All about API's

I truly adore going to tech meet-ups.  One of the meet-ups I went to last night was about mobile as this is one of my interests. Last night speaker was talking about API’s which I have heard about API’s but never knew how to use an API especially as it relates to mobile. Here are my few take a ways.

• What does API stand for? Application Programming Interface
• API is http based
• Why create API?  There are four reasons to create API which are:
• Have data to share
• Have functionality to offer
• Allows others to lead their customer to you
• Several ways to build API which are WCF data services(OData), ASP.NET web API, and Azure mobile services

      The speaker recommended not using SOAP/ASMX. I am not sure why but I would like to perform           research on this issue.       Windows Azure was mentioned to use as a free account or if you want to pay to use for mobile                 services. I would like to sign up for the free account and practice from there.
      Encourage us to visit http://www.asp.net/web-api to learn how to create an  API which is on my list.       The speaker presentation can be found at:      http://devhammer.net/creating-and-consuming-web-apis-in-.net

Progress: C# and Javascript

Recently I have been studying C# and gotten off to a slow start. Currently I am in chapter two where they speak about commenting. I have completed reading the chapter and now working on the exercises to understand the full-meaning of them.

Also, JavaScript has started to occupy my mind as I am studying that as well. About two weeks or so ago, I went to a JavaScript meet-up group and they mentioned some of the resources to use when learning the language. One of the resources I found to be good is Mozilla Development Network that has a list of other programming languages that can be learned but I am focusing on JavaScript this time. Here are few other resources I found to be of great use for me as a beginner and free.

• W3 Schools
• Udemy
• Virtual University
• W3 Resource (practice exercises for basic, intermediate, and advanced)
  Today’s goal is to work on the following which seem to be a lot
  
• Study JavaScript from Mozilla Development Network(Values, variables, and literals)
• Re-practice the exercises from W3 Resource  for JavaScript
• Practice C# exercises from http://www.worldbestlearningcenter.com/index_files/csharp-operators-exercises.htm
• Work on two projects which are Tomboy Notes and another project that involves WordPress.  I have worked on building this WordPress site before and have plans to rebuild the site again with something new and different.  I wonder if I can include some functionality of JavaScript into WordPress this time.

Tomboy Notes: CLI Interface Overview

Yesterday while I was in the fitness center exercising, I was looking at this show that they had on called celebrity wife swap. One of the couples on the show had a well-defined schedule that listed things to do throughout the day on the refrigerator. It made me think about how I should somewhat incorporate how this couple created a schedule of the times they do things. In this case, I definitely wanted to use the way they handle their schedule with how I want to learn C#. So today, I hope that I sit down and write out a C# schedule for learning and display my schedule on my wall possibly in my bedroom.

Working a bug from Bugzilla Gnome

There are at least four or five bugs that have been assigned to me to attempt to work on.  One of the bugs that I am working on from tomboy notes will be about CLI Interface to start sync.

CLI interface to start sync

Here is the issue

• A lot of notes are written at home
• Attempting to access Tomboy Notes from work
• Use ssh into homebox and read through xml files into text-editor

Recommendations

• Command-line interface to initiate the sync.
• Then I can ssh to home, run the sync command from the shell, and then have everything in sync.
• Initiate sync from a shell script.
• Sync a backup of my notes to a remote server and the script already sets up everything (encFS etc) but I still have to initiate the sync manually. So bug #562097

Notes

Since I am new to understanding C# and its language, I have to research what this means. For starters,  I will research the following:

• What is CLI?
• What is ssh?
• How to sync from a shell script.

Learning Programming: Going to Meetups/Setting Goals

 

It has been about a week or so since I have written anything. Between that time I went to the Javascript meet up group to see which resources to learn as a beginner.  Also, there is another meet up group that I would like to attend probably when they start back up somewhere in September or October which is the Java study group. I think that learning this along with C# will be similar as I believe and I could be wrong that they both have almost the same syntax. I am focusing on C# more because there is a project called Tomboy Notes that I am working with. Hopefully this month, I can examine, write, or view code on a daily basis and write about it.

My goals for this month are:

·         to work with some of the bugs that are in the GNOME Bugzilla database which can be found athttps://bugzilla.gnome.org/

·         write about my experiences with the bugs that I worked on.

·         Read the book called Sam’s Teach Yourself C# language in 21 days. Looking through this book, I think it is going to take me more than 21 days to understand this maybe 45 days. Starting from today until 45 days from now it should take me until October 18, 2014. That is only I do so every day.

With that said. During my lunch break, I decided to peer into the Sam’s Teach Yourself C# language, chapter 1 and stopped at page 14 and hopefully pick back up tomorrow with the remaining pages.

 

Learning Programing: Scheduling

Yesterday while I was in the fitness center exercising, I was looking at this show that they had on called celebrity wife swap. One of the couples on the show had a well-defined schedule that listed things to do throughout the day on the refrigerator. It made me think about how I should somewhat incorporate how this couple created a schedule of the times they do things. In this case, I definitely wanted to use the way they handle their schedule with how I want to learn C#. So today, I hope that I sit down and write out a C# schedule for learning and display my schedule on my wall possibly in my bedroom.

Working a bug from Bugzilla Gnome

There are at least four or five bugs that have been assigned to me to attempt to work on.  One of the bugs that I am working on from tomboy notes will be about CLI Interface to start sync. 

CLI interface to start sync

Here is the issue

• ·        A lot of notes are written at home
• ·         Attempting to access Tomboy Notes from work
• ·         Use ssh into homebox and read through xml files into text-editor

Recommendations

• ·         Command-line interface to initiate the sync.
• ·         Then I can ssh to home, run the sync command from the shell, and then have everything in sync.
• ·         Initiate sync from a shell script.
• ·         Sync a backup of my notes to a remote server and the script already sets up everything (encFS etc) but I still have to initiate the sync manually.

Notes

Since I am new to understanding C# and its language, I have to research what this means. For starters,  I will research the following:

• ·         What is CLI?
• ·         What is ssh?
• ·         How to sync from a shell script?
  
  
  With that in mind, I will perform research on such questions tomorrow and continue to read my C# book tomorrow.

Learning C#: My Goals

It has been about a week or so since I have written anything. Between that time I went to the Javascript meetup group to see which resources to learn as a beginner.  Also, there is another meetup group that I would like to attend probably when they start back up somewhere in September or October which is the Java study group. I think that learning this along with C# will be similar as I believe and I could be wrong that they both have almost the same syntax. I am focusing on C# more because there is a project called Tomboy Notes that I am working with. Hopefully this month, I can examine, write, or view code on a daily basis and write about it.

My goals for this month are:

•  To work with some of the bugs that are in the GNOME Bugzilla database which can be found at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/
• Write about my experiences with the bugs that I worked on.
• Read the book called Sam’s Teach Yourself C# language in 21 days. Looking through this book, I think it is going to take me more than 21 days to understand this maybe 45 days. Starting from today until 45 days from now it should take me until October 18, 2014. That is only if I do so every day.

With that said. During my lunch break, I decided to peer into the Sam’s Teach Yourself C# language, chapter 1 and stopped at page 14 and hopefully pick back up tomorrow with the remaining pages.

Tomboy Notes Projects: Getting Started

 

One of the projects that I have been working on and off for a probably about a year is Tomboy Notes. I really wanted to grasp the understanding of this project as it encompasses C# in which I am learning.  I decided to make sure that this time I stay on track as I started the month of August off with understanding Tomboy Notes.

Tomboy Notes can be found through Gnome at https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy. From this page, I read about Tomboy Notes and decided to join their mailing list, IRC client some time ago.  Also, I downloaded Tomboy Notes on my laptop and also downloaded Tomdroid on my cellphone. Right now, I would like to stick with working with Tomboy Notes for now. 

 

After downloading the application, I took the opportunity to educate myself on how to use Tomboy Notes and found some interesting features/plugins I can use which is found at their site:https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy/PluginList is exporting to html. On this site, I hope to try some of these other plugins

Xamarin Hello World experience part 1

For the last couple of days, I have found myself looking into mobile programming. Since I have an Android mobile phone, I am sticking with that to work on. I am hoping in the future, I can learn iOS and Windows as well. From my experience so far, I have navigated to the Xamarin website and selected the Developers section to understand Xamarin development.  After reading the setup and installation process, I went on over and selected the Android section. It is true, that it does take some of understanding of the code especially C# which I plan to go back and understand what I  did. On their website, there is a section that gives you a tutorial on how to create a Hello World Android with the mobile phone.

 

Here are my outcomes:

• For step 20, I did not see the AndroidManifest.xml under Properties which I need to find out what happened.
• I decided to proceed to step 21 and build and run the application. After running the application, I received an error which was "'Resource' does not exist in the current context" . I could not understand why I was receiving the error message as I was following the exact instructions. I went out to the website and found out that when Building the application that the properties in Resource.Designer.cs and Activity1.cs is set to Compile. I changed it to None and I was able to Build the application.

On the next round I would like to found out what happen to the AndroidManifest.xml and finish with the remaining steps for the Hello World portion.

Xamarin

Last week (August 13, 2014) I attended a meeting for mobile developers using C# as I do have an interest in understanding how mobile works. The topic discussed was using Xamarin.  Since I do not know too much about Xamarin, I went to their website to start looking around on how I can attempt use Xamarin. First I am going to start with the Getting Started to see what I can actually understand of it. I think I want to focus on the Android piece since I have an Android phone and Windows. Let’s see how that works.

Learning Programming

 

I truly wanted to chronicle the process that I am going through with learning programming and hopefully help those who have an interest in learning programming. I have taken classes on programming before but if you have not used it, you will definitely lose it and that is what has happened to me. There are so many programming languages to choose from which kind of left me in a state of not knowing which one to choose. One of the languages I have learned in the past is C#. I have read a couple of  C# books but this time around I want to do something different . I want to re-learn C# so that I can impart to teach it or find work.

There are lots of free resources online for C# but this time I decided that I want to start with taking Intro to C# with Udemy. The course has about 37 video modules to view. So far I have reviewed 10 modules and have learned where to find information about C# which can be found at MSDN which I need to check out.

 

I have found that signing up for several meetups in your area actually helps and that is what I have done. I have signed up JavaScript study group, mobile developers using C#, and Java study group. I think understanding JavaScript will also help as well. I have not been to the Java study group meetup yet but I think it might be worth taking a look at it as it might have similar syntax as C#.

Throughout my programming journey, I would like to attend events and write book reviews that relate to programming. 

Book Review: SharePoint 2010 for Project Management by Dux Raymond Sy; O'Reilly Media

I must admit that I am big fan of SharePoint. SharePoint for Project Management is really a good book which is authored by Dux Raymond Sy. This 256 page book is geared towards a novice, intermediate, and project manager user to understand the basics of SharePoint 2010.  The book is broken down into nine chapters starting with what is PMIS(Project Management Information Systems) to understanding lists, project tasks(best way to track projects), versioning, and much more as it focuses on project management best practices.

I like the fact that each chapter have well-organized workshop or examples that you can you follow as you read along as well as practice what you learn. Being geared toward the project manager role, this allows for the project manager to enhance the quality of each project.

 

I like the fact that the author addresses what is clearly more is at stake when using PMIS which includes the following:

• quality logs
• status reporting
• calendars
• contact information

Again, I find the book to be good for beginners as it covers the basics of what SharePoint is and the concept of PMIS. It does not fully elaborate on project management for project managers.

 

I would definitely recommend this book to purchase for someone who is a beginner in SharePoint.

Catalog Page: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920020387.do