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Humor Programming The Street Finds Its Own Uses For Things

ArnoldC: A programming language based on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie one-liners

Do you like programming? Do you like Arnold Schwarzenegger movies? If so, ArnoldC is the programming language for you!

ArnoldC will never make the TIOBE list, but then again, no other programming language is based on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie one-liners! Better still, there’s an ArnoldC syntax highlighting package for Sublime.

Here’s “Hello, World!” in ArnoldC:

IT'S SHOWTIME
TALK TO THE HAND "hello world"
YOU HAVE BEEN TERMINATED

It compiles down to Java bytecode. Running the program above is as simple as saving it as hello.arnoldc and entering the following on the command line:

java -jar ArnoldC.jar hello.arnoldc
java hello

Find out more about ArnoldC on its GitHub page, and once you’ve been impressed, download it, start coding, and GET TO DA CHOPPA!

Since we’re on the topic of Arnie, enjoy this video:

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Don’t miss out on RayWenderlich.com’s Black Friday sale!

Here’s your chance to learn mobile development where I learned mobile development, and at a sale price! RayWenderlich.com, the premier mobile developer tutorial site, is having a big Black Friday sale until December 2nd, and you don’t want to miss these bargains…

The offering The price You’ll want this if…
Yearly Plan:
A year’s subscription to the site, which gives you access to all the articles.
$99 / year
(It’s normally $20/month; you’ll save over $140)

You want a steady stream of tutorials — each one typically an afternoon’s worth of work — on a wide array of movile development topics: iOS/Swift, Android/Kotlin, Unity, Flutter, and server-side Swift.

If you’re just getting started with mobile development, especially cross-platform mobile development, you’ll find this quite useful.

Beginning iOS & Swift Black Friday Bundle:
5 books: iOS Apprentice, Swift Apprentice, Core Data by Tutorials, Data Structures & Algorithms in Swift, and Living by the Code.
$99.97
(Normally $270 for all the books)

You’re new to iOS development, Swift, or both, and want a deep dive. We’re talking a solid two or three months of serious learning in these five books — think of this bundle as boot camp for self-starters who want to learn iOS development.

You’ll want this is you’re serious about getting an app in the App Store or landing a job doing native iOS development.

Beginning Android & Kotlin Black Friday Bundle:
5 books: Android Apprentice, Kotlin Apprentice, Saving Data on Android, Data Structures & Algorithms in Kotlin, and Living by the Code.
$99.97
(Normally $270 for all the books)

You’re new to Android development, Kotlin, or both, and want a deep dive. We’re talking a solid two or three months of serious learning in these five books — think of this bundle as boot camp for self-starters who want to learn Android development.

You’ll want this is you’re serious about getting an app in the Play Store or landing a job doing native Android development.

Advanced iOS & Swift Black Friday Bundle:
10 books: SwiftUI by Tutorials, Combine: Asynchronous Programming with Swift, Catalyst by Tutorials, iOS Test-Driven Development by Tutorials, Machine Learning by Tutorials, Advanced iOS App Architecture, Concurrency by Tutorials, Design Patterns by Tutorials, Metal by Tutorials, and Mastering Git.
$199.97
(Normally $580 for all the books)

You’ve been doing iOS development for a while and want to take it to the next level. These books will take you four to six months to go through, and by the end, you’ll be an iOS development force to be reckoned with.

Are you angling for a senior developer position doing iOS development? This is for you.

Advanced Android & Kotlin Black Friday Bundle:
Reactive Programming with Kotlin, Kotlin Coroutines by Tutorials, Advanced Android App Architecture, Android Test-Driven Development by Tutorials, and Mastering Git.
$99.97
(Normally $300 for all the books)

You’ve been doing Android development for a while and want to take it to the next level. These books will take you four to six months to go through, and by the end, you’ll be an Android development force to be reckoned with.

Are you angling for a senior developer position doing Android development? This is for you.

If you don’t want a bundle, the individual books are also available at sale prices. Don’t miss this opportunity — go check out the RayWenderlich.com store and get these bargains before they’re gone!

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The “Your first iOS and SwiftUI app” video course — based on my chapters from the “iOS Apprentice” book!

In the next couple of days, the 8th edition of iOS Apprentice — a great book for beginners who want to learn how to write iOS apps — will be available. I learned iOS programming from an earlier version, and fittingly enough, I wrote the first two sections of the upcoming edition.

In my sections, I show you how to write apps using SwiftUI, the new declarative Swift-based way of defining user interfaces for iOS and other Apple operating systems. This required me to not just revise the previous edition, but to rewrite my sections nearly from scratch. It was a lot of work, but it was enjoyable work, and I’m quite pleased with the results.

If you’d like a taste of what my section of the book is like, check out these sample videos from the RayWenderlich.com course called Your first iOS and SwiftUI app. It’s based on some of my chapters from iOS Apprentice, where you learn how to write your first app: a simple game called Bullseye. You can access the whole course with a subscription, which is a worthwhile investment.

And now, the sample videos…

Your First Programming Challenge: Making a Programming To-Do List

The course starts with a challenge: given a description of the game you’re about to develop, make a to-do list of tasks that you, as the programmer, will have to perform in order to have a completed app.

Getting Started with SwiftUI

Now that you’ve go a to-do list, it’s time to build your first Swift and SwiftUI app — an app that displays a button.

Objects, Data and Methods

Now that you’ve created your first app, you’ll need to learn a little programming theory and how it relates to the code behind the app.

Buttons and Actions

At this point, the app displays a button on the screen, but nothing happens when you press it. Let’s fix that.

Swift UI State

State is a key part of programming with SwiftUI. In this section, Ray introduces the concept of state and how it relates to how the SwiftUI draws the user interface.

Solving Code Problems

One of the biggest pitfalls when learning iOS development when something goes wrong. Here’s how you deal with these situations.

Portrait vs Landscape

In this section, you’ll learn about portrait and landscape modes, iDevice screen resolutions, and setting up the app so that it displays its content in landscape mode only.

Swift UI Views

This covers views, which are anything that’s drawn on the screen.

Swift UI Layout

You’ll learn the basic of laying out user interface elements on the app’s screens in this section.

Spacers and Padding

Cluttered interfaces aren’t as usable, so here come spacers and padding to the rescue!

Once again, you can watch the entire course (plus every other course and tutorial at RayWenderlich.com) with a subscription, and you can get this tutorial in book form soon when the book i co-wrote — iOS Apprentice, 8th edition — comes out in just a few days!

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Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, November 25, 2019)

Hey, Tampa Bay techies, entrpreneurs, and nerds — here’s what’s happening in Tampa Bay this week!

It’s the week of Thanksgiving, so things are going to be more quiet than usual. Take the time to kick back, take stock, and find things to be thankful for, which should include being based in the best small tech talent market in North America. Next week, we’ll probably see the number of events ramp up as our local meetups start throwing their Holiday parties.

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!

Monday, November 25

Tuesday, November 26

Wednesday, November 27

Because it’s the day before Thanksgiving, I strongly recommend that you double-check with the organizers that the events listed below are actually happening before you attend.

Thursday, November 28: Thanksgiving!

The events listed below are recurring events, and it’s very, very likely that their organizers forgot to account for Thanksgiving and remove them from the schedule. I’m including them only because they’re still listed in their schedules.

Friday, November 29: Black Friday

Because it’s the day after Thanksgiving, I strongly recommend that you double-check with the organizers that the events listed below are actually happening before you attend.

Saturday, November 30

Sunday, December 1

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!


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If you like my “Tampa Bay tech events” posts, you’ll LOVE the mailing list!

If you want to know what’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech scene, or want to know what tech, entrepreneur, or nerd events are happening in and around the Tampa Bay area, it’s easy: just subscribe to the Tampa Bay tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events mailing list!

It’s got the same content as the weekly post here in Global Nerdy, but delivered straight to your inbox! It’s free of charge, “all ham and no spam,” and I don’t sell your email address (I’ll explain why below).

Why do I make these weekly events postings and the mailing list?

According to the 2019 edition of the annual tech talent report [PDF link] put out by CBRE, Tampa is the top small tech talent market in North America. Our tech talent population grew by over 10,000 people — an increase of about 28% — between 2013 and 2018. With techies in leading markets becoming less available or moving to smaller markets or the Sun Belt, our small but scrappy scene is in a position to put the area on the larger tech map — if we’re willing to put in the work.

Doing the work we do for a living is only part of the job. The other part — and it’s a crucial one — is building a lively tech scene that extends beyond office hours. We need to get together, make friends, share ideas, find work, form clubs, start businesses or side hustles, and do all those things ordinary cities into tech powerhouses. I was there when Toronto was a tech backwater in the early 2000s, but by teaming up with other community-minded techies who brought back their experience from working at tech centers during the dot-com bubble, we built it up into one of the top 3 tech cities in North America. I’d like to help to make the same thing happen here.

Hence my weekly “tech events” post, and thanks to a suggestion by Justin Davis, it’s also available as a weekly email digest.

I don’t charge anything for the list, nor will I make money by selling your email addresses. I plan to profit from the list by helping to make Tampa Bay’s tech scene an active, lively, and prosperous one. So please — subscribe to the list, find some events that interest you, go attend them, and go forth and help build the Tampa tech scene!

Subscribe to the mailing list

Subscribing to the list is easy! Just enter the email address where you’d like to receive the weekly list below…

…and then click the button below…

 

…and that’s it!

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I get asked this question two or three times a week

Sometimes, when it comes up in conversation that I know how to program Android and iOS applications, someone will say “Hey, I have an app idea — do you want to make it for me?” That’s why I laughed so hard at the most recent episode of Rick and Morty.

Here’s the opening scene from that episode:

In most cases, I politely demur — I can quite truthfully back out by saying “I’ve already got a lot on my plate right now.” Does this happen to you, and what do you do?

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Coming soon…

Cover of “iOS Apprentice, 8th edition”

Take note of the first author in the list!

The early access edition is available now, and the finalized edition is coming out very, very soon. Watch this space!