Women Who Go (Chicago) Let's Learn About Go Types and Interfaces

I had met Carolyn Van Slyck at a previous meetup and decided to check out her Women Who Go meetup. This event was about Go Types and Interfaces. It was interesting to note how easily you can declare a variable in Go and that the language categorizes it for you. I loved that the meetup was a smaller group and much easier to ask questions. I did run into some Windows technical issues getting started and was not able to take many notes on this one.

Metis One Day at Bootcamp: Python & Data Modeling Training

David Ziganto/Senior Data Scientist at Metis led a free one day bootcamp intro to Python and Data Science. This was a great intro to Python and how it is used in sorting and preparing data for specific presentations or uses. We used Anaconda and Jupyter notebook to practice simple steps for sorting and displaying data in different ways. After lunch he moved on to advanced topics using SciKit Learn to model linear regression and data prediction. 

Nathan from Metis bootcamp explained how their bootcamp is for people already comfortable with coding. There is an interview process and several prerequisites for those interested in going into data science but it is a very rewarding field and they seemed very passionate about it.

I have included the link to the event which has more information for those interested in data science:

https://www.meetup.com/Metis-Chicago-Data-Science/events/244672898/

Uncle Bob: Clean Code at Illinois Java Users Group

IJUG hosted Uncle Bob Martin, author of many famous coding books such as Clean Code. He was preceded by a lightning talk about the legal aspects of consulting.

Ian Berliner/Atty presented a short talk on the pros and cons of consulting. He mentioned the job security aspect of working for a large company but also talked about tax benefits in favor consulting. He mentioned how important it is to protect yourself and your intellectual property when doing consulting work. He also spoke about how important it is to put in the contract how and when you will get paid such as when you reach certain milestones in the project. He recommended both parties have a right to terminate the contract and to make sure there is a clause where the company cannot sue you twenty years from now if they find an issue with the software. His last point was of course, to always have your agreement reviewed by an attorney before taking on any consulting job.

There was not a topic listed for Uncle Bob just background information on him, so I think several of us believed he was going to talk about Clean Code. Alternatively, he spoke about Clean Architecture his new book which was recently released. He mentioned the importance of keeping your database behind its own firewall and making requests from the server through functions. He also recommended that your business rules be separated from your GUI and your database through the use of plug ins and functions. More details can be found in his new book.

React for Beginners at Northwest Chicago JavaScript

This was a super fast intro to many features of React. A note to remember, React is a library whereas Angular is a framework. React is a smaller and quicker to pick up and use. Angular is much more intense with more features and information. The presentation showed how to use React components to render items in the browser. You can set items to render with both state and stateless ways as well as choose how the items will be manipulated.

Java Sneak Peek hosted by CJUG & GOTO nights with Brian Goetz/Oracle

This was a great talk from Brian Goetz/Oracle about what is up and coming in Java. The changes he spoke about were local variable inference, data classes, pattern matching, and safer serialization. None of the changes are guaranteed, but all ideas that his team is working on for the future.

He also spoke about Java not being a trendsetter, but more of a stable language. The folks at Oracle prefer to let other languages test features first and run them successfully for a while before Java will implement new ideas.

Write Speak Code Workshop "Own Your Expertise"

I attended the Write Speak Code "Own Your Expertise" Workshop this weekend and wow it was AMAZING! So many awesome women, everyone was super supportive and networking came easy with this group. I never really thought of myself as a writer, so I had passed this group up a few times. But when I attended, I found out it was so much more. Own your expertise was all about finding out what you are good at, what knowledge you have and how you can share it with others.

Of course the three ways to share your knowledge with others are to write, speak and code about it. But I never realized how you could take each one of these paths and aim it toward your own skills. One of the questions that really stood out to me was "What are the five things you talk about the most with others?" and to take those things among other skills to share.


This workshop was all about taking what skills you have or what interests you and using that to inspire you to code or help with an open source project, present at a conference or workshop, or write blogs and articles to spread the knowledge. This was emphasized due to the lack of women speakers and women's presence in general in so many events as leaders in tech. There were countless exercises and tons of support at this meetup, a definite one not to miss in the future!

Coding Bat Progress

I have finally finished 5 sections on Coding Bat. I do these intermittently as I have small bits of extra time in between other projects.

I totally had planned to have these finished by now, but as you get to the end of each set of problems there is a lot of logic involved. I found out I do better when I work on these on my day off in the morning while my brain is fresh. LOL. So, I will continue to work on these as I can and hope to have them finished in the near future.

They are excellent practice and I highly recommend Coding Bat.

http://codingbat.com/java

Northwest Chicago JavaScript Lightning Talks

I like to attend lightning talks since they give a bunch of mini info sessions crammed into one night. I did not take notes on this one since I just wanted to listen and take in as much information as I could. There were four speakers and I really enjoyed this session and how people shared so many different projects they were working on.


Below info taken from: https://www.meetup.com/Northwest-Chicago-JavaScript/events/241124693/

Working with Objects: Thoughts from a Javascript Newcomer
by Jason Cohen Jason will discuss his arithmetical expression parser/calculator and compare JavaScript to other languages he has used. 

************** 

ROC Commerce: Dynamic Forms with AngularJS by Ernesto Pye 

A short demo of ROC Commerce's dynamic forms functionality, powered by AngularJS and ASP.NET, with an extensible API-driven schema, and customizable client-side form components.

**************

Mobile App Development for the Enterprise - the Hybrid Edition by Mary Grygleski 

This is a high-level technical overview of the hybrid approach that was taken for the first enterprise-grade Mobile App at the wireless company where I work. Angular 1 was chosen for the UI/UX frontend implementation that would be "wrapped" and enabled for the target mobile runtime platforms by Apache Cordova, while NodeJS was selected to serve as the Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) service layer. 

************** 

PouchDB and Couchbase Replication for the Offline-First Web by Steve Schwarz

Naperville Open Hack

This is one of the closest meetups to my house, but I always seem to miss it for some reason. Often it conflicts with another meetup, and since it is only once a month I have to make sure to catch the post and put it on my calendar.

So when I finally made it to attend I was so happy that I did. I met another coder who is working on Free Code Camp, and we talked about our progress and where we were on the projects. This is one of the first times that I was actually able to help someone else which felt pretty good.

After he left, I started speaking with another person there about Java. I mentioned how I posted my code for my simple Tic Tac Toe game online, and someone gave me feedback that I need to turn the game into one using objects. He was able to give me a lot of good advice as well as point me to the book Thinking in Java. I started reading this book over the weekend and it is the best description of objects and classes that I have read yet. It actually tells you what things are doing and breaks them down. I was so looking for this when I was reading Head First Java. That was one of the things I did not like about HFJ, it refers you to pretend you are using a remote control when I would rather they just tell me what is really going on behind the scenes. So, I plan to take this information and redo my Tic Tac Toe game into one that uses objects and has a GUI.

This was a great meetup! I do plan to attend again and really felt I learned something from this one.

Coding Bootcamps....

I don't think I had mentioned this in my blog, just at meetups, but my job plans to outsource our help desk within the next six months. So in order to speed up my learning to code, I decided to start investigating coding bootcamps again. I had looked into a few a while back but ultimately have two top contenders.

Northwestern Coding Bootcamp is in Chicago, IL (about an hour from me) and is the better priced option. The downside is they do not have Java, which I have a strong interest in. The bootcamp is $10,000 but you get $1000 off if you pay in full ahead of time. They have the backing of the university so it must be a good program, but the bootcamp is so new there are not many reviews online to find out more about it. Northwestern does have paid parking available for all except the Chicago campus day program. https://codingbootcamp.northwestern.edu/full-time

The Software Guild in Louisville, KY is $13,750 with a possible $2000 women in tech scholarship. They are working on renewing it for 2018 so it is not official yet. It is more expensive and it would require housing, but it is more in line with what I see myself doing in the future. They have really good reviews from previous students. With this bootcamp, if you take the Java course, you also get access to the .NET curriculum which is a plus. And they offer an online Android course if I decide to complete that in the future. https://www.thesoftwareguild.com/

I only applied to one other and was denied. The Recurse Center, which is in New York and has a very low acceptance rate about ~10%. The Recurse Center is free and they prefer people who already know how to code and just want to work on projects and improving their skills or learning a new language. However, some who are new to coding have been accepted.

I do want to mention that I investigated the majority of bootcamps in Chicago. I spoke to many alumni at the meetups I attended, read reviews, and still visit many of the campuses when they offer free courses. They all offer very similar front end and full stack programs, Most are higher priced between about $14-$18,000. There are many reasons I decided against most of these: the cost, no Java (when I attended the Chicago Coder Conference just about every booth was looking for Java developers plus I have a strong interest in learning it), poor or expensive transportation and parking, expensive temp housing in the area, and one had too easy lessons.  The instructors and course material seem similar. I did find it to be true that those with the more difficult acceptance rate tend to have better final projects and higher paying job placements advertised. I watched several final presentations and was impressed most by those from Full Stack Academy.

I am leaning towards The Software Guild for numerous reasons: going away from my family I can spend more uninterrupted time learning to code, they are a well established bootcamp having been open longer than most others, they are on the top of many lists of the best bootcamps, the instructors are all developers with many years of experience (not just former students), housing/parking are affordable, my already underlying interest in Java, and the entrance process is not too easy where anyone can get in.

I have been accepted to both Northwestern Bootcamp and The Software Guild both of which start in January and I will update my blog with more info about my decision in a future post.

Wakatime

I just found out about this great coding tracker called Wakatime. You can find it here https://wakatime.com/.

You simply add a plugin to your IDE and it tracks both time spent coding as well as what you are working on, in my case Java or JavaScript etc.

Change of Course

After quite a bit of thought, I decided to close the Beginner Java Group I had hosted at the Bolingbrook Library for the past six months. The attendance was very low and intermittent as well as there were just too many skill levels to keep working at a good pace that worked for everyone. I did meet many great people along the way and plan to continue to keep in touch with many of them as well as see them at other local meetups and conferences. After that difficult decision, I took a couple weeks to refocus my learning plan.

I decided to continue to learn Java as well as continue to work on Free Code Camp. Free Code Camp has a ton of learning support and I have found it easier to keep going learning to code within this group supported by message boards, chats and You Tube videos. I have also found a Java Group on Facebook that has tons of resources "Java Software Development Group" so I plan on using a lot of the resources from here, CJUG, IJUG, books, and the Spring guides to keep learning Java. It is still hard to plan not knowing what languages I will be working with at my first junior developer job, but I know a lot of the languages and skills are similar/transferable and I still feel I am on a good path.

Meetup #11: MIT Course Lesson 7

Today we finished lesson 7 from the MIT course. The code has been added to our github site.

https://github.com/BeginnerJavaDeveloperMeetup

That Conference - Day 3

 

Day 3 started with Hilary Stohs-Krause giving her keynote on famous women who code. This was yet again another inspirational speaker who shared so many facts about women who paved the way in technology.

Sessions attended today were:
1) Angular 2 development for newbies with Troy Taylor
2) Making the smart home fun with Brad Marsh
3) Soft Skills are the hard skills with Mariah Hanson
4) Conference closing and That Bacon Bar!!

That Conference - Day 2

Day 2 started with a keynote from Chris Coyier. He is the creator of Code Pen and CSS tricks.

The sessions I attended on day 2 were:
1) The future of JavaScript with Sergio Gomez
2) Rest for an hour with Lyndsey Padget
3) Squashing JavaScript bugs with Todd Gardner
4) Git gone wild! with Magnus Stahre

That night we also played Save That Random Universe with complete strangers which made for a fun and interesting team building event. See photo below.

That Conference - Day 1

Day 1 of That Conference was incredibly motivational. I sat at a table with another woman. Then my female friend joined us, then another woman and another. By the time the table was full, there were six women and two men. Then, we heard an incredibly inspiring keynote from Brian Hogan.

These are the sessions I attended on day 1:
1) Mastering GitHub with Keith Dahlby
2) Intro to Docker with John Ptacek
3) Open Spaces - Developer Interview Process
4) Make a 3D Unity game in an hour

Zero to 26,000: My Journey into Open Source with GitHub by Steven Maguire

This was a great presentation by PHP developer Steven Maguire. He talked about his goal to contribute to twelve open source projects in twelve months. He made numerous first pull requests which were rejected, but he kept trying. Once he discovered that there are certain standards and guides to submitting code, his requests started getting accepted. He recommended using trust-markers to validate your code and semantic versioning. He has now had thousands of downloads to his merges to open source projects and was invited to be a member of PHP league.

Link to presentation slides: http://slides.com/stevenmaguire/open-source-journey

Beginner Java Developer Meetup: MIT Course Lesson 6 - Part 2

Today we finished lesson 6 from the MIT course. See links in the below July 12 meetup.

At our next meetup:

We will work on the final lesson #7 from the MIT course.

Don't forget to sign up for the next meetup if you plan to attend.

Beginner Java Developer Meetup: MIT Course Lesson 6 - Design, debugging, interfaces

Today we reviewed lesson 6 from the MIT course. Here is a cheat sheet I made that may help with the project:

Graphics Strikes Back Cheat Sheet

Link to the course we are following:

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-092-introduction-to-programming-in-java-january-iap-2010/

At our next meetup:

We will work continue to work on the MIT Lesson 6 assignment Graphics strikes back!

Don't forget to sign up for the next meetup if you plan to attend.

Alexa Workshop at Coding Dojo

Another great and free workshop from Coding Dojo. This workshop introduced how to build Alexa skills even without coding skills.

In order to build skills you need an Amazon Web Services account and an Amazon Developer account. Here are the links for each:
https://aws.amazon.com/
https://developer.amazon.com/alexa

Tutorials can be found here:
https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit/tutorials/fact-skill-1

Intro to Databases and SQL

This was a nice refresher on databases. I had taken a course in college a few years ago but do not use SQL regularly so this was good practice to brush up on the skills.

We learned about the different kinds of databases which are relational and non-relational. Most databases are relational such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL which stores data in columns and rows. Any other type of storage is considered non-relational such as Mongo. Here is a great website that ranks the most popular databases: https://db-engines.com/en/ranking.

We used a free website to practice running commands with keywords. A few commonly used keywords are SELECT, FROM, WHERE, AND, INNER JOIN and LIKE. There are many others. You can practice here if you are interested: https://www.w3schools.com/sql/trysql.asp?filename=trysql_op_in  There are small diagrams on the W3 schools JOIN pages that better explain these concepts which many in the group found useful. Overall this was a very good presentation. Actualize is offering free courses each Wednesday on a variety of topics related to coding.

Chicago Coder Conference Day 2

Day two started with keynote speaker Dr. Cliff Clark talking about H20 and large data processing. He described H20 as a large open source data calculator and not a storage solution.

The first session of the day (session 6) was another good one by Mark Lasoff. It was called "The One Hour App Challenge". Here he walked step by step through creating a find local restaurant app and how to build it and release it using open source phonegap.

Session 7 was a tour of React Native with Adam Gerber. There was quite a bit of history in this session with how React Native came about, the competition, and how React Native is stronger than other cross platform options. There is also strong community support which has helped with its popularity and growth.

Session 8 was the Zen of Python with Jess Unrein. She talked about how the rules or Zen of Python are more easily applied to fresh code. Often when given existing complicated code some things are better off left alone if working. She did recommend updating unspecific variables or correcting code you are confident you can correct and improve.

The next session was "Cloud Native Batch Processing with Spring" by Michael Minella. This was a walk-through of setting up a cloud native batch process.

The final session was "Intro to Java 8 Lambdas and Streams." This was an overview of the new features in Java 8.

Overall there was a lot of information and learning at the Chicago Coder Conference. Some of the sessions were more like lectures and some were actual demonstrations of doing things with code. I really enjoyed the sessions where the leader was walking through doing an activity in code and will look for more of these in the future.

Chicago Coder Conference Day 1

Today was the first day of the Chicago Coder Conference. This was my first tech conference so I wasn't sure what to expect. Fortunately for me, a friend of mine from my Java study group was willing to go also and it made things much easier.

The conference opened with keynote speaker Mike Evans talking about starting Grub Hub. He encouraged developers to also try to be entrepreneurs and talked about the path he took and some obstacles and lessons learned.

The first session of the day was with Mark Lassoff of Learntoprogram.tv. He talked about visual literacy and how to make websites and color schemes more appealing. He went over using color patterns and white space as well as how to use images to match your target audience. He added humor to his talk and it was easy to follow along with and understand his content.

The second session of day 1 was "Hacking the Coding Interview" with Dushyant Srikant. This session overview referenced talking about the coding interview process. It was more aimed at the interviewer and not the interviewee. He talked about taking into consideration problem solving qualities as well as how a person would fit into a diverse team over just solving coding challenges.

Session three was "Scope, Time, and Resources" with Mike Evans/GrubHub founder. He talked about how time and resources are less able to be negotiable and how scope often takes the hit when deadlines are coming close.

The fourth session was by Dennis Ellis and was called "The Checkbox that Ruined my Life." Here he went over manipulative design and how we are all responsible not to let these designs that hurt people out into the world. He talked about how casinos intentionally design software to keep you playing. How they removed the lever to pull on the slot machine since it is easier to repetitively press a button and how they stopped the machines from releasing coins since many people would leave after winning a bunch of money. He mentioned even the simplest choices we make may have unintended consequences. The checkbox he was speaking of in the title was one that automatically chose the minimum payment on a credit card which is not an ideal situation for a paying customer.

The last session of day one was SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies with Kyle Williams. Here he went over how page rank is now used and how the more people who link to your site the better ranking it will get with Google and other search engines. He talked about how important it is to have your webpages disability friendly and how to validate them.

Tic Tac Toe

I'm starting to work on some simple projects and created my first Tic Tac Toe game. It runs from the IDE and is very basic. I plan to add a GUI later but at this point I am happy to have coded it completely on my own and it works :)

https://github.com/jenhurd8/TicTacToe

Beginner Java Developer Meetup

Meetup #8: MIT Course Lesson 5 - Access Control, Class Scope, Packages, and Java API

Today we went over several topics from using private and public variables and methods, scope, packages and several Java API’s.

We used the information learned from making objects and making an Array List to create a small graphics project with both moving and still objects.

I have added the files we were working on to Github if you want to check it out or try to duplicate:  https://github.com/BeginnerJavaDeveloperMeetup/MIT-assignments

Note: If you send your username for Github I can add you to the group.

Link to the course we are following:

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-092-introduction-to-programming-in-java-january-iap-2010/

At our next meetup:

We will work on the MIT Course Lesson 6 and Graphics strikes back! project.

Don't forget to sign up for the next meetup if you plan to attend.
https://www.meetup.com/Beginner-Java-Developer-Meetup/

Free Code Camp Portfolio - NavBar issues on mobile devices

I had issues with my navigation bar showing on mobile devices, it was taking up a good portion of the screen and covering my text. After a bunch of research, I found I had to add a collapsible navigation bar and then import the JavaScript into my header.

Before

I have listed the links below that explain how to correct this issue:
https://www.w3schools.com/Bootstrap/tryit.asp?filename=trybs_navbar_collapse&stacked=h

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27930160/bootstrap-navbar-toggle-button-not-working

After

// note jquery tag has to go before boostrap
      <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.1.3.min.js"></script> <script
src="http://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.1/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>

Portfolio Page

Today I finished the basic setup for the portfolio page from Free Code Camp. There will be a lot more content coming to be added, but I am happy with the initial result. Here is the link to check it out: https://codepen.io/jenhurd8/full/pPdpdP/

Girl Develop It - Intro to JavaScript /Parts 1-4

Attended 5/23, 5/25, 5/30, 6/1

The course slides are available online if interested:

 http://gdichicago.com/courses/gdi-featured-js-intro/#/

Girl Develop It - Intro to JavaScript /Part 1

Today, I attended the Girl Develop Intro to JavaScript. It is a four part course with two hours each session. I had taken JavaScript a few years ago in school, but this course is a good refresher. I strongly recommend the GDI courses if you are just starting out learning to code. They are appropriately paced for those just starting out. Also, plenty of guys attend these meetups too!

The course slides are available online: http://gdichicago.com/courses/gdi-featured-js-intro/#/

IJUG Virtual Meetup - Machine Learning Exposed

This was a nice introduction to machine learning. Machine learning is the science of getting machines to learn without being explicitly programmed. The speaker showed several examples. Below are two websites showing machine learning implemented. The first is a picture that is given and the machine must try to match which object it is. The second is a large group of paintings which are sorted based on certain characteristics. There are several ways to give the machine data from which it bases its decisions on. They are supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning. Recommendations were given to check Coursera or Stanford courses if you are interested in learning more.

http://cs231n.stanford.edu/

https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/tsnemap/

Beginner Java Developer Meetup

5/17/17

Meetup #7: MIT Lesson 4/Marathon and Library Projects continued

Today we went through and finished the Marathon and Library projects.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-092-introduction-to-programming-in-java-january-iap-2010/

See the code on Github: https://github.com/BeginnerJavaDeveloperMeetup/MIT-assignments

Please send me your Github name if you would like to contribute to our group.

Draw.io file:

https://www.draw.io/#G0B1fYewnAppxuQWdLd3FraXRfMEE

Announcements:

Upcoming Conferences

Chicago Coder Conference:  June 26-27, 2017

That Conference: August 7th - 9th, 2017

If you are on Facebook checkout: Self-Taught Programmers Group

Static you tube video. Why is the main method static?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm5B6Z8roQk

At our next meetup:

We will start working on MIT Lecture 5: Access control, class scope, packages, Java API.

Don't forget to sign up for the next meetup if you plan to attend.

Project Management with Trello

Recently I saw another person learning to code who had saved everything they were learning into a project management webpage. I was impressed by the idea and did a little research. I tried several options and found the one that worked best for me was Trello. https://trello.com/  The only thing I was disappointed in was most of them do not come with a manual time tracking feature. Additionally, the ones that do either cost money or are an add on that others cannot see unless they have it downloaded. I'm not sure if I will keep using this or just keep track of things on this blog, but it's good to know this type of free software exists in case I decide to use it for any upcoming projects.

Here are a few others if you are interested:
http://www.techworld.com/picture-gallery/startups/10-best-free-project-management-software-programs-3625922/

Getting the whole picture...MIT Library Project

So, I have been working on this MIT Library Project assignment #4 for our meetup group at the library.  I was using the same example from MIT Lecture 4 of the baby object to try to build code for the library project. It seemed no matter what order or variables I used to build the code I was getting one error or another. I reviewed the lesson a couple times, I googled objects and compared my code to a bunch of other objects but wasn't getting very far.

So, I took a couple days off and then came back and reattempted the project. I still had the same issues so, I decided to try a different resource. I had purchased a couple old Java books, and found the answer in the 2013 Introduction to Java Programming by Y. Daniel Lang.

The example on the left, is the same code from his book. It wasn't that the code was wrong, it was that I wasn't getting the whole picture. When I compared the circle code to mine, the items were in different order and the brackets and variables were setup differently. All it took was a different perspective, a full page of working code creating an object to help everything make sense. After I found this, I finished the library project in about fifteen minutes and all worked just fine. I realize now that some random bits of code sometimes aren't enough to get the whole picture on how some of the larger ideas work.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-092-introduction-to-programming-in-java-january-iap-2010/assignments/

http://www.cs.armstrong.edu/liang/apcs/html/SimpleCircle.html

Beginner Java Study Group

Meetup #6: MIT Course Lesson 4 - Objects and Classes

Today we went through the Objects and Classes lesson and started working on on the Library project.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-092-introduction-to-programming-in-java-january-iap-2010/

At our next meetup:

We are going to try to correct the Marathon.java file to get the fastest two runners and we are going to try to simplify and complete the Library project. We will also do some work uploading files to Github.

In our existing code we used an arraylist but we had not learned that yet. A point was brought up we may be able to use a fixed array (that we had previously learned) and then make four book objects with a boolean for borrowed status.

I have added the Book and Library files we were working on to Github if you want to try to work on:  https://github.com/BeginnerJavaDeveloperMeetup/MIT-assignments

If you send your username for Github I can add you to the group.

Don't forget to sign up for the next meetup if you plan to attend.

Sololearn

I ran across a recommendation that there was a free beginner course on Sololearn on Java and several other languages. I checked it out and it was a good review and test of what was taught in Head First Java and the Beginner Java for Dummies books, so I am going to add this to the beginner suggested to do list.

It tests you by giving you partial code and you have to fill in the blanks to finish to achieve the desired result. If you have a basic understanding of Java, you probably could finish this in a day. At the end it gives you a nice certificate to show you completed the course. You can add the certificate to your Linked In profile or Facebook. I decided not to add this one since it is lesser known but still a nice achievement and good practice on beginner concepts. https://www.sololearn.com/

This was a great workshop from Girl Develop It that covered the basics of Git source control. We went over saving files and committing changes, viewing the Git log, viewing differences, pushing and pulling to GitHub and much more.

Here is a link to the slides from the presentation: http://gdichicago.com/courses/git-github/#/

https://www.meetup.com/Girl-Develop-It-Chicago-IL/events/238943686/

Free Code Camp

When I visited Girl Develop It, someone mentioned they were working on Free Code Camp. There are already like a million places to learn to code, but I figured I would check it out. This is one of the best resources I have found to bring a new person down a path to learn to code and it's absolutely FREE! I am using this to supplement my learning java which is more of a back end language and learning front end development with free code camp. I have realized learning to code is way more complicated than just learning java. I am still working on learning GitHub and my IDE among other things on a long to do list. This is why you now see two progress bars for learning to code when I originally only had one. Check out this great resource if you get a chance: https://www.freecodecamp.com.

Beginner Java Developer Meetup

Meetup #5: MIT Course Lesson 3 
Today we completed MIT Lesson 3 about loops and arrays. We also completed the assignment #3 called Marathon. I will be setting up a GitHub for our group to hold code in the future.

We will pick up on lesson 4 at the next meetup. 

Please review lesson 4 for the next meetup. We will start working on objects and classes.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-092-introduction-to-programming-in-java-january-iap-2010/

https://www.meetup.com/Beginner-Java-Developer-Meetup/

CJUG Office Hours

I went to the CJUG office hours again and have been learning quite a bit. There are some great people there who are willing to help. I learned about iterating through arrays and how to compare array items to each other. I learned about using MIN and MAX value when trying to find the lowest or highest value of a set. Here's a link to their meetup if you are interested in finding out more:
https://www.meetup.com/ChicagoJUG/

Mongo DB with Node School Chicago

This was a nice introduction to Mongo DB. They had a representative from Mongo who gave a nice description of Mongo DB and what it does. Mongo reads and writes JSON data at webscale very fast. It is not a relational database but is optimized for speed so some data may be duplicated. BSON is the binary JSON type that is used by Mongo. The data is passed between a server and a listener which normally executes Javascript. Each action is completed on the primary server and then goes to an oplog that is then also written to the secondary. There is an upcoming Mongo conference in Chicago June 20-21 if you are interested in learning more about Mongo.

CJUG office hours

Here is a great new offering for those near Chicago trying to learn java. CJUG office hours.
Here, several experienced Java developers will help you work on a project or just code together. I met a bunch of great people. Unfortunately I did not have a project to work on yet, but I did work on a bunch of coding problems and get some great help. I look forward to attending more of these in the future.
https://www.meetup.com/ChicagoJUG/events/238116477/

Beginner Java Developer Meetup

Meetup #4: MIT Course Lesson 2

Today we finished going over the MIT Lesson 2 and activities about types, methods and conditionals. We found a few shortcuts to reuse code and make it more concise.

We will pick up on lesson 3 at the next meetup.

Please review lesson 3 for the next meetup. We will start working on loops and arrays.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-092-introduction-to-programming-in-java-january-iap-2010/

Anita Borg Institute - Intro to Java

I attended this workshop "Intro to Java"  hosted by the Anita Borg Institute held at Coding Dojo.
This was a quick overview of the Java language with everything from character types to lambda expressions. This was a short two hour course that reinforced most of the main java concepts found in beginner java books. There was not much time to follow along since the instructors code was prepared ahead, but repetition of concepts definitely helps with understanding of the language in general.

Projects... Projects... Projects!!!

Now that I have attended a bunch of meetups and spoke with quite a few people regarding learning to code, I think it is time for me to refocus my efforts. I'm going to take bits learned from a bunch of places and put it back together to revamp my study efforts.

Projects... Projects... Projects!!!

Recommendations for learning to code have echoed the projects message over and over and this is one I cannot ignore. Recommendations have also included the importance of knowing JavaScript and HTML/CSS as well as database and Git.

Right now I am still working on the Google Study Jam for Android as well as the MIT course for Java. I plan to keep working on these until the Study Jam is over but then switch to 50% projects and 50% study work and tutorials. I do like following along with tutorials and working on practice problems so I do not want to eliminate this entirely.

I'm going to use the recommendation of 90min of focused study (no distractions) followed by 30min breaks. Also using the peak time of day when I am most focused for working on the projects.

I also have decided to make a list of subjects I am interested in learning and to visit only related meetups as to not waste time. I have visited a few boot camps curriculum and personalized my own list which includes Java, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, Servlets, SQL, Git and more.