With mainframes storing a significant portion of the world’s data and acting as the backup system for most businesses, mainframe coders are in high demand. Master the Mainframe is a virtual coding competition sponsored by the IBM Z Academic Initiative in which high school and college students put their mainframe-specific programming skills to the test tackling real-world problems. This year, college student Anna McKee made history as the first woman to win the competition. The competition gives employers a firsthand look at some of the best young coders out there, and helps companies connect with––and hire––talented students via a new program called Talent Match.
Technology often has a poetry to it, and poetry can emerge out of technology. Last year, an IBM intern developed a poetry generator that feeds user input through the IBM Watson Tone Analyzer to craft a poem based on the user’s feelings. We’re looking forward to seeing how this year’s summer interns find their own intersections between technology and creativity.
How could millions of developers solve the world’s greatest problems if given the chance? IBM believes it’s time to find out. We’re partnering with The American Red Cross and the United Nations Human Rights Office to launch Call for Code, a global coding challenge inspiring developers to create sustainable disaster mitigation solutions. The competition is open to all developers—if you’re ready to answer the call.
What can TJBot do? That’s a long list, but we’ll start with the weather. TJWeather is a recipe you can implement that leverages Watson’s Speech to Text and Text to Speech APIs as well as the IBM Weather Insights API, enabling TJBot to tell you the forecast when you ask for it. Another recipe, Weatherbot, gives TJBot the power to forecast rain and tell you the temperature using his arm and head-light—one quick glance at TJBot before you’re out the door will let you know if you need to grab a jacket or an umbrella. Give these recipes a try before you get caught out in the cold without your coat!
I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.
(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)
But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.
There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:
Novice
Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:
w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)
Intermediate
Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:
If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.
Programming problems
Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems
If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.
I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.
If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:
If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.
If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.
Best of luck!
I’d also like to add some more specialized resources!
SpriteKit (2D) and SceneKit (3D) which are built into the official compiler to create iOS apps (see iOS apps for more resources)
also all of the above game engines (cross-platform)
Game console development:
Game Maker Studio (with a paid subscription)
Unity
Unreal
CryEngine
Note that games can also be created on more general platforms like iOS and Android apps, but the resources listed above are specialized for game development.
iOS apps:
In order to develop iOS apps, you’ll need to purchase an iOS developer program membership for $99 a year, which requires an Apple account. Here are some general resources:
Xcode (the official IDE for iOS apps; can be installed on OS X)
Xcode also has SpriteKit, SceneKit, and Metal built in, all of which are incredibly useful for creating apps that require elaborate graphics, particularly games.
Also, in order to publish iOS apps, you’ll have to juggle certificates, app ids, and provisioning profiles. This process can be convoluted at times so here are some resources:
Blender (can also be used to create games; Python script; free and open-source; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux)
Maya (specialized script; free trial, free 3-year student subscription, and paid subscription versions; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux to an extent)
3ds Max (Python script; free trial, free 3-year student subscription, and paid subscription versions; can be installed on Windows and OS X)
RenderMan (specialized script; free for non-commercial/educational use and pay-per-license for commercial use; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux)
Misc. resources:
Stack Overflow is an ask-and-answer community for programmers. It’s amazing and will save your life. Sign up and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Github offers a student pack (here) if you create an account and prove you’re a student. This gives you free access to a bunch of great programming resources for free for a certain period of time, such as Unreal Engine. Also, Github in general is a site that you can host your code on. Other users can see it, and “fork” it to make a copy of your code and modify it.
Parse is a backend service that allows you to store data in databases it hosts on its own servers. It lets you use push notifications, create users, store and retrieve data, etc. It’s compatible with iOS apps, Android apps, Windows apps, Xamarin, React, Unity, OS X, Windows, JavaScript, PHP, .net, Arduino, and Embedded C. It’s free up to a certain limit that depends on the services you use.
Cloud9,Codebox, and Squad are online IDEs that allow for real-time collaboration and support a variety of languages, so they’re useful for team projects.
And some general advice:
Your program will not work right away, 99% of the time. That’s okay. Do your best to figure out where the error is. Here is some advice on debugging (written for PHP but the methods can be generalized).
If you’re stuck, Google. Google like there’s no tomorrow.
Ask questions on a community like Stack Overflow.
For that matter, browse relevant Stack Overflow questions. You can probably find some solutions there.
Don’t be afraid to copy and paste.
Take breaks sometimes if you’re getting burned out. But don’t stay away from your projects for too long or you’ll lose track of its status.
Backup your code. On the cloud, on a USB drive, wherever. If your IDE has a backing up feature like snapshots, use it whenever you hit a milestone.
If your project is big, split it up into milestones and set goals. Don’t tackle everything at once.
Like the OP said, coding isn’t just for professionals and “geeks” anymore. Anyone can learn it if you really try, and with the rapidly expanding tech industry, learning coding can really broaden your opportunities.
If any of the links are broken, or you have a question or some information/resources to add, you can contact me through the askbox or the OP through his Twitter (as mentioned in his post).
If you’re interested, try some of these out and best of luck!
Great work expanding on my humble list to include a much fuller collection of resources for learning how to code! Cheers!
a multi wip page with clickeable wip boxes with full pop ups and combined filters
features:
basic wip boxes with: header image, title, summary and an open button
full pop ups with sections for: header image, title, summary, details, characters, multiple chapters, faq, progress bars and links. you can safely delete any of those sections if you don’t want them
responsive design
there’s a lot of code in this, you will need some basic html knowdelege to edit it
I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.
(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)
But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.
There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:
Novice
Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:
w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)
Intermediate
Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:
If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.
Programming problems
Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems
If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.
I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.
If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:
If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.
If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.
Just how does machine learning work? You’ve probably read a primer or two on the subject, but often the best way to understand a thing is to try it out for yourself. With that in mind, check out this little in-browser experiment from Google named Teachable Machine. It’s a perfect two-minute summary of what a lot of modern AI can — and more importantly can’t— do.
Teachable Machine lets you use your webcam to train an extremely basic AI program. Just hit the “train green/purple/orange” buttons, and the machine will record whatever it can see through your webcam.
Once it’s “learned” enough, it’ll output whatever you like (a GIF or a sound effect or some speech) when it sees the object or activity you trained it with. Read More
How to automatically change icons based on user input
Adding icons to custom links (whether through text options or using {block:HasPages}) can be tricky when you can’t guarantee what users will want their links to be.
Using some attribute selectors, we can change the icon based on the content in the href attribute.
I’m using Font Awesome for this tutorial, but any icon font that uses unicodes in pseudo elements (:before or :after) will work!
By default, it will be the link icon. I can change this icon if a user is adding a tag as a link by selecting any link with “/tagged” in its url:
.links a[href*=“/tagged”] i:before {
content:’\f292’;
}
A breakdown of why/how this works and more examples:
Let’s start with the first part
.links a
This is selecting all of the anchor tags inside of our links container
.links a[href*=“/tagged”]
is selecting the href attribute that is inside of a link.
If I were to do
.links a[href=“/tagged”]
it would only select links with that exact match.
by adding the *, i’m selecting any link that contains /tagged somewhere in the link. this way we can select *all* tags, not just one tag at a time.
.links a[href*=“/tagged”] i
This is only selecting the i elements inside of links that contain /tagged. This is important because otherwise we would be selecting every i element, but we only want to change the tag links.
.links a[href*=“/tagged”] i:before
and lastly we are selecting the :before pseudo element that Font Awesome uses to add icons.
What else can I do with this?
You can do a lot with attribute selectors! You could repeat this process for other links like discord, twitch, about pages, faq, etc.
Here is how you would target external links:
a[href^=“https://”]:not([href*=“tumblr.com”])
or if you wanted to include the possibility of http:// you coulddo either of these:
Justin is of a new generation of artists who may not even consider themselves artists in the pure sense. He spends his days coding for google. All artwork is coded and generative meaning that it is constantly changing and is different at any point in time that you may be viewing it. The pictures above are merely screen captures of some of his artwork. To view as intended, they must be viewed in a WebGL enabled browser such as chrome.
