education

Like many of my age and generation, I started learning to program with BASIC. These were the days when you bought magazines full of pages and pages of code for games or basic applications. You spent hours with your friends painstakingly typing these programs in to a computer to find there was a typo, or the game didn't work, and then giving up. It was more about hanging out with your friends, whilst your parents felt like you were learning something.

Like many of my age and generation, I started learning to program with BASIC. These were the days when you bought magazines full of pages and pages of code for games or basic applications. You spent hours with your friends painstakingly typing these programs into a computer to find there was a typo, or the game didn’t work, and then giving up. It was more about hanging out with your friends, whilst your parents felt like you were learning something.

I recently read <https://www.bfilipek.com/2016/05/coding-without-google.html> about a Developer's workflow before the proliferation of the internet, search engines and developer websites. It reminded me of an idea I had wanted to write about for a while and this blog post prompted me to drag it off my todo list.

Learning to code with a board game? Sounds too good to be true.

Two experiences in my life have shaped the way I try to talk about technology. One was over ten years ago when I taught a room full of retirees, long-term unemployed, and recent immigrants basic computer skills. I realized that I could throw many of the subjects I had studied out of the window and that the best way to teach people was to give them a reason to learn. Fast forward to last year (and a subject I wrote previously on SitePoint) when I taught programming to a group of recent Syrian refugees. Again, I had to throw away much of my own learning and preconceptions and think afresh.

I listen to hours of developer-focused podcasts each week covering tech, current affairs, board games, and general geekery. I even started my own podcast, which I have a lot of fun making. Hundreds of developers have written blog posts recommending thousands of different podcast series. There's no shortage of such recommendations for software engineers, so I won't subject you to another one of those lists. Instead, I'll idenfity specific podcast episodes that I think nailed a particular topic and were extremely engaging and fascinating from a developer's or technologist's perspective. For some of them, the interview subject or guest was especially interesting, or a discussion cropped up that was really compelling. For some reason, these episodes were very memorable, and that's why I think each one is worth your time.

We take a look at a new educational platform that allows beginning devs to sync up their GitHub accounts and practice their new found development skills.

On occasion, I have created content for and taught computing subjects to students, ranging from absolute newcomers to computers and coding to professionals wanting to top up their skills. When I first started, options for learning to code were limited, restricted to university and college courses that often assumed some prior knowledge and required commitment, time, and money.

Check out this software development conference that's currently catering to devs in Australia, but is soon expanding to Southeast Asia.

Swift Playgrounds from Apple is a slick integrated coding education tool — how far does go it to teach one of the hottest languages of the past 5 years?

Software development practices change fast. Development teams use an endless stream of new tools, frameworks, and practices, and it’s your job as a test engineer to make sure that no matter what your development teams use or create, everything runs and works reliably.