Our Hour of Code
Have you heard about Hour of Code? Organized by Code.org, Hour of Code is a week long event that encourages participants to engage in one hour of coding. For many, Hour of Code is an opportunity to code for the first time, and understand that its possible for anyone to learn the basics.
Women Who Code-DC decided to join in the fun by hosting our own event on December 9, 2014: Learn to build an API in One Hour. This event was led by Matt Makai, Developer Evangelist for Twilio. Matt explained to us that we would all be able to build our own Twilio API in one hour, allowing us to send SMS, MMS, and voice messages through our own personal Twilio phone number.
Matt started by showing us how our Twilio API’s would work, by asking us to text into his number ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ if we have ever used Twilio before.
We also tested how Twilio conference calls worked. Matt called every phone number that texted into the poll and phones rang out intermittently. This feature was pretty cool, there was no special call-in, or password we needed for the conference call, we were automatically looped in.
After the demos, it was our turn. We set our Python environments, and followed Matt’s guidance to set up our Twilio accounts and send a SMS to our phones.
Next we worked on the MMS. Matt selected an image of Grace Hopper for us to add as a media file in python, before we sent it out as an MMS to our phones.
The last task proved to be a bit of a challenge, setting up a standard call response when someone called our Twilio number. We were able to customize the text of the response, the language, and even the accent of the robot speaking. We were instructed to use ‘Alice’ (the female British accent). There were some frustrated cries of “Alice doesn’t want to talk to me,” as we tried to troubleshoot our API.
Matt and a group of Python mentors walked around and helped us figure out our issues, and by the end of the hour, almost everyone successfully received Alice’s message.
There are still many more things we can learn about the Twilio API, but Matt gave us a great intro, and for some, their first taste of Python. If you’re interested in giving the Twilio API demo a try, check out http://www.mattmakai.com/women-who-code-dc-workshop.html
To participate in Hour of Code, or find Hour of Code events in your area, head to http://hourofcode.com/us.
