Planning Coding Summer 22

What I would like to see is thousands of computer scientists let loose to do whatever they want. That’s what really advances the field. (Donald Knuth)

Summer is a good chance for my students(*) and myself to experiment and practice on several programming activities without the barriers set by traditional courses and assignments.
(*) current and past students from NYC, UNYT, UNYP, and LPR

Topics:

Backend frameworks:
Goal: learn their architecture, patterns, and workflows.
We will use Django, a high-level Python framework and we will implement a simple, yet challenging project. Django is the framework behind Instagram, Spotify, Disqus, YouTube, Pinterest, Dropbox, Eventbrite, and many others.

Data Engineering:
Goal: learn how to collect, process, clean, and prepare data into a form of information which then can be used by data scientists.
We will experiment with Python libraries, mainly Pandas, but also NumPy, Sickit-Learn, Matplolib, Seaborn, etc.
Appropriate online MOOCs will be used (TBD) and during meeting we will discuss and implement what we have learned.

Design Patterns:
Goal: To learn the most important design patterns and most importantly why we need them and in which cases they should be used.
We are going to use the book “Head First Design Patterns” and the “Refactoring Guru” website. It will be great if we can find additional cases to apply the design patterns in any programming language each one prefers.

Databases and SQL:
Goal: practice with database design and implementation as well as the Structured Query Language (SQL).
We will use MySQL DBMS, but we will also take a look at NoSQL databases (probably MongoDB). A case study will be used for the design and implementation which requires a lot of tables and complex relationships.

In addition to the main topics described above, there will be occasional activities according to participants interests. These may include:

• Solving programming katas
• Exploring the area of AI art generation
• Front end frameworks, esp. React.
• IoT, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi experiments

Finally, a number of alumni will be invaded to share their stories and experiences with us.

Starting on Jun 15.
Till then a number of preparation posts will be published and maybe some ad-hoc meeting will be scheduled.

Schedule:
Each topic will have a Discord channel for coordination and discussion.
There will be weekly meetings to discuss topics and solve problems.