Evergreen Bike Shop volunteer Peter volunteers at the Evergreen Bike Shop

            I followed Evergreen Bike Shop volunteer Peter around the shop during one of his weekly shifts. That day he continued working on a bike for his girlfriend’s brother and assisted someone who came to work on his bike.

            Since 1977, The Evergreen State College campus has hosted the Evergreen Bike Shop, a volunteer-run shop where people can work on their bikes or even build a bike out of spare parts. Bicyclists may store their projects at the shop as long as they work on it at least once every two weeks, otherwise the shop reclaims the parts.

            Bicyclists may find a number of basic and specialized tools, DIY manuals and free spare parts. The shop also sells some basic materials as needed.

            Aside from its basic hours of operation, which depend on volunteer schedules, the shop holds special events and meetings. Every Monday at 4 p.m., the shop hosts Lady and Trans Night, a “target-only” space. May 18, the shop sponsored the Mob Roll Alley Cat, a bike scavenger hunt through Olympia followed by a show and party.

           Those interested in volunteering may attend the weekly meetings 2-4 p.m. Wednesdays at the shop in Room 135 of the College Activities Building.

Review: stackoverflow

            Here is the obligatory review of stackoverflow. Look, if you are working on a project and come across a problem that you want some help on, go here. Someone else has quite possibly had the same problem, and someone has quite possibly helped them solve it on this site. If not, post your problem, and a bunch of bored programmers will solve it for you. Pretty neat, huh?

            The site is much like any other forum like this. You can search by question, by tag, or by text. Questions and answers are rated by users. Users create profiles and earn badges and reputation which gives more privileges and gives their votes more weight.

            As usual, the moderators try to get everyone to learn the rules and keep the discussions professional and on task. They also invite people to apply to help with the various tasks of managing the site. Stackoverflow is part of StackExchange, a network of similar sites for various areas of expertise.

Review: Google Developers University

            Google Developers UniversityConsortium presents a fairly comprehensive and emergent education program for anyone looking to master web development or simply expand their skill set — comprehensive in outline at least. I get the sense that it is curricula compiled by an information management specialist giant, not composed by educators per se.

            The well-organized site lists quite a number of offerings in three general categories: mobile, web development, and programming languages. The programming languages track leaves much to be desired, but the other two tracks appear to lead from a fairly introductory “classes” to advanced real-world application. The offerings range from free online videos or slideshows to university courses with tuition, to live webinars from any number of organizations.

            The free stuff sometimes is little more than a slideshow with no voice over, which makes little sense without the lecture it was designed to accompany. But, there are still some gems. I have selected this course from the University of Maryland on building Android apps to browse over the summer.

          Also, though many courses start off at a very introductory level, none of these are designed to build your knowledge from the ground up like Codecademy does. So, what you get out of Google Developers University depends on what you can put into it.

            As a site (or, subsite), it is well-organized and interactive. There is a forum area for collaboration, questions etc. But, mainly the content is well-regulated, which is good. It seems to be a good place for universities to attract students with “cutting edge” offerings. Also, there are some pretty cool applications available for developing and educational collaboration.

Profile: Justin Bodeutsch, Olympia programmer

            Olympia, Wash. programmer Justin Bodeutsch has worked as a web professional for the past eight years since he graduated from college. But, he has never formally studied computers or programming. His degree from Multnomah Bible College is in Bible theology and speech communication.

            Bodeutsch said he probably got in the field at the end of an era when formal education was not as required to get a job as a programmer as it is now. He said he learned most of what he needs to know through on-the-job training and independent study.

            “I love just creating stuff and some of the newness of the internet. It’s like a frontier, figuring out how to use it. I studied communication in college, so from that standpoint it’s a new way to communicate,” he said.

            He has worked at Monk Development since 2006. Loosely based in San Diego, Monk mostly creates and manages websites for churches; the company’s “content management system” is its “main product,” he said.

            He acts as a system administrator, solving problems Monk’s clients bring to him, and “finding other problems before they are big problems – problems that maybe nobody has brought to you yet. You just always have to be diligent.”

            He said Monk did not have a system administrator before, “so I just started doing some of that work. I’ve never had an official titling ceremony.” He said his title changes “depending on the context.”

            “To some people, ‘system admin’ is a dirty word, or it’s a terrible job,” he said, “Dev ops guy is my official informal title. That’s what I call myself internally, but my business card says, ‘System Administrator.’”

            He said he has been transitioning from PHP developer to full-time system administrator, and should be done with the transition by the end of year. He said his goal is just to be an “all-star sys-admin.”

            He is at Monk for the “long haul,” he said, “That’s been my goal all along. I’ve felt like I wanted to retire there.”

            “You know, I want to be able to take a tool and use it for good,” he said, “Monk’s mission is totally in line with mine.”

            He said he did not have the same feeling about the company he worked for before Monk, Netbiz. He said Netbiz was basically about “tricking realtors into thinking they needed a website, and the main cash flow was reselling adwords to realtors.” He said Netbiz had that one thing that was relatively successful, but it tried new ideas almost on a weekly basis. He said it was good that the company was responsive to the dynamics of the internet, but he did not feel good about a lot of the ideas, and the ideas were not very successful.

            He said his job with Netbiz was doing mostly HTML ad CSS for the designers. He said he leveraged his experience making websites for himself and his friends in high school and college, when it was novel for anyone their age to have a web presence at all. He said he also used his experience and training as the assistant to Multnoma’s web developer in his senior year of college.

            While he was at Netbiz, he taught himself PHP and MYSQL, because he “didn’t want to be there forever.” He said, “I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible because my boss was insane, and it was a horrendous commute.”

            He said he used w3schools a lot to get the basics down. Then, he said, he tried some ideas for websites that “never really went anywhere,” but the experience helped him learn to make applications and to see where he “got stuck, what worked and what didn’t work.”

            He said that work put him in the position to take a job with Monk. He had a side job helping to maintain the website for Imago Dei, a Portland, Wash. church. Imago Dei hired Monk to provide a new website, and Bodeutsch helped with the transition, helping get the new central management system online.

            He said he started doing some HTML and CSS for Monk, but he also did some basic PHP and MYSQL work, learning PHP from his boss. He said he bought some books, and, “at first, I was still just googling when I got stuck.” He worked five years learning more PHP and MYSQL and “a few other things here and there, but not really using them much.”

            “It’s really amazing how hard it is to get things perfect.  It’s really easy to go to a website and see things you don’t like about it. It’s hard to make a website that works well and is easy to use,” he said.

            He said of his current job that he does not “like that it’s constant.” He said, “When you have thousands of users there’re always people trying to use the system in a new way, always new features rolling out, or new bugs. You can’t just say, ‘Okay let’s not have any new bugs this week. I don’t want to solve any new bugs this week.’”

            His advice to new programmers is, “Keep learning. Try new things, even things that don’t seem completely relevant to what you’re doing. But, just keep trying new things and learning from other people that are more experienced.”

Review: Codecademy

On Codecademy, a person can learn to code for free, even someone who knows absolutely nothing about programming. You'd have to be pretty dense or unmotivated, or think you are pretty dense or unmotivated, to not be able to learn how to code from this site. But, it's not without its drawbacks and straight-up flaws.

The quick, easy lessons are broken down to the smallest parts, so you can spend as little as three minutes a day or as much as all day every day building your skills. Like a video game, the curriculum uses progressive complexity (levels), rewards and has a social element. It is kind of like a Facebook game, except you get something of value out of it. (c.f. James Paul Gee)

The site offers multiple lesson tracks within a number of coding languages: HTML, CSS, jQuery, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, APIs, and there are likely more on the way.

I personally used the site as an absolute novice to get a head start on my first JavaScript class, then again to extend my knowledge after that quarter. And, I plan on returning for some of the other offerings.

Collective genius?  Is that an oxymoron?  Whatevs.

Here is a piece of the genius that I love about the information age in the time of web 2.0: crowdsourcing and collective intelligence. Codecademy produces user-generated lesson tracks, curating them through user-generated evaluation! I mean, talk about leverage! Talk about socially driven evolution of content and technology!

Etc. But, that model does cause problems. Like biological evolution, things are constantly under development and change. This can cause a track you are working on to become obsolete, which interrupts your badge earning! Ugh. But, then you realize they replaced the track with a better one, which makes you wish you would have been doing the better one the whole time.

I mean, as a user, you are like a guinea pig used to cull out the not-so-great tracks generated by hacks who maybe are only like three levels ahead of you in Codecademy, and who often don’t seem have a lot of knowledge of pedagogy or even just writing in English. I came across a couple of these. But, look, they are learning too. We’re helping each other, right?

Easy, Whiskey.  Wait, who's Whiskey here?

Anyway, Belle Beth Cooper of Attendly wrote a critique of Codecademy. Her main argument is that it is not very good for absolute beginners, because there are too many basic assumptions about coding that are not explicitly taught in the lessons. I think there are some basics left out, but this is not really a problem, per se. I mean, I had a couple times when I felt kind of like I came to a wall because there was something I was not getting, but I did not know what it was. But, I worked through it, either using the hints supplied, or using Google or w3schools (which I found through Google), or just plain thoughtful trial and error.

Admittedly, I did know that there was a difference between a web browser and the internet.  But, look, if all you know is that you can use the code you're learning within the Codecademy framework, that is enough until you're ready to figure out how you're going to get it to work in the real world.

Here's the thing, Cooper. If a person arrived at the Codecademy site with the intention of learning to code, that person has enough prior knowledge. First of all, the person can navigate the web, knowing there are such things as web pages. Look, users have some reason for being there -- a website idea, or they want to be more useful at their job, or just plain curiosity. I mean simply picking a language to learn means that you have to know (or, to figure out) what each is used for and which would best meet your goals.

This all highlights the fact that they have some idea that there is something you can learn to do called coding, and it makes computers do stuff, maybe even the stuff you want computers to do. That's all you need to know. Codecademy's target audience is anyone who wants to "learn to code" not people who want to "learn about coding" or people who can not get to the site. You have to do the work...when you're ready.

I think a lot of people need to get in there doing stuff, trying to accomplish things (even the silly tasks within Codecademy), in order to have an adequate interest in the kinds of basics Cooper says are necessary. You really do not need to understand anything other than how to follow directions and pay attention to language to start learning code on Codecademy.

Don't get me started on the countless wasted chapters read and hours spent in class during the first couple of weeks of classes, "learning background," "building foundations." These "basics" were either old hat to me, or not connected to my motivations for taking the class. And, they were not necessary to start doing the stuff of it.

Learning a subject is not linear, so why should a course determine which angle you come into it at? Why not start in the middle and let the doing, the challenges, the frustration and confusion guide you in where you need to fill in the gaps and extend your knowledge? These will fuel your motivation and curosity, hopefully.

And, here’s my rant on how annoying I find it when people just throw up their hands when they encounter things they don't understand.  I mean, what happened to curiosity?  People need to learn that they can learn things by encountering them in use, not just by having things explicitly explained (side note: could the return to "common sense" contextualized application be the next step in the information age?).

Take the meaning of new words. Kids acquire language and new vocabulary mainly by encountering them in use and trying it out themselves. Only later do we use dictionaries, which are totally useful, but not necessary. Think about it. How and when do some people get intolerant of ambiguity, intolerant of not knowing for sure whether they "know" a thing?

lmgtfy

Anyway, someone who actually wants to learn to code will be able to do it just fine on Codecademy, and encountering the uncertainties will only prepare them better for real world coding, IMO.

That said, there are other resources I have found useful as I learn to code, resources that supplement Codecademy and will get anyone through the rough patches -- primarily w3schools and Google. Perhaps Codecademy could refer people there from the get-go?

Of course, some might then find the lessons on w3schools better and give up on Codecademy. And, of course, the ease of access to “answers” provided by Google is undoubtedly (to my born-in-1981 mind) a factor in expanding the populace of people unaccustomed to figuring things out. O, the irony. O, the humanity.

The bugs bug me, but not as much as...

Also, Cooper mentioned that Codecademy is buggy and hard to navigate. It is totally buggy. There were times when I knew that my code was right, that I followed the directions, and it even produced the right result in the console log, but the lesson did not approve, didn’t pass me along to the next lesson.

Cooper’s got to be kidding me about the site navigation issue. The site is one of the most user-friendly sites I have encountered. It uses the same sort of mechanisms and structures as the most popular social media sites and whatnot, so even if you have been living under a rock, you’ll be able to find your way around – unless you’re one of those people I mentioned earlier who just don’t normally pay attention to the way things work. If that is the case, give up now. Actually, don’t give up now. Turn over a new leaf, and stop giving up so easily!

Here's how it works. The evolution of semiotic domains as seen in typical web tech, and why I am not a teacher

The home page is very simple and easy to read with essentially three main options, in tabs: learn, teach, about. Smack in the middle of the page, you can click “Get Started” or simply jump right into the first exercise window and start without even clicking. You just follow the directions and type your name. In this first lesson, you’re not programming, but you're getting acquainted with the structure of the lessons.

You create a user-profile. You have a dashboard to track progress, select next actions, connect with users etc. You can share your activity on Facebook, Twitter etc. You earn points, pass levels, earn badges, complete projects etc. You know, there is everything a person acquainted with using the web would expect, and someone not acquainted with using the web would undoubtedly catch on if they wanted to, IMO.

Sure, these types of user interfaces and semiotic domains draw on the typical user’sprevious knowledge derived from using the tech that led up to this point, so those just now entering the world of the web will have a learning curve. But, I mean, if all the new user has is an index finger, an eye (or, comparable access technology) and a touch of basic human curiosity and intelligence, the user will do fine.

These standard web features evolved in the environment of human use. By now, they are pretty well adapted to human intelligence. Forgive my snark, but it really isn’t that hard to figure out. (And…this is why I’m not a teacher.)

Anyway, Codecademy has other stuff going on now too. Check it out. It has a blog with posts like keyboard shortcuts you can use onCodecademy, an interview of a programmer doing a hackathon, how knitters arelike human computers, an announcement of a fellowship opportunity with Codecademy, meetups etc.  The company also started an after-school program to help start school clubs.

Profile: Rand Riness

Computer information science Professor Rand Riness never particularly wanted to go into a technological field in and of itself. He got into computers and database management out of necessity early in his career as a public administrator in transit systems. Now, he teaches programming at South Puget Sound Community College.

Riness said computers have been a normal part of his life since his father owned one in the ‘60s. But, Riness said, “I’m not a professional programmer. I’m a problem solver, and computers are the tools to solve some of the problems.”

Riness earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and a Master in Public Administration, both from the University of Washington (UW). Shortly after graduating, he went to work as a transit planner.

“Transit is one of those services that is necessary for the people and can help do some things for people in the community,” Riness said, “All of my career has basically been driven by ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’”

Riness said he started using a personal computer for work when he worked as a transit planning consultant for Dave Consulting 1983-1985. Before that, the firm had a shared system called a super micro, he said. This was where he got into spreadsheet modeling and budget forecasting, he said.
Riness said that at UW he had some computing projects dealing with statistics and forecasting, but they used punch cards in the school’s main frame. When he worked at Intercity Transit in Thurston County, Wash. as the planning and development director (1988-1996), they “didn’t have much access to anything computing-wise” at first to do much analysis. It was all paper-based, he said. He said he was glad to get away from the paper, because it just could not handle the data.

Riness also held a position as a senior planner of the Thurston Regional Planning Council 1985-1988, doing mostly transit planning.

“I grew up riding the bus, and you never would have thought I’d end up working with buses, but it was good fit. And, at the time, IT was growing a lot, so I got a chance to do a lot of things and got to hire some good people.”

When it comes to policy and program analysis, Riness said, you start asking, “How do you measure stuff? What’s working? What’s not working? And, you need data to do that, a lot of data.” That leads to using computers to figure out how to collect, store and process data, he said.

Riness said he tells his classes the same thing, and he teaches people to think first about the data they are dealing with and why they are dealing with it. He said you need to “start with the end in mind” a la Stephen Covey, author of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”

He often takes the time to talk with students about the kinds of conversations they might have with clients and employers to clarify the business needs of a project. Once you have grounded your understanding of the problem in the real world, he said, you can think about coding.

Riness started teaching part time at the college in 1998. He started teaching an Access class first, and the department asked him to teach other classes after the first quarter. He started teaching full time after the first year. Also, in 1997, he was a staff person for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges creating budget projections and allocations.

Riness said he took the teaching job because he liked the hours better than the hours he had to put in as a public manager. He said that, often as a manager, he would have his first meeting at 7 a.m., and he would not be finished until 1 a.m. Plus, Riness said, “I like change. Every quarter represents something different topic-wise, and different students.”

“The one thing that changes too much is probably the software, and keeping up to date is probably the biggest challenge,” Riness said.

Riness currently teaches four classes at the college: CIS 145 “Introduction to Access,” CIS 166 “Programming Business Objects (C#),” CIS 182 “Structured Query Language (SQL)” and CIS 266 “Developing Database Applications (ADO.NET with C#).” He taught a management class for five years before it got cut. He said, “I didn’t miss it.”

“I’ve been here longer than I’ve been any place else, but I don’t see myself going back to an eight-to-five job. As long as I can keep up with the software changes and the things I have to teach…I don’t see any reason to leave” the college, Riness said.

Riness said he attends South Sound .NET User Group meetings every couple of weeks to stay connected and up to date. He has been involved in the group since 2004, he said.

Every year or two for the last five or six years, Riness has helped organize and promote an event at the college for the Olympia Area SQL Server User Group. Open to the public, the events are to improve skills and focus on particular types of problems and solutions, he said. Each event has featured a number of guest lecturers, such as the experts in SQL Azure and business organization at the event last fall. The organizers have not set a date for the next event, but Riness said he expects it to be next spring or the following fall.

About programming in general Riness said, “We make a lot of this stuff more mysterious and convoluted than we need to.” He said, “I came in with a pretty good set of logic and critical thinking skills, but computers were foreign. All you’re doing is describing stuff.”