(right).
The interactive cards allow you to click toggle buttons to demonstrate effects of prewritten code, whereas the coding interface has a coding editor and a live preview window that shows you the effects of the code entered into the coding editor.
The coding interface has four parts:
❯❯ Background information on the upper-left side of the screen tells you about the coding task you’re about to do.
❯❯ The lower-left side of the screen shows instructions to complete in the coding window.
❯❯ The coding window allows you to follow the exercise’s instructions and write code. The coding window also includes a preview screen that shows a live preview of your code as you type.
❯❯ After completing the coding instructions, press Save & Submit, Next, or Run. If you successfully followed the instructions, you advance to the next exercise; otherwise, the site will give you an error message along with a helpful hint for correcting it.
The interactive cards have three parts:
❯❯ Background information about a coding concept.
❯❯ A coding window to complete one simple coding task. A preview window also shows a live preview of your code as you type.
❯❯ After completing the coding instructions, press the Got It button. You can review any previous interactive cards by clicking the Go Back button.
Receiving support from the community
If you run into a problem or have a bug you cannot fix, try the following steps:
❯❯ Click the hint below the instructions.
❯❯ Use the Q&A Forums to post your problem or question or to review questions others have posted.
❯❯ Subscribe to this book’s mailing list at http://tinyletter.com/codingfordummies for book updates and explanations for changes to programming language commands.
❯❯ Tweet me at @nikhilgabraham with your question or problem, and include the hashtag #codingFD at the end of your tweet.
Book 2
Career Building with Coding
Chapter 1
Exploring Coding Career Paths
IN THIS CHAPTER
❯❯ Using coding in your existing job
❯❯ Exploring entry-level full-time coding roles
❯❯ Understanding skills and tasks in various coding roles
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
For many people, the words “coding career” evoke an image of a person sitting in a dimly lit room typing incomprehensible commands into a computer. The stereotype has persisted for decades – just watch actors such as Matthew Broderick in War Games (1983), Keanu Reeves in The Matrix (1999), or Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network (2010). Fortunately, these movies are not accurate representations of reality. Just like a career in medicine can lead to psychiatry, gynecology, or surgery, a career in coding can lead to an equally broad range of options.
In this chapter, you see how coding can augment your existing job across a mix of functions, and you explore increasingly popular careers based primarily on coding.
Many people find coding opportunities in their existing job. It usually starts innocently enough, and with something small. For example, you may need a change made to the text on the company’s website, but the person who would normally do that is unavailable before your deadline. If you knew how to alter the website’s code, you could perform your job faster or more easily. This section explores how coding might augment your existing job.
Coding career paths are extremely varied. For some people, the path starts with using code to more efficiently perform an existing job. For others, coding is a way to transition to a new career. As varied as the career path is, so too are the types of companies that need coders.
As more people carry Internet-capable mobile phones, businesses of every type are turning to coders to reach customers and to optimize existing operations. No business is immune. For example, FarmLogs is a company that collects data from farm equipment to help farmers increase crop yields and forecast profits. FarmLogs needs coders to build the software that collects and analyzes data, and farmers with large operations may need coders to customize the software.
To build or customize software, you’ll need to learn new skills. Surprisingly, the time required to learn and start coding can range from an afternoon of lessons to a ten-week crash course to more time-intensive options, such as a four-year undergraduate degree in computer science.
Creative design
Professionals in creative design include those who
❯❯ Shape how messages are delivered to clients.
❯❯ Create print media such as brochures and catalogs.
❯❯ Design for digital media such as websites and mobile applications.
Traditionally, digital designers, also known as visual designers, created mockups, static illustrations detailing layout, images, and interactions, and then sent these mockups to developers who would create the web or mobile product. This process worked reasonably well for everyday projects, but feedback loops started becoming longer as mockups became more complex. For example, a designer would create multiple mockups of a website, and then the developer would implement them to create working prototypes, after which the winning mockup would be selected. As another example, the rise of mobile devices has led to literally thousands of screen variations between mobile phones and tablets created by Apple, Samsung, and others. Project timelines increased because designers had to create five or more mockups to cover the most popular devices and screen sizes.
As a designer, one way to speed up this process is to know just enough code to create working prototypes of the initial mockups that are responsive, which means one prototype renders on both desktop and mobile devices. Then project managers, developers, and clients can use these early prototypes to decide which versions to further develop and which to discard. Additionally, because responsive prototypes follow a predictable set of rules across all devices, creating additional mockups for each device is unnecessary, which further decreases design time. As mobile devices have become more popular, the demand for designers who understand how to create good user interactions (UI) and user experiences (UX) has greatly increased.
