No Time for Caution

Learning | Programming | Web Design | Reflections

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Look at what we just got our hands on!

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What do you need on your website and how much should you pay for it.  

[left4cake-gaming]

Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.

Eric S. Raymond (via left4cake-gaming)

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The owl

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Learning about the Unity game engine and programming in C#

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Getting a job

I recently had an interview for a manufacturing engineer job at a telecommunications company near my college.  Too often, companies post job offers without being specific.  This leads to students not knowing what classes to take and ultimately not being prepared for getting into industry.  

Naturally, the question I had for my interviewer was “What exactly are companies looking for in their prospective employees”  His response was that as of now, the big two things that prospective employees should be familiar with are managing a database and app development. 

What I liked about this answer is that it is very easy to learn a lot about these topics online.  For example, as a manufacturing engineer I will be writing and documenting Saas applications and working with Ruby.  I used a course offered for free from UC Berkeley called Engineering Software as a Service.  It helped with learning some things that will be necessary for this job.

Initially I had felt doubt about taking up this opportunity because I had never taken any classes that specifically involved this type of work.  I learned though, that if you are willing to take advantage of every resource possible and just go for it, the payoff will be worth it.

[joel]

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:)

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Take a survey for my religion class!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hm0Zub9ToGUOoatLss2DjXb8dX6mFevw7RlxhjVJYOU/viewform?usp=send_form

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How to Get a Job After Graduating From a Programming School

Flatiron alum Kyle Doherty originally posted this article on his blog. He currently works as a Software Engineer at AlphaSights.

DISCLAIMER: This is just my opinion based on what got me a job and what my company looks for when we’re evaluating junior candidates.

In the past five months I’ve gone to programming school demo days, career fairs, and other recruiting events to help recruit more junior developers to our team. As a recent grad myself, students ask me what they should focus on post graduation to help them get a job.

The problem, I tell them, is you want to get a job ASAP and there is too much to learn and not enough time to do it in. Generally people advise you to, review everything you’ve learned in the past 9-12 weeks, and then give you 30 other things study…oh yeah, and go to Meetups, ask people to coffee, write blog posts, and work on side projects.

Assuming you don’t have another three months to practice programming without making any money, don’t do this. You need to focus!

Read More

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I started learning bootstrap!

Its pretty great actually.

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Broke Design: GIMP

I’ve been using this thing for a long time!

I have used the GIMP image manipulation program since I was in high school and let me tell you that in it’s early  years it wasn’t exactly the best thing out there.  It was the only thing that broke high school students like me had as an alternative to Photoshop.  It has come a looooong way since then.

Basically Photoshop but not quite

You don’t have to hand over your firstborn child in order to use it!

Panels for Layers, Brushes, Tools, Paths, etc available

Menus include File, Edit, Select, View, Image, Filters, and Help

does not include built-in Raw processing

plugins are very different

Try it out!!!

This program is definitely recommended for designers who are adventurous, quick learners, and in need of an affordable program for image manipulation.  It might not have all of the features offered by Photoshop, but it definitely can get the job done!

More Resources

I always used this app for simple very amateur photo manipulation and logo design however, if you want to go in depth and use the program at it’s maximum potential, then you should check out these handy resources!

The Book of GIMP: A Complete Guide to Nearly Everything by Olivier Lecarme

GIMP 2.8 for Photographers: Image Editing with Open Source Software by Klaus Goelker

GIMP for Absolute Beginners by Jan Smith

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No Time for Caution!!

So I aspire to become a computer scientist.

I would like to consider myself an Art Oriented person.  I always felt more comfortable working on projects that involved things like:

Creating using lego bricks and model kits 

Drawing and illustrating with Adobe Photoshop as well as GIMP

Designing plots or characters for music videos, books, movies, and tv-shows

Problem

But I was always also very interested in science and technology.

Solution

Computer Science!! So much of computer science involves creativity and design, much more in comparison to classic sciences like Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, or Physics.  It can be considered to be a home for most of our collective creativity since the late 20th century.

What should I do about it?

Set a Goal! I knew that some day I would like to learn to design apps or software using objective oriented programming.  I knew that I would like to manage a business that involves computers and technology, as well as creative thinking.

To achieve these goals I knew I needed to learn how computers work and create something productive with them in order to earn a living while being able to enjoy the work.  I have begun learning HTML, CSS and JQeury.  I had taken a few college classes on computer programming and had some experience with introductory Java and PBasic.  I plan to first master these simpler programs before taking on something more challenging like object oriented programming.

I have met some people who are in the industry and have advice to give.  Mentorship is important, NETWORKING is important.  All great hero stories involve a mentor.  If it works for them it must work for me.  I will try to constantly keep listening for advice from those in the business!

Try and hope for the best.  So far I have been able to learn web design well and quickly.  I really hope that, like Luis Bloom in Nightcrawler, "this might just be something that I love as well as something I happen to be good at".

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Web Design Software: Google Web Designer

Introducing the Software

At first glance, Google Web Designer seems to be the answer to all your prayers.  The workspace looks good and it has a strong brand name.  After all, it's Google right? It should be awesome!  Sadly it isn't very awesome.  At least not for beginners seeking to learn web design from scratch.

What does it offer?

I think Google Web Designer was meant to be for online advertisement design.  On the bright side, it is:

Free!

Easy to use and switch between code and design view

Heavily concentrated on visual design

creates responsive web pages and ads

This program is meant for designing ads.  Since it is mostly still in beta version, most of the features that would help in web development for beginners are not present.

More Features

As can be seen from the introductory screen on the download site for Google Web Designer, this software is meant for designing banners and online advertisements.  Once you download the software and go through some of the online tutorials, you notice the similarities between Open Element and this program.  It can be extremely useful for veteran developers, but for starters, it might not be the best choice.

Final Thoughts

If you take a look at the community forums for Google Web Design, you can see that even most who use it will agree that it might not be the best option for website development.  However, that does not mean that over time and after some updates, this program can't become a very efficient tool for first timers as well as experienced web developers.

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Web Design Software: Brackets

Introducing The Software

This time I am going to talk about software that is designed to be a text editor.  In my opinion, this program Brackets is one of the best text editors to start learning to code for web development.  The main reason why I decided to try it out was, as you might have guessed, because it was free!

What does it offer?

Brackets does not contain all the smart web development tools that other software have to offer.  It is strictly a text editor, however, it has been designed as a text editor specifically for building websites.  One very clever and useful feature is the "inline editor".  This allows you to modify the CSS for a particular element without having to jump back and forth between the CSS and HTML files that pertain to that element.

More Features

Another great thing about Brackets is it's "code hint" capability and it's "live preview in browser" feature.  With code hint you can quickly learn the way HTML and CSS as well as other languages function without having to worry so much about getting the syntax right.  Along with live preview, this helps you focus on design and function instead of worrying about tedious typing errors.

Final Thoughts

Brackets is a clean, smart, and fun way to learn to code CSS and HTML.  It is be the best program for developers who want to learn the CSS and HTML behind a website.  However, it falls short on being useful for people who want to just design a solid, static website quickly. Since in order to use it well, some coding knowledge is required.  If you want to learn the code behind web development, I would definitely recommend starting with Brackets as your text editor!

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Web Design Software: Open Element

Introducing the Software

So for anyone that is just getting started with web site development, like myself, I am going to post my opinion on some software that I have used in my attempts to design my first fully functioning website.  Today's software is Open Element.  

What does it offer?

I chose to try it out because it had several positive qualities.

It was free to download

It focused on web design through "reusable style presets"

At first glance it's use appeared to be similar to Adobe's Dreamweaver software

More Features

I wanted software that would make learning web design as quick and comprehensive as possible.  This is hard to do since learning to work with HTML, CSS, JQuery, etc. at a proficient level takes roughly two years.  Open Element definitely made it easy to design websites!

Final Thoughts

However, for beginners it didn't explain the code being used behind the designs very well.  While to a seasoned developer, Open Element might be a great tool, a beginner would be better off using a regular text editor for a while before starting to use web developing software.  Simply because understanding the code behind everything is so imperative.  Once you are comfortable working through CSS, HTML and all the other ones, it would be a good idea to move on to software like Open Element.

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Super simple

I can write things!