“Exercises in Programming Style” by Cristina Videira Lopes is the best programming book to come along in many years. Casting back over many decades, the only book I can compare it to in terms of actionable value is Steve McConnell’s “Code Complete,” and in terms of approachability and sheer fun, it reminds me of Ted … continue reading
Phillip Ou had barely learned to code when he joined Make School’s 2014 summer academy. A year later, after transferring from MIT to become a member of the educational startup’s inaugural two-year “college replacement” class, Ou has published more than half a dozen iOS apps and is currently interning at Snapchat. Ou is one of … continue reading
Of all the creative methods out there to introduce programming concepts to young children and students—everything from interactive robots and online games to visual code editor programs and hands-on kits—no one has ever thought of leveraging a medium as analog as a card game. Littlecodr, a new Kickstarter campaign from tech entrepreneur Nathan Slee and … continue reading
A programmer walks into a job interview and is asked to write the most efficient program to output the first five primes. The programmer spends three hours implementing the Sieve of Atkin, a GPGPU shader. “Not what we’re looking for,” says the interviewer, pointing at the exit door. “Why? What did you want?” asks the … continue reading
There are plenty of resources outside of the classroom that can help teach aspiring developers how to code, and it looks like they are taking advantage of them. A recent survey by Stack Overflow revealed that almost half of developers haven’t received a degree in computer science. “There are many ways to learn how to … continue reading
Security researches have exposed a software vulnerability in Dropbox’s SDK for Android. The bug could allow hackers to connect apps from a mobile device to their own Dropbox account without a user knowing. The vulnerability, which was discovered by IBM’s X-Force application research team, impacts Dropbox SDK versions 1.5.4 through 1.6.1. “The response from Dropbox … continue reading
Code.org announced its Hour of Code campaign has eclipsed 100 million hours, measured by the time students have spent taking the free programming courses and tutorials offered online. The total dates back to the program’s beginning back in June 2013. The organization also announced the number of lines of code written has surpassed 5 billion … continue reading
There’s a peculiar trend taking shape in the coding world, as one of the fastest growing professions finds scores of new programmers joining its ranks each year. These young programming Padawans seek wisdom, and half-joking, half-serious programming proverbs have become a popular delivery mechanism. Last summer, we covered Programmer’s Proverbs, a GitHub repository launched by … continue reading
Code.org has revealed a milestone with its computer-science learning platform, Code Studio. The organization announced that more than 1 million girls, along with 1 million African-American and Hispanic students, have enrolled in Code.org’s computer-science education program. “We all know tech has a diversity problem. The problem in computer-science education is even worse. To work to … continue reading
IBM has released the IBM Design Language, a shared vocabulary, framework and collection of resources for software design. The IBM Design Language website is a set of living guidelines for IBM’s software product design. The framework encompasses experience, visual, interaction and front-end sections, and the site includes resources such as a type scale calculator, icon … continue reading
Today marks the start of Code.org’s second annual Computer Science Education Week, and with it another round of the Hour of Code campaign, this time with even higher goals. This year, President Obama kicked off the festivities with a speech, also taking on the title of “Coder-in-Chief” and becoming the first president to program a … continue reading
For years, organizations have been trying to get more and more kids into programming. Code.org promotes the Hour of Code to teach kids one hour of computer science. There are visual programming environments such as Alice, Blockly and Scratch geared toward kids. Plenty of board games, computer games and mobile applications that teach the basics … continue reading
