Learning to Program

Steven Foote is a web developer at LinkedIn. A self-taught programmer who loves technology, especially the Web, he has a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Accountancy from Brigham Young University. While working on his Master’s degree, he built all aspects of two AJAX-y web applications, from visual design to server and database maintenance, and everything in between.

• Introduction Why I Wrote This Book 1Why You Should Read This Book 3Your Project 31 “Hello, World!” Writing Your First Program 5Choose a Text Editor 5Core Features 6Making Your Choice 8Sublime Text 9TextMate 9Notepad++ 9Gedit 9Vim 10Eclipse 10IntelliJ 11Xcode 11Visual Studio 11Create a Project Directory 12Start Small: Create a Test File 12How HTML and JavaScript Work Together in a Browser 13The Value of Small Changes 15Build on Your Success 17Reference Your JavaScript in manifest.json 20Let It Run! 20Great Power, Great Responsibility 21Summing Up 212 How Software Works 23What Is “Software”? 23Software Life Cycle 24Source Code—Where It All Starts 25A Set of Instructions 25Programming Languages 26From Source Code to 0’s and 1’s 31Compiled vs. Interpreted Languages: When Does the Source Code Become Binary? 31Runtime Environment 32Execution by the Processor 34Input and Output 34Making Software Useful (and Reusable) with Input 34Where Does the Input Come From? 35How the Software Gets the Input 36Types of Output 36GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out 37State 38Add State to Kittenbook 39Memory and Variables 41Variables 41Variable Storage 42A Finite Resource 44Memory Leaks 44Summing Up 453 Getting to Know Your Computer 47Your Computer Is Stupid 47Your Computer Is Magic 48Standing on the Shoulders of Giants 48Computer Guts 48Processor 48Short-Term Memory 49Long-Term Memory 49Using Your Computer 50The File System 50The Command Line: Take Control 52Summing Up 624 Build Tools 63Automate (Almost) Everything 63Install Node 64Install Grunt 66Software That Helps You Create Software 69Avoid Mistakes 70Work Faster 70Tasks to Automate 70Compile 71Test 71Package 72Deploy 72Build Your Own Build 72Gruntfile.js 73Use Grunt Plug-ins 73Load Grunt Plug-ins 76Register Tasks 76Watch This! 78Summing Up 805 Data (Types), Data (Structures), Data(bases) 83Data Types 83Why Different Data Types Exist 84Primitive Data Types 84Composite Data Types 89Dynamically and Statically Typed Languages 96Data Structures 96Set 99Stack 99Tree 100Graph 101How to Choose an Effective Data Structure 104Databases 104Long-Term (Persistent) Storage 104Relational Databases 104A Brief Introduction to SQL 106Summing Up 1076 Regular Expressions 109Ctrl+F on Steroids: Looking for Patterns 109Using Regular Expressions in JavaScript 110Repetition 111? 111+ 111* 112Special Characters and Escaping 112{1,10}: Make Your Own Super Powers 113Match Anything, Period 113Don’t Be Greedy 114Understanding Brackets from [A-Za-z] 115Lists of Characters 115Ranges 115Negation 116A Pattern for Phone Numbers 116I Need My \s 119Shortcuts for Brackets 119Limitations 121Capture the Tag 124Advanced Find and Replace 125The Beginning and the End (of a Line) 126Flags 126Global 126Ignore Case 126Multiline 127When Will You Ever Use Regex? 127grep 127Code Refactoring 127Validation 128Data Extraction 128Summing Up 1297 if, for, while, and When 131Operators 131Comparison Operators 131Logical Operators 132Unary Operators 134Binary Operators 134Ternary Operators 136“Truthy” and “Falsy” 139“Syntactic Sugar” 140Looping Through an Array 142Looping Through Images 142Nested Loops 143You Need a Break 143Infinite Loops 145Take Another Break 146When You Don’t Know When to Stop 146When 147Events 147Listeners 147Cron Jobs 148Timeouts 149Catch When Things Go Wrong 150Writing Robust Code 151Summing Up 1518 Functions and Methods 153Function Structure 153Definition 154Invocation 154Arguments 155Call Stack 157Code Encapsulation 158Do One Thing Well 158Divide and Conquer 159A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place 162Code Reuse 163Solve the General Problem 163Do More with Less 163Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) 165Scope 166Global 167Local 168How Variable Lookups Happen 168Summing Up 1719 Programming Standards 173Coding Conventions 173Setting Standards 174To Hack or Not to Hack 174Pay Now or Pay Later 175Writing Maintainable Code 175Code Formatting 176Keep It Consistent 177Whitespace 178It Doesn’t Happen on Its Own: Make Rules 178Using the Work of Others 180Build Faster 180Open Source Software 181Built by the Community 181When to Build It Yourself 182Best Practices 182Documentation 182Planning 183Testing 183Summing Up 18310 Documentation 185Document Intentions 186Self-Documenting Code 187Don’t Document the Obvious 189The Danger of Outdated Documentation 190Find Bugs Using Documentation 191Document for Yourself 191How Good Is Your Memory? 191Document to Learn 192Documentation Beyond Comments 192Document for Others 196Document Your Decisions 196Document Your Resources 197Document to Teach 197Summing Up 19811 Planning 199Think Before You Build 199Create a Specification 200Design an Architecture 200Draw Diagrams 201Try to Break Your System 202Iterative Planning 203Design for Extensibility 203What Are Your Priorities? 204User Experience 204Performance 204Security 205Scalability 205Deadlines 205The Balancing Act 206Identify and Create Constraints 206Know What You Can and Can’t Do 206Summing Up 20712 Testing and Debugging 209Manual Testing 209Test As You Work 210Try Something Crazy 210Eat Your Own Dog Food 211Automated Testing 211Unit Tests 212Set Up Tests for Kittenbook 215Epic Fail! 218Spies Like Us (and We Like Spies) 219Integration Tests 221Catch Problems Early 222Debugging 222Errors 223Logs 224Breakpoints 224Inspecting, Watching, and the Console 228Stepping Through the Code 229Call Stack 231Find the Root Cause 231Code, Test, Debug, Repeat 232Summing Up 23213 Learning to Fish: How to Acquire a Lifetime of Programming Knowledge 233How to Search 234Finding the Right Terms 235Working Backward 236Identifying Quality Resources 236Personal Blogs: Hidden Gems 237Where, When, and How to Ask Programming Questions 237Where 237When 240How 241Learn by Teaching 241Summing Up 24214 Building Your Skills 243Make kittenbook Your Own 243Restyle Facebook 243Add New Functionality 244Share Your Version of Kittenbook 245Find Your Own Project 246Solve Your Own Problem 246Be Ambitious 246Get Help, Give Help 247Open Source Projects 247GitHub 247Finding a Project 248Different Ways to Contribute 248Create Your Own 249Free Online Education 249Project Euler 249Udacity 250Coursera 250codecademy 251Khan Academy 251Tutorials 251Paid Education 252Read a Book 252Udacity and Coursera 252Treehouse 253Summing Up 25315 Advanced Topics 255Version Control 255Why Use Version Control? 256Working with a Team 257Subversion 260Git 260OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) 265Classes 266Inheritance 266Instances 267Design Patterns 268Pub Sub 268Mediator 269Singleton 270Summing Up 270Glossary 273TOC, 9780789753397, 10/13/2014