Screenshot from the game. Tap to see it at full size.
Pictured above is Dale Mabry, a “cross the road”-style videogame in the style of Frogger, or its later cousin, Crossy Road. It gets its name from Dale Mabry Highway, a busy north-south six-lane “stroad” in Tampa. I wrote it back in 2016 as part of learning iOS game programming in Swift and SpriteKit.
I then wrote code to move the cars and handle the gameplay.
After getting the basic gameplay working, I got busy with other projects and forgot about the game for a couple of years. I recently pulled it out of mothballs just before Wednesday’s “Share Your Mobile App” with Others meetup, because organizer Edwin Torres asked attendees to show off any apps they’d worked on.
I wrote it back in 2016, when Swift was at version 3. It took me about a half hours’ worth of work to get it up and running in the current versions of Swift and SpriteKit, which was considerably less time than I thought it would take. I compiled it, put it on my iPad, and showed it to the group at the meetup.
Now that it’s out of mothballs, my plan is to polish it and put it in the App Store later this year. and it’s going to be one of my 20 Projects in 2020.
Photo by Maria Vanessa Moreno. Tap to see at full size.
On Tuesday, Anitra and I attended the graduation ceremony for the latest LaunchCode CodeCamp cohort, a class made up entirely of women. It was an immersive “coding boot camp”-style course that they attended for 14 weeks, Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., where they learned programming in Java and Python. With the effort and time required, it’s a commitment that the students couldn’t take lightly. We’ve met a good number of the women in the class, and we were happy to attend the ceremony!
Photo by Joey deVilla. Tap to see at full size.
The goal of the 14-week program is to teach its students how to code, but more importantly, how to think like a computer programmer. The curriculum comprises these four phases:
Programming fundamentals: An introduction to the concepts of programming, using Python (a good choice, in my opinion). The idea is to set up the students with the building blocks that every programmer needs.
Universal web: A look at the foundations of a modern web application, as well as languages, frameworks, and other tools used in web development.
Java deep dive: Hibernate and Spring MVC. The fact that they were made to use frameworks that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole and a hazmat suit speaks volumes about the dedication and capabilities of these women.
Portfolio project: After all of the above, they spent the last few weeks of the program working on a project to showcase what they’ve learned and what they can do.
Here‘s local news coverage of the event:
LaunchCode is an unusual coding school: It’s a non-profit that provides its courses free of charge. Their goal is to help people enter the field of technology by providing them with what they need to do so: accessible training and job placements in paid apprenticeships.
LaunchCode was founded by Jim McKelvey, the co-founder of the payment processing company Square. Square started in McKelvey’s hometown of St. Louis, but he moved it to Silicon Valley when he couldn’t find enough talent at home. LaunchCode started as his to help people from his hometown find work in technology. It has expanded from St. Louis to four other U.S. metros, including Tampa Bay.
Here are the photos I took at the event:
Photo by Joey deVilla. Tap to see at full size.
Photo by Joey deVilla. Tap to see at full size.
Photo by Joey deVilla. Tap to see at full size.
Photo by Joey deVilla. Tap to see at full size.
Jill St. Thomas, Executive Director of Tech Tampa Bay, gave an inspirational commencement address. She reminded us that women make up slightly more than half of the workforce, yet are underrepresented in many areas that define modern life and society, including technology and leadership. Rather than emulate men, she said that women should embrace that they are different from men and play to those strengths.
The students were given an opportunity to speak for a couple of minutes to talk about their experiences during the 14 weeks. They told stories that will be familiar to you when you think of the first time you encountered programming, look back on your first serious project, or if you’ve ever been in a group with a strong sense of camaraderie.
Every week, dedicated individuals and organizations in around the Tampa Bay do more than just their “day jobs”. They get involved in events where they share their knowledge, make connections and friends, and gather together to build strong tech, entrepreneur, and nerd communities. That’s why I do this every week: I put together a list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events to make sure that they can be found and you can attend them!
Here’s what’s happening in Tampa Bay this week!
This weekly list is posted as a voluntary service to the Tampa tech community. With the notable exceptions of Tampa iOS Meetup and Coders, Creatives and Craft Beer — both of which I run — most of this information comes from Meetup.com,EventBrite, and other local event announcement sites. I can’t guarantee the accuracy of the dates and times listed here; if you want to be absolutely sure that the event you’re interested in is actually taking place, please contact the organizers!
Do you have an upcoming event that you’d like to see on this list?
If you know of an upcoming event that you think should appear on this list, please let me know!
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Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!
Happy new year! I hope you enjoyed your holidays and perhaps even got a chance to take a break to rest and recharge. 2020’s now in full swing, and so is Tampa Bay! I’m back back with my weekly list of the area’s tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events.
Do you have an upcoming event that you’d like to see on this list?
If you know of an upcoming event that you think should appear on this list, please let me know!
Join the mailing list!
If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.
Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!
Here’s a quick list of what’s happening in Tampa Bay’s tech, entrepreneur, and nerd scene this weekend! The regular list will resume in a couple of days.
This is why I’ve been posting most things — even if it’s just a single photo or link — on my blogs rather than social media. As far as I’m concerned, the primary purpose of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are to direct readers to my blogs.
In today’s New York Times, there’s a frightening article titled 2020 Campaigns Throw Their Hands Up on Disinformation, which Techmeme succinctly summarizes like so: Campaign staff and researchers say almost no political campaigns, including presidential ones, have teams for spotting and pushing back on disinformation.
Welcome to the downside of the old internet promise that anyone can be a publisher or a journalist: It’s that everyone also has to be an editor, a fact-checker, a media critic, and yes, an investor too.
In the end, what may end up making a big difference is the rise of contributors who care enough to give up some of their time to act as independent fact-checkers and watchdogs. That’s how the Urban Legends Reference Pages got its start, and it eventually became Snopes. Just as social media accounts can be used to spread disinformation, they can also be used to spread the truth. Algorithms have been weaponized against people, but they can also be harnessed to protect them.
Someone’s going to have to take on the challenges that the campaigns and social media networks can’t or won’t do, and as the drivers of the information age, that responsibility will fall to us. Are we up to it?
