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(this are notes for the “hard programming club” at HackneyUTC )

Last week:

• We talked about inviting some Year6 students in for a programming day and I gave some ideas for we need to prepare (Scratch game, Program-a-human-robot) 
• We started learning python the hard way, we did Exercise 0: setting up PythonAnywhere, and using the Python Anywhere console.

This week:

1) I’d like to see any scratch programs you have made

2) Learning Python The Hard way:

• Can you still remember how to log in and 
• Learning: Exercise 1 (yes it’s important to type them in and make mistakes, yes do please do the study drills). Ask each other (and me) for help. Do go ahead to Exercise 2 if you want. 

If there’s time, let’s look at some scratch, or program each other as a robot.

A replacement for Exercise 0 of Zed Shaw’s “Learn Python the Hard Way”, if running on PythonAnywhere:

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If the title doesn’t make sense: Continuous integration means (for web applications) running all your automated tests whenever you check your code into a code repository. So you don’t get any nasty surprises. Hosted continuous integration means that someone else worries about keeping the server going, and you just have to ensure your tests work.

Context: my local CI (jenkins) machine (not hosted, not even on the web) died a while ago. Need to get all my clients tests running all the time so I don’t have to rerun them everytime I or a colleague commits new code. Most of the projects are on rails, but I’d rather not be limited.

Here’s my shortlist currently:

• travis pro (when I get an invite… sigh)
• https://www.codeship.io
• https://semaphoreapp.com
• https://www.tddium.com

Anyone with any experience of these?

Quick note about this debate from last year. Worth skimming the articles and head for the comments - the articles are good, but the comments they provoke are actually better for thinking with, I think:

Jeff Atwood says why does everyone need to code, everyone doesn’t need to learn plumbing…

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/please-dont-learn-to-code.html 

Zed Shaw responds saying it’s not about “becoming a programmer” but learning some coding in order to understand some things

http://learncodethehardway.org/blog/MAY_15_2012.html

Quick reflection: I’ve had to learn some basic plumbing in order to fix ad hoc problems in my house. I am not a plumber. I wish I was a better plumber and/or had a better conception of how my plumbing worked. I could definitely know when I should do something myself, and when I should call in a professional.

Presumptions:

You definitely want the site to work whether people type www. or not (or any legacy/alternative urls etc). 

You want a canonicalized address (makes life easier for everyone, way way better for SEO).  

Therefore you need one of the addresses to redirect all requests to the other.

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if you’re a pythonista, you’re used to embedding classes, methods or whatever within each other. Ruby supports embedding classes within classes, and on might appear to support embedding methods within methods… but doesn’t. Here’s an example

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