Engineering: Q&A

(Previous: Problem Solving Strategies: Small Incremental Changes)

My job, according to xkcd.com

I got some questions from a second grader interested in computer engineering, below are my responses:

1. Could you describe one of your typical workdays?

Problem Solving Strategies: Small Incremental Changes

(Previous: More Than a Hobby: Programming as a Job)

Word Ladder from http://www.powgi.com/puzzle-word-ladder-2015-03-02/

For most software developers, being able to learn and adapt on the job is critical for success. Most of the tutorials and documentation I use for learning teach one small thing at a time: how to use .map in JavaScript, or how to create forms in html, or how to get data using AJAX calls, to name a few pretty standard skills.

Full Stack JavaScript: What is a Full Stack? And Why is it MEAN?

(Previous: Coding Dojo: Algorithm Platform)

Is this a full stack? Does it come with Java? Sorry, I know, puns are the worst… Especially breakfast puns.

For aspiring web developers, it’s not enough to be a JavaScript or Ruby or Java ninja–you have to know how your JavaScript or Ruby or Java interacts with the whole project you are working on.

That’s why developers talk about Full Stack Development. In very general terms, a Full Stack, like a stack of pancakes has three parts: the front, back, and middle (more professionally referred to as the Front End, Back End, and Web Framework).

Coding Dojo: Algorithm Platform

(Previous: jQuery and JavaScript: Treehouse)

After a few rounds of tutorials on Treehouse, Codecademy, or your favorite online learning center of choice, it’s not hard to master the basic building blocks of coding–variables, for-loops, while-loops, functions, arrays, objects, etc. But putting them all together in a real-life situation isn’t always as straightforward as working through the carefully constructed examples in the tutorials.

This is why I think Coding Dojo’s Algorithm Platform is really useful for beginning programmers.

jQuery and JavaScript: Treehouse

(Previous: jQuery and JavaScript: Codecademy)

My next stop for jQuery and JavaScript tutorials was at Treehouse. Treehouse offers two jQuery tutorials: jQuery Basics, Using jQuery Plugins (and AJAX Basics, which ended up being a detailed explanation of how the jQuery “.ajax()” function works), as well as JavaScript Basics, JavaScript Loops, Objects, and Arrays, Interactive Web Pages with JavaScript, and Object-Oriented JavaScript.

jQuery and JavaScript: Codecademy

(Previous: Stuck in the Middle)

I love the slogan for jQuery: “write less, do more”.

Having now slogged through quite a few jQuery tutorials, and interactive JavaScript tutorials (more on those later), I will say this: jQuery can be a huge timesaver, and is specifically designed to help front-end developers do the things they do the most, but faster.

HTML/CSS Part 2: XAMPP

(Previous: HTML/CSS Part 1: Codecademy and W3schools)

Learning HTML/CSS from tutorials was a good start to get an idea of what types of things they can do, but I find I always learn more from practicing in less controlled conditions.

Enter XAMPP. With this tool, you can host your own HTML/CSS pages from your own computer, so you can see how they look. Can you hear my excitement?