kenyancoder-blog

[kenyancoder-blog]

@kenyan254 @yomjoel @code-boodle @healthycoding @kakatagi @kkaniaru @kleylerpalacios17 @bobandjava-blog @purehippy @crazyorwhut-blog @blogdigitaland @four-oh-four @cheezbot 

[kenyancoder-blog]

@yomjoel @code-boodle @healthycoding @kakatagi @kkaniaru @kleylerpalacios17 @bobandjava-blog @purehippy @crazyorwhut-blog @blogdigitaland @four-oh-four @cheezbot 

Ray-Ban Sunglasses

[kenyancoder-blog]

@yomjoel @code-boodle @healthycoding @kakatagi @kkaniaru @kleylerpalacios17 @bobandjava-blog @purehippy @crazyorwhut-blog @blogdigitaland @four-oh-four @cheezbot 

Ray-Ban Sunglasses

[kenyancoder-blog]

I believe in free education, one that’s available to everyone; no matter their race, gender, age, wealth, etc… This masterpost was created for every knowledge hungry individual out there. I hope it will serve you well. Enjoy!

FREE ONLINE COURSES (here are listed websites that provide huge variety of courses)

Alison 

Coursera

FutureLearn

open2study

Khan Academy

edX

P2P U

Academic Earth

iversity

Stanford Online

MIT Open Courseware

Open Yale Courses

BBC Learning

OpenLearn

Carnegie Mellon University OLI

University of Reddit

Saylor

IDEAS, INSPIRATION & NEWS (websites which deliver educational content meant to entertain you and stimulate your brain)

TED

FORA

Big Think 

99u

BBC Future

Seriously Amazing

How Stuff Works

Discovery News

National Geographic

Science News

Popular Science

IFLScience

YouTube Edu

NewScientist

DIY & HOW-TO’S (Don’t know how to do that? Want to learn how to do it yourself? Here are some great websites.)

wikiHow

Wonder How To

instructables

eHow

Howcast

MAKE

Do it yourself

FREE TEXTBOOKS & E-BOOKS

OpenStax CNX

Open Textbooks

Bookboon

Textbook Revolution

E-books Directory

FullBooks

Books Should Be Free

Classic Reader

Read Print

Project Gutenberg

AudioBooks For Free

LibriVox

Poem Hunter

Bartleby

MIT Classics

Many Books

Open Textbooks BCcampus

Open Textbook Library

WikiBooks

SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES & JOURNALS

Directory of Open Access Journals

Scitable

PLOS

Wiley Open Access

Springer Open

Oxford Open

Elsevier Open Access

ArXiv

Open Access Library

LEARN:

1. LANGUAGES

Duolingo

BBC Languages

Learn A Language

101languages

Memrise

Livemocha

Foreign Services Institute

My Languages

Surface Languages

Lingualia

OmniGlot

OpenCulture’s Language links

2. COMPUTER SCIENCE & PROGRAMMING

Codecademy

Programmr

GA Dash

CodeHS

w3schools

Code Avengers

Codelearn

The Code Player

Code School

Code.org

Programming Motherf*?$%#

Bento

Bucky’s room

WiBit

Learn Code the Hard Way

Mozilla Developer Network

Microsoft Virtual Academy

3. YOGA & MEDITATION

Learning Yoga

Learn Meditation

Yome

Free Meditation

Online Meditation

Do Yoga With Me

Yoga Learning Center

4. PHOTOGRAPHY & FILMMAKING

Exposure Guide

The Bastards Book of Photography

Cambridge in Color

Best Photo Lessons

Photography Course

Production Now

nyvs

Learn About Film

Film School Online

5. DRAWING & PAINTING

Enliighten

Ctrl+Paint

ArtGraphica

Google Cultural Institute

Drawspace

DragoArt

WetCanvas

6. INSTRUMENTS & MUSIC THEORY

Music Theory

Teoria

Music Theory Videos

Furmanczyk Academy of Music

Dave Conservatoire

Petrucci Music Library

Justin Guitar

Guitar Lessons

Piano Lessons

Zebra Keys

Play Bass Now

7. OTHER UNCATEGORIZED SKILLS

Investopedia

The Chess Website

Chesscademy

Chess.com

Spreeder

ReadSpeeder

First Aid for Free

First Aid Web

NHS Choices

Wolfram Demonstrations Project

Please feel free to add more learning focused websites. 

*There are a lot more learning websites out there, but I picked the ones that are, as far as I’m aware, completely free and in my opinion the best/ most useful.

[kenyancoder-blog]

I was at a company retreat this weekend and while talking to some of my colleagues, the topic of women in computer science came up, as it seems to a lot when I’m talking to colleagues. They both expressed that they’d like more women to be in computer science because they believe that balanced groups are better and because they’d like to have more female colleagues in general (and no, I don’t suspect an “ugly” motive such as wanting to oggle them while working). Then they tried to figure out why there aren’t more women studying computer science and related fields and went on to reminisce about their female classmates at university.

Here’s where the problem started: instead of trying to see societal reasons for the ratio of women in stem fields, they evaluated their female peers, “rating” them on how well they fit their image of a computer scientist and dismissing large groups of them as not behaving properly in their eyes or not measuring up to their standards. Their examples were of women who tried to get by using their gender as “leverage”, meaning they tried to get the men to help them or do their work for them because they were women. I mean, sure, that’s not how you succeed in computer science - you have to do the work yourself if you want to learn anything. The problem is that my colleagues saw these types of students and evaluated all female computer science students accordingly: that even the few who do make it into university are largely not “real” computer scientists but “women computer scientists” who are not equal to their male counterparts. Of course there are exceptions, they said so themselves, but they only reinforce the pattern.

<b>This</b> is the problem women face in computer science and in stem fields in general: we aren’t seen as individuals making individual decisions but as a collective always being accurately represented to those men who happen to observe us at any given moment. And as long as men keep doing this, women will always feel isolated, judged and discriminated against, which is one of the reasons women either don’t start a degree in stem, drop out of university or leave the male-dominated field eventually. It’s not that we aren’t passionate or intelligent or motivated, it’s that we aren’t seen as people by our peers.

Sadly, I wasn’t as quick to grasp this during our conversation, to which I just added that I hadn’t ever observed this kind of behaviour from fellow female students at university. But next time, I’ll tell them that if they stop seeing us as women and start seeing us as people, the state of things will probably change.

[kenyancoder-blog]

The netflix.github.io page, which displays their open source projects, is incredible.

[kenyancoder-blog]

ahh github....sharing is caring <3

build on them or learn how to build from them….enter the lovely world of github themes

bootstrap-tumblr-theme

svbtle-tumblr-theme

sanographix

tumblr-boilerplate

tumblr-framework

cargo-theme

svbtumblr

Ashley

tumblr-theme-hunch

Tumblr-HTML5-Blank-Theme

svbtle-tumblr

termblrbrg-theme

thimble

tumblrthemr-xml-theme

Vacant-Tumblr-Theme

HTML5-Tumblr-theme-template

Boundless-Tumblr-Theme

fumblr

modreal

Readr

themes

Simplr

draper

tumblr-bootstrap

Hampi

biggiesmalls-tumblr-theme

peerlibrary-blog

tumblr-theme-base

washr

tumblrtheme

[kenyancoder-blog]

New GitHub Project: Doors

Hello world!

As many of you are aware I had made a simple RPG game called “Doors”. The premise of the game is to reach the middle of the dungeon, but you have somehow been caught in an infinite loop. Three doors sit in front of you. What lies behind? A trap? An enemy? Power? You pass through one door to find 3 more. And then again. And again. Pass through the doors slaying enemies and trying to survive. Gain better equipment and grow in power.

I have decided it would be really cool to have a completely free, open source RPG video game.

I am calling all programmers, artists, and nerds to come help and contribute to this project.

I will be using my tumblr to post updates and well and make the downloads of the compiled game available for free. As it currently stands the command line version of the game is available here.

All comments and suggestions are most welcome. I think this could be really cool to have a completely community made, designed, programmed and written video game. We can do what ever we put our mind.

[kenyancoder-blog]

Coding masterpost is now on github!

https://github.com/TumblrCommunity/coding-masterpost

Add your own resources and help us format things :)

[kenyancoder-blog]

TumblrCards Update v0.0.2

Hi all,

GitHub here.

So I think to help promote the game and keep up interest, I will write a blog post with each release update! For those of you that don’t know right now releases are structured as follows:

For something to be considered for merging in to the master branch it must be submitted as a Pull Request to the development branch first. All Pull Requests will be given at least 24 hours before being merged in to the development branch. Pull requests may take longer to be merged if more needs to change. On every Monday the development branch will have a pull request made (assuming development is ahead of master) to be merged in to the master repository. This pull request will sit for one week to be reviewed until it is merged in on Sunday. The weekly pull request may be delayed if more changes need to be made.

Now, why is it v0.0.2?

Normally release numbers follow the format Major.Minor.Patch, and eventually we will follow this. However the game itself is not actually playable. So until we have a working alpha version, I will be increment the patch number for each development merge. Master currently sits at v0.0.1, and the current pull request will make it v0.0.2. Once we have a working single player game (no matter how awful the alpha version starts) I will set the release version to v0.1.0.

So whats new?

The biggest thing so far is the Console API I have created. What this aims to do is give us a simple set of tools to handle console output for drawing. The Console API will mainly be used for the single and multiplayer games, as well as the deck editor. v0.0.2 will contain only 2 pieces (Console and ImageMap) of this API, and it will expand as development continues.

Besides that, this update really just contains a lot of error message fixes and other minor tweaks. For a full list of changes in this update check out the pull request here!

How can I help?

Well there’s a TON we still need help with and could always use new people. The biggest need is for programmers. The game is written in C++, however it’s totally ok if you have a negative amount of experience with C++. This is a learning experience for many of us, so use this as an opportunity to learn a new programming language!

For details on contributing check out this page!

We also have a Slack chat. If you would like to stay in the loop and get to know your fellow Comp Sci blogs shoot me a message with your email so I can get you an Invite!

[kenyancoder-blog]

General

Always comment your code Commenting your code is a great way for you to not only help solidify what you’re writing in your head, but it makes your code so much clearer for you and anyone else who may be reading your code. Of course you don’t always have to document every line, but documenting lines that you find difficult to remember is a good practice to keep.

Document your methods/functions Documenting your methods is a great way to keep track of what methods do what - create a doc-box above them and list the name of the method, what arguments it takes, what it returns, and the purpose it serves to the program. This can also serve as a quick reference so you don’t have to dig through your paper and find out what it’s supposed to do.

Develop your own style of coding When you first start coding, you may end up with code everywhere - Brackets in weird places, inconsistent spaces between parentheses, etc… Over time, you should start developing your own style of coding that is yours. Decide how you like to type your brackets, how you like your parentheses to look, your general variable naming style, etc… It makes your code so much easier to look at and read.

Know the official website for the language you’re working in If the code you are writing has an official website, use it! Languages like C++, Android, Java, and a ton of others have a website that has an extensive dictionary of libraries available to you and how to use them. Some of them even have example programs that you can use to help you. I keep all of mine in a bookmark folder.

Experiment on your own If you look below, you’ll notice my tip #4 for assignments - Don’t over-complicate your code. This is best saved for your own experimenting, so do it! In your down time, learn new techniques and new ways to optimize your code to the best it can be. Doing this in your own time is the best way to do it, as you don’t jeopardize any of your points if your code ends up not being able to work or if the teacher is extremely to-the-book on their assignments.

Debug as you go Debugging all at once sucks. You may get so far just to find out that your code is broken at the way beginning and that nothing else works. Instead, I suggest that you debug as you go to avoid the hours of debugging and possible re-writing at the end.

Assignments

Take your time time reading the prompt Nothing sucks more than finishing up the assignment after a week of coding than finding out that you completely skipped a crucial part of the program. If you need to, print out the prompt and highlight the crucial parts and make a note of anything else that you might forget.

Put document boxes at the top of your code These are more of a preference, but I prefer to put document boxes at the top of each of my files. I normally put my school id, name, assignment #, file name, and purpose of the file at the top of every file.  This helps me remember what file is supposed to do what and keeps my code clean and keeps my programming time shorter.

Make a list of your variables Programming is one of those things that will frustrate the heck out of you at times. You will spend days trying to debug one thing, just to go in to the TA to find out that you missed a semi-colon or you misspelled a variable. My recommendation: Make a list of variables that are used globally as well as which ones are used privately in their respective files. You can either do this in a doc-box or you can use old-fashioned pen and paper. I also put what the variable is used for and use the sheet for quick reference.

Don’t try to over-complicate your code When you’re given an assignment, do only what the assignment says - don’t try to go above-and-beyond unless you’re told there’s extra credit or another incentive. This means; not using a switch when you’re specifically told to use if-else statements or anything else similar.

Visit your TA or teacher if you need help They are there to help you - don’t just rely on stack overflow to teach you something that you don’t understand. Sure, you may be able to fix your code from that forum post, but do you actually understand it?

Pair programming is great if you do your own part Don’t just rely on your partner to do everything while you get the grade. You won’t learn anything that way. Evenly split the work and code when you are both present. This will allow you both to learn how to do the program and prepare you both for the exam to come. Pair programming is a great way to get a more real-world experience, as many projects in the real-world are done in groups or teams. ** Pair programming may not be available for you, ask your professor first **

Do your own code Aside from pair programming, do your own code. Do not rely on git hub to have the old assignments from years past and do not rely on your friends to write your code for you. Copying code from online is not only plagiarism which can earn you a 0 in the assignments, but some schools even have a strict policy where you can fail out of the class for plagiarizing. It also does not help you to learn the material.

[kenyancoder-blog]

TumblrCards (Working Title)

Hi all,

So I thought it was probably time I share what I’ve been working on. About 2 weeks ago I began approaching different blogs (per the request of @codingflumps) to gather interest and help in writing a card game! Flumps had been to busy with life at the time to put anything together, so I took it upon myself to spearhead his idea! Well, after spamming a large number of you (some of the most popular Comp Sci blogs have agreed to help), I have about 27 blogs total currently working on this game. But 27 isn’t enough!! My goal is to get as much of the Tumblr community involved as I can. Especially the Comp Sci “fandom”.

The project will be written in C++. We are using GitHub for open source control and Slack for discussion. Below you will find the link to the GitHub project (which can also be found on my blog) as well as the list of blogs that have signed on to help and allowed me to tag them (a few have asked to remain untagged).

If helping is something you would be interested just shoot me or any of these blogs an IM :)

Github: https://github.com/incomingstick/TumblrCards

@2nvtech

@algorhythmn

@caniprogram

@code-bug

@codeforvictory

@codingflumps

@compsciengineergirl

@computers-studying

@comp-sci

@debugmouse

@fangandal

@geekyasian

@javaonthedarkside

@leftistpropaganda

@matrix-inverse

@moonstruckstudies

@pirateprogramming

@racheloutofbounds

@radioactive-bananas-and-potatoes

@rorysglasses

@skeletonstudy

@teenagedintrovert

@tegan-scissor-hands

@theravenstudies

@thisgirlcodes

@what-do-the-skies-see

[kenyancoder-blog]

@Regrann from @freedom_faction - An 11-year-old #Shaolin #KungFu black-belt from #Texas stunned an audience of security experts in the #Netherlands on Tuesday by demonstrating that anything connected to the #InternetofThings (#IOT) can be #weaponized, even a teddy bear.

Whether it’s information technology, gymnastics, or Shaolin Kung Fu, 11-year-old Reuben Paul knocks it out of the park.

The Anti-Media reports:

This kid from #Austin, #Texas, just stunned a crowd of #cybersecurity experts at a conference in the Netherlands by demonstrating how just about anything can be “weaponized” when it’s connected to the Internet. “From airplanes to automobiles, from smartphones to smart homes, anything or any toy” can be part of the Internet of Things (IOT), Paul said while speaking at the World Forum in The Hague. “From terminators to teddy bears, anything or any toy can be weaponized.” The 6th grader, who also excels in gymnastics and is the youngest-ever #American to earn a Shaolin Kung Fu black belt, put his money where his mouth was. To back up his claims, he presented a teddy bear that connects to wi-fi using Bluetooth technology.

Paul then plugged a small device known as a “#RaspberryPi” into his laptop. The 11-year-old scanned the room for Bluetooth devices, then — “to everyone’s amazement,” according to Agence France-Presse — he downloaded dozens of phone numbers from the cyber security experts gathered in the room.

Then, using a computer language program called #Python, Paul hacked into the teddy bear’s system using one of the collected numbers. To hammer his point home, he turned on the toy’s light and recorded a message from an audience member. “IOT home appliances, things that can be used in our everyday lives, our cars, lights, refrigerators,” Paul told AFP after the conference, “everything like this that is connected can be used and weaponized to spy on us or harm us.” The wunderkind’s father, information technology expert Mano Paul — while admittedly “shocked” by the types of security vulnerabilities his son is able to expose — says Reuben has been doing this type of thing all this life: 🖐🏾More in comments👇🏾#Technocracy #SurveillanceState #WatchDo

[kenyancoder-blog]

hi! i read that you're currently majoring in computer science. i am planning on doing that too, or software engineering. do you think you can create a post on what to expect for incoming freshmen who want to major in comp sci? and what classes to take junior/senior year of high school in order to prepare? thanks so much!

Hey there! Actually this summer I changed majors from math (course 18) to computer science (course 6). Programming is a very important skill and it is very useful to have at least some experience in it, even if you aren’t a CS major or don’t enjoy coding.

What to expect:

Math! A prerequisite for many programming courses is experience in linear algebra, (which mostly deals with matrices). 

Building circuits (??) This one doesn’t make a lot of sense at first, but the major I am in at MIT is called Course 6 EECS (electrical engineering and computer science), and the two go hand-in-hand. It may also be useful to understand a bit of electromagnetism (ie. physics)

How to prepare:

Attend a hackathon. A hackathon is a team based competition where you create new apps, build robots, etc. MIT hosts one every year for high school students called Blueprint. Here is a list of other options.

Practice. Try making your own Tumblr theme.

AP Computer Science. or any programming course your school offers. I didn’t take this class in high school, but from what I heard, it can be very difficult, so if your school doesn’t offer it, I wouldn’t recommend tackling it on your own. Buying a study guide for it could be helpful though!

Online Resources:

MIT Open Courseware video lectures, reading material, exercises

MIT edX  real professors, 15 hours/week commitment, homework

Code Academy step-by-step guides, easy going, (often feels like you’re playing a game, rather than taking a course)

Khan Academy

An Hour of Code for younger students. Often the best way to learn is through teaching. For example, you could start a club at your local elementary or middle school that teaches students the basics of coding.

Python Resources:

Python is a good programming language for beginners. The differences between languages is mostly what commands exist, so once you get the hang of one programming language, learning the others become way easier.

download it here.

Think Python is an online guidebook

the Python Tutorial

Finally, my friend Selam has a rad blog post about this topic, which includes some very encouraging words about learning to code. I hope you found this post helpful, and feel free to ask more questions!

[kenyancoder-blog]

Learn Python & Swift 3 by creating real-life startup platform with Web dashboard and iOS app. Get more information here

[kenyancoder-blog]

Programmer's youtube subscriptions

There’re some people who teach to people how to code or learn programming on youtube. I think these guys are so cool, they’re doing great jobs and they have knowledge of every subject of programming. I chose some of them and listed in my tumblog.

So here:

1. The New Boston

2. Derek Banas

3.MyCodeSChool

4.CodeGeek

5.DrapsTV

6.TheShellWave

7.CrashCourseCode

8.Sentdex

9.WildAcademy

10.VoidRealms

11.ProgrammingHelpOrg

12.ChiliTomatoNoodle

13.The Bad Tutorial

14. Komputez(Css and Html)

15. Patrick WashingtonDC(Java and C#)

16. LearnCode Academy(Web development)

17. Adam Khoury

18. Brackeys (Game development)

[kenyancoder-blog]

What in the heck is Python?

Hello, there!

If you’ve never wrote a single line of code in your life before - don’t fear. Before I took a college Intro to Computer Science class, I didn’t even know what writing code meant. So, the very fact that you are looking at this post means that you’re far ahead of the game. With that said, let’s continue!

Python is a programming language that is popular in high school and some college classes because of how easy it is to learn (whew, right?). 

So, why should YOU learn Python? The easy answer would be: because it’s totally cool. But, in all seriousness, it’s a great ‘first language" to help you understand how to communicate with computers - those darn things don’t speak English. It’s also a great way to build analytical thinking skills, and it looks great on a resume. Going back to the coolness factor: Google, NASA, and a ton of other companies program in Python. It’s pretty powerful.

Now, let’s get started!

Here’s what you will need for this Tumblr tutorial series:

1. Python 3.4

You can download Python here: https://www.python.org/downloads/

2. Wing IDE 101

You can download Wing IDE 101 here: http://wingware.com/downloads/wingide-101

Make sure you download Python first, so that when you download Wing, Python 3.4 will be set as the default version of Python to be used.

Mac users should be able to do this as well (you just have to add Wing and Python to your Applications folder). If you’re having trouble getting started, feel free to send me a message or comment below!

When you’re finished downloading both Python and Wing, open Wing and click on the blue paper icon (Create a new file). You should have something that looks like this:

(Note: I have Python 2.7, just out of preference).

If you do have something similar to what’s in the photo above: Congrats! You just set up an intelligent development environment to work with Python in.

Basically, an integrated/interactive development environment (IDE) is a program that allows you to work with code in an editor so you can write code faster, fix your code easily, and just have a nice workspace. It’s like using Word instead of Notepad or TextEdit to write a final paper - if that makes any sense.

That’s it for now! Check back for a tutorial on how to write your first program!