If you’re into open source, you’re probably aware of the different kinds of free, thanks to the expressions “Free as in beer” and “Free as in speech”.
If you’ve dealt with some particular open source codebases, you’ve probably also internalized a third kind of free: Free as in mattress.
The online Intro to Python Coding course that I’m teaching on behalf of Tampa Bay’s own Computer Coach Training Center starts tonight at 6:00 p.m.. For the next five weeks, on Monday and Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 10:00, I’ll be leading a class of Python learners through “code along with me” exercises in the Python programming language.
The format of the course will be pretty much the same as the one I use at Tampa iOS Meetup, where I lead the group through a “code along with me” exercise. I project what’s on my computer on the big screen, and everyone follows along, entering the code as I explain what’s happening.
Since Python has a REPL (Read-Evaluate-Print Loop), I can also have the class go through some exercises and try little coding challenges. It will be a “learn by doing” kind of class.
The main textbooks for the course (which will be provided to students) are Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition…
…and Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd edition (which is free to read online):
In order to minimize confusion, we’ll all use the same tools in the course, namely the Anaconda Individual Edition distribution of Python 3.7 and associated tools…
…and Visual Studio Code:
Both are available free of charge, and run on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
It’ll be fun! Watch this space; I’ll post some snippets from the course as it progresses.
Interested in signing up? Visit Computer Coach’s site and speak to them. Don’t dawdle — it starts tonight!
I’ll be teaching a live online course on Python programming on behalf of Computer Coach Training Center starting Monday. Here are the details:
To register for this course, visit this page and tap the Attend Online button. Someone from Computer Coach will contact you.
This is an introduction to the Python programming language. Now in the top 10 programming languages according to the TIOBE Programming Language Index, it is versatile enough to have a wide array of uses, from simple scripting to powering Instagram, Spotify, Netflix, Dropbox, and more. Its combination of simplicity and vast scientific and math libraries have made it the preferred programming language for data science and machine learning. If you’re looking for a first programming language, Python is an excellent choice.
This is not a passive course! This isn’t the kind of course where the instructor lectures over slides while you take notes (or pretend to take notes while surfing the web or checking your social media feeds). In this course, you’ll be actively taking part in the learning process, entering code, experimenting, making mistakes, correcting those mistakes, and producing working applications. You will learn by doing. At the end of each session, you’ll have a collection of little Python programs that you wrote, and which you can use as the basis for your own work.
The course will start at the most basic level by walking you through the process of downloading and installing the necessary tools to start Python programming. From there, you’ll learn the building blocks of the Python programming language:
You’ll write all sorts of programs…
Better still, you’ll learn how to think like a programmer. You’ll learn how to look at a goal and learn how you could write a program to meet it, and how that program could be improved or enhanced. You’ll learn skills that will serve you well as you take up other programming languages, and even learn a little bit about the inner workings of computers, operating systems, and the internet.
Until I started working on a video tutorial for Apple’s Combine framework (coming soon to raywenderlich.com!), I had no idea that this existed.
Open a Swift playground in Xcode and enter the following code:
let formatter = NumberFormatter()
formatter.numberStyle = .spellOut
let number = 87654
let spelledOutNumber = formatter.string(for: NSNumber(integerLiteral: number))!
print("\(number) spelled out is \(spelledOutNumber).")
Run the playground code, and you’ll see this:
87654 spelled out is eighty-seven thousand six hundred fifty-four.
Having come from the world of C, where you format strings using printf() and formatting strings, and later from other languages where you use whatever formatting method its string class provides, I’ve ignored most of Swift’s classes that derive from Formatter — with one notable exception: DateFormatter, which is indispensable when working with dates and times.
I’m now looking for an excuse to use this capability.
As I typed “DateFormatter” a couple of paragraphs above, I remembered that DateFormatter had a locale property. It’s for ensuring that any dates you present are in the correct form for the locale:
I wondered:
NumberFormatter have a locale property?So I changed the code in my playground to the following:
let formatter = NumberFormatter()
formatter.numberStyle = .spellOut
formatter.locale = Locale(identifier: "fil_PH")
let number = 87654
let spelledOutNumber = formatter.string(for: NSNumber(integerLiteral: number))!
print("\(number) spelled out in Filipino is \(spelledOutNumber).")
I ran the code and saw this…
87654 spelled out in Filipino is walóng pû’t pitóng libó’t anim na daán at limáng pû’t ápat.
…and my response was “Ay nako!” (translation: OMG!)
How about Korean?
let formatter = NumberFormatter()
formatter.numberStyle = .spellOut
formatter.locale = Locale(identifier: "ko_KR")
let number = 87654
let spelledOutNumber = formatter.string(for: NSNumber(integerLiteral: number))!
print("\(number) spelled out in Korean is \(spelledOutNumber).")
The output:
87654 spelled out in Korean is 팔만 칠천육백오십사.
My response: 세상에 (“Sesange!”, which is pretty much Korean for OMG!)
Try it out! You might find this list of iOS locale string identifiers useful.
Mike Dominick, who runs The Mad Botter — which develops automation/integration software — moved to the Tampa Bay area three years ago. It’s been my experience that Tampa Bay techies don’t do things halfway, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that in addition to the day job, he also has a technology- and open source-focused podcast named The Mike Dominick Show.
I had the privilege of being the guest for Episode 25 of the Mike Dominick Show, which we recorded yesterday afternoon (that’s its player above), and it was a fun conversation that covered:
Mike ends each podcast with two questions — one tough and one easy. The tough question he asked me was “What question should I have asked you that I didn’t?” You’ll have to listen to hear how I answered that one.
Don’t just listen to my episode — be sure to check out previous ones, including these ones that I’ve enjoyed on my daily bike rides:
One of the reasons I write for raywenderlich.com — the premier mobile developer tutorial site — is that they’re wonderful people to work with, because they’re such good people. And as good people, they’ve put together something to help developers during this time of pandemic and quarantine: RW Community Care. It’s a series of office hours, livestreams, bootcamps, and more, running until August 22 — and all events are 100% free!
Here’s what RW Community care offers…
I learned iOS programming back in 2012 by reading and doing the exercises in an earlier edition of iOS Apprentice, which was written by Matthijs Hollemans. While I’d done some mobile development as a Windows Phone Champ during my time as a developer evangelist at Microsoft, it was this book that set me on my path as a mobile developer.
I owe a lot to this book, which is why it was a big honor to co-author the eighth edition with Eli Ganim. For the summer, you can read it online for free at RW Community Care. Whether you’re completely new to programming or — like me, back in 2012, experienced at programming but new to iOS development — you should check out iOS Apprentice on RW Community Care!
RW Talks happen weekly, cover all sorts of topics that mobile developers will find interesting, ranging from the deeply technical to the inspiring. Upcoming talks include:
You can also see past talks:
Can’t attend some of the other live events, or prefer to collaborate on discussions as a community? Or maybe you’re more the type to hash out challenges or problems with a group of like-minded developers? There’s a Discord server that you can join!
Not everyone has easy access to a senior mobile developer, especially when everyone seems so busy these days and our teams are more physically separate then ever before.
Good news: Office Hours are the next best thing to having a senior developer right next to you!
Want a senior member of the development community to look over your current project, run a critical eye over your professional résumé, or review some code you’ve been struggling with? This program is designed to do just that.
If you need someone to help you with deeper questions on your particular project, or to lend a critical eye to your resume or job search, you need Review My Stuff!
The current coronavirus pandemic has given me a chance to do some spring cleaning at home, which in turn led me to revive some old computers that have been sitting idly in a closet. I figure I could put them to work doing interesting things.
I’ve given an old Compaq 610 a new lease on life with Peppermint OS, a lightweight Linux distro that runs really well on old machines (the Compaq is a 2009-era machine with a Core 2 Duo processor). I also installed VS Code, Node, Anaconda, and React on it, making it a lean, mean machine for that upcoming Python course I’m teaching.
In the process, I also gave some old Smalltalk-80 books a new purpose as well: propping up the monitor that goes with the Compaq.
I replaced the CMOS battery on my trusty ThinkPad T430 and its older version of Ubuntu with Linux Mint. Its own internal wifi card finally died, and I simply decided to simply replace it with a faster USB wifi adapter that would arrive the next day instead of getting the slower internal card that could take as long as 6 weeks to arrive.
As with the Compaq, I set up the ThinkPad with VS Code, Node, Anaconda, and React. Since it’s got the processor power and 16 GB RAM, I also put Android Studio 4 and Flutter on it. Between some mobile projects in my near future, and the need to have a machine for running servers and other automated tasks, it’s going to prove to be quite useful.
That leaves me with one last machine to update.
I got the Raspberry Pi 3 4 years ago as my one impulse purchase on Amazon Prime Day 2016 (in mid-July of that year), and made regular use of it until around early 2018, when I used it for a Sonic Pi programming demo. It was high time to bring it back to active duty.
The Raspberry Pi’s “hard drive” is actually a microSD card that fits into an easily-accessed slot near one of the edges of the board. The process of updating the Pi’s OS is pretty simple: You use the Raspberry Pi imager on another computer with an SD card slot (and a microSD-to-standard SD card adapter) to rewrite its contents.
The Raspberry Pi is a pretty good Python machine, and I may end up using it while teaching that Python course, if only to show what’s possible on a computer that’s smaller than a deck of cards (when it’s not in a case) that you can get for about $50.
Since it’s powered by an ARM chip, it offers an opportunity for a kind of programming that most other machines don’t offer: ARM assembly programming!
It looks like it’s going to become an ARM-based world:
With this upcoming sea change, it doesn’t hurt to have some familiarity with ARM assembly language. Even though smartphones have ARM chips, the Raspberry Pi is a much better platform on which to learn ARM assembly, as it allows you to do development and execution in the same place.
It may have been a while since I’ve done assembly language programming — first on the 6502 in high school on Apple ][s and Commodore PETs, and later in university on NS32000 boards connected to Digital Unix machines — but I found my return pretty simple. It didn’t take long for me to cobble together a “Hello World!”-style app on the Pi.
Watch this blog for ARM assembly tutorials!