haven’t mentioned by name), then you can be very assured that BART is an acronym meaning: Broadcasting And Reporting Things
Full downloads available here on GitHub Minified JS is only 2.1K! Minified CSS also included
Demo available here.
How jQuery.Bart Was Built
4Putting aside the fact that this took far longer to fully code than I wanted it to, I have to say that the process of building jQuery.Bart was fun. I finally got my GitHub repository up and running, and am getting used to committing code into that. I also got to play with some CSS3 animations, and some interesting quirks to the jQuery.animate() function, so overall this was an awesome learning experience.
As I have done with earlier plugins which I have written, I will take you on a brief journey through what went into the construction of this plugin and why I have made some of the choices I have made as far as structure, syntax, and functionality.
You’re not from around here, are you? – The Same Origin Policy
112 months ago
Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on things like StackOverflow, #jquery IRC, and other places asking about doing things like manipulating iframes. And in each and every case, the petitioning (though rarely aspiring) coder gets an answer about how to get, set, add, or remove some aspect of the iframe document object. And, inevitably, they come back and say that it doesn’t work. Now, at this point, there can be only one of two possible reasons for that.
Putting jqLSAdmin together, Part 2
0In the previous post, I went through some of the infrastructure of this little project. The stuff-I-had-to-figure-out-first stuff that without it the rest of the project would have been doomed from the beginning. In this second post, I will go through some of the code I used to build it and talk about what the next steps for this will be. I’ll also post the link to the unminified source here, and invite comments and criticisms on ways to improve this.
