Google Udacity Scholarship Update - Good news!!!

I know I have been quiet the last couple months, but I have not stopped coding! I have been busy working on my Android grow with Google track. I finished just in time before the 12wk deadline and am so excited to have been selected to move on the the full Nanodegree track. I posted the link to my tweet below :)

Link to my twitter
Super excited to have been selected for phase 2 of the #GrowWithGoogle #GoogleUdacityScholars Android Developer Nanodegree track!!! What an awesome opportunity :) Thanks to @udacity @Google

Free Code Camp Bolingbrook

Today we had the second Free Code Camp Bolingbrook Meetup. Only a handful of people showed up but that was ok with us. We were still able to collaborate and learn from each other, share progress, and make plans for future meetings. 

A while back I had followed the process listed on FCC to add a study group by requesting it be added to the list. Several months had passed and our group had not been added yet, so I decided to attempt to submit my first pull request to add our group. To my surprise, I found a fellow camper had put in our pull request (along with a list of other locations) and it is currently pending to be added. Very exciting!!! So hopefully this will help us grow our group as well. 

The whole reason I keep trying to start a group in the suburbs is to help us learn from each other, attend some meetups or conferences together and maybe even try our luck at a hackathon. I had already accomplished several of these goals last year with the Beginner Java Group and hope to spread this same encouragement in the new Bolingbrook Free Code Camp group.

Google Developer Challenge Scholarship:Android Intermediate - Update

I just wanted to post an update since I have been spending a lot of my spare time working on this Android course for the Google Scholarship. We are at the halfway point of the scholarship and I am on lesson 6. There are 14 lessons total but several of these in the second half are shorter so I feel like I am doing ok on progress and on track to complete it before the April deadline.

I have noticed that the course itself moves very fast and the explanations of things are very short. I have found it super helpful to use the additional resources other students have posted in the slack and forums in addition to taking part in as many online meetings as I am able to join in on.

Check back in a month to see if I finished on time :)

Intro to Scala - All day event at 8th Light

This was an awesome all day event and introduction to Scala. I was pleasantly surprised how much of my Java knowledge was transferable to the Scala course we worked on. Not only was the course content based on manipulating images (see the last link below) which made it so much more fun, but 8th light also provided a large amount of mentors which made feedback so much easier to get. I was lucky enough to have my own mentor and just asked questions all day long about Scala, coding, and becoming a developer. My mentor Kyle was self-taught and so was our leader Aina! This was so inspiring!!! I definitely plan to attend any future 8th Light or Bridge Troll events and highly recommend them. I couldn't help but take a couple other pics on the walk over.

https://scalabridge.gitbooks.io/curriculum/content/
https://www.gitbook.com/book/scalabridge/curriculum/details

Curriculum: http://www.scalabridge.org/creative-scala-v2.html

Free Code Camp Bolingbrook

After unsuccessfully trying to get a Beginner Java Group going last year, I decided to give it a try again this year with Free Code Camp Bolingbrook. Free Code Camp has a ton of free resources, a full free curriculum, chat rooms and articles and so much support. I reached out to a couple other group leaders in the area and got some tips to get the group going. To start, the meetings will be once a month and I am just the organizer not a teacher. The first meeting was small but there was enough interest to get started. We went over the new and old curriculum of FCC, did introductions and had some project collaboration. 

Free Code Camp Study Group based in Bolingbrook, IL Share the link to our local group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/FreeCodeCampBolingbrook

Learn to code at: https://freecodecamp.com

Open Hack Naperville

This is a friendly open environment to work on whatever project you are interested in. There are a lot of developers here to get feedback from and free pizza! Today I worked on the Android Udacity Scholarship course but spent most of my time setting up on my new laptop. I had to enable virtualization and run Android Studio as admin to avoid the errors I was trying to get working. I hope to have more progress at the next meetup.

Windy City Dev Fest at Google

Google Developer Group held Windy City Dev Fest at Google. This is a one day conference self-described as "A 100% community organized developer conference with industry experts presenting on exciting topics!" There were many sessions geared towards Android or mobile developers. Below are the courses I attended:

Session 1: Moto Mods with Christian Flowers from the Moto Mods team
He explained the process of developing your own Moto Mod starting from your hardware idea, to the software and approval process.



Session 2: Cheat code, combo, or power up by Michelle Schulp
This talk was about the advantages of using existing code and choosing how to decide different level developer contributions.

Session 3: AR Core with Patrick Fuentes
This was a great session on augmented reality and how the technology behind it is fairly new. There was a super cool presentation on how anchors and plane finding work as well as some of the challenges such as lighting issues and reflective surfaces. Definitely an area of interest I'd like to spend some time on in the future.

Session 4: Demystifying Constraint Layout with James Williams
This session was all about the constraint layout used in developing android apps.

Session 5: Firebase Analytics for Android Live! with Stacy Devino
Stacy walked through an app she had setup for the group and was able to pull real-time analytics such as options users chose on a survey and what type of phone they were using.

Session 6: Build your own app for Google Home with Martin Omander
This was a nice presentation on how simple it is to build your own Google app for Google home.

For more information, see the conference page: https://windycity.devfest.io/home

Grow with Google Challenge Scholarship: Android Developer Intermediate

I applied for and was accepted to the Grow with Google Challenge Scholarship: Android Developer - Intermediate. This is a twelve week scholarship that can result in a free Nanodegree program if you are one of the top finalists. In order to move on the next round (based on the numbers it looks like 1 in 10 will proceed), I will need to complete the coursework as well as contribute to the slack channel and the forums.

Check back for updates on this in April and wish me luck!

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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.