GitHub Student Developer Pack

In a technologically thriving world where it only takes some coding know-how, a laptop, and a great idea to make a difference in the world, businesses are doing their part to help get their powerful technologies into the hands of aspiring student developers preparing to enter the workforce. Enter the GitHub Student Developer Pack, a program that gives an array of coding related products to students with free trials or at discounts. Last night, I applied for it, and this morning, I was accepted. It just requires proof that you're a student coder. From Amazon Web Services to the Unreal Engine, there are so many great products that students should play around with. To get your pack, fill out the form from GitHub Education.

Hour of Code 2014

Apple is once again joining Code.org's "Hour of Code" campaign by hosting one-hour, free coding sessions at Apple Stores. Mark your calendars! It's on December 11. There will be other events during Computer Science Education week, which takes place from December 8-14. I hope anybody reading this considers attending. Some stores will even have famous app developers there. Happy Hour of Code!

New Developer Tools in a Nutshell: The Scoop (WWDC 2014)

WWDC is truly all about the developers. After all, it stands for "World Wide Developers Conference." So here are some of the new APIs and tools for developers announced at WWDC this year.

iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite:

iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite has many more ways of becoming one with the developers. Extensions allows apps to add their own "share sheets" into the iOS UI. For example, you can share a photo from the Camera app using Pinterest or Instagram. Photo editing works the same way. You can edit using a third-party photo editor by using the edit function and using one of the custom-made filters or functions made by that developer. Widgets are finally in iOS. Using the Today view of Notification Center, apps can create widgets that will reside there. Apps like Pages can now store documents in third-party storage spaces such as OneDrive and DropBox. And, yes Mrs. Myers, Google Drive, too. Also, developers can make their own custom keyboards. Apps can now authenticate using Touch ID, add health info into the Health app, add home automation devices to HomeKit, make cloud storage simple with CloudKit, and make their apps work with Handoff (see yesterday's post). Finally, Metal replaces OpenGL to make much faster performance opening many possibilities for developers with pre-rendered graphics.

Swift:

Swift is an entirely new language that's modern, safe, and doesn't complain about having semicolons at the end of every single line of code. It's Objective-C without the slowness of C. One thing I personally like is how much easier it is to type out code. For example, here's how to make a simple "Hello, World" program (every programmer's first program).

In Objective-C:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, const char * argv[]) {

printf("Hello, World!");

return 0;

}

In Swift:

println("Hello, World!")

That is literally it! No semicolons. No main method. No imports. It's so simple! That just saved you from typing four additional lines of code. Needless to say, Swift is a great new language and I think that every developer looks forward to coding in it. 

40th Anniversary of Rubik's Cube

Today is the 40th Anniversary of the Rubik's Cube and Google is making the most of it with a playfully themed Google Doodle and a whole Chrome campaign towards it, the Chrome Cube Lab. This lab lets you code your own cube. I haven't tried it out, but if I get a chance I might post it on the blog or tweet it. By clicking on the cube on Google's home page, you can solve a scrambled cube.

Coding Talk 4 Geeks

This "Coding Talk 4 Geeks" thing is our temporary replacement for our little, failed Starbucks Chatter idea. What it is is a Google Group. To learn more, go to https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/coding-talk-4-geeks .