CodeBuddies.org — May 19th 2015 News

Note: CodeBuddies.org is a community of independent code learners who share knowledge on Slack and schedule “silent” or “non-silent” Google Hangouts to co-work on personal projects, pair program, or help each other master tutorials. Sharing knowledge is fun and helps us learn faster. The project is free and open-sourced on Github.

*STUDY GROUP NEWS*

A *javascript* study group is working through the code exercises from eloquentjavascript.net and scheduling google hangouts on codebuddies.org to meet and work through the exercises. Join the #eloquentjavascript Slack channel if you have questions about any of the chapters, or are are interested in finding study partners! I believe most of the active study group members are on Chapters 5 or 6 at the moment. Also, shout-out to @will for hosting a bunch of the hangouts and @gordonmzhu for writing up this helpful annotated version of the first 6 chapters of the book: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aa2-HtUglQrAps31s4LdTPVsiFb1BxhyjZolxeezzcI/edit#.

A *django/python* study group is (slowly) working through the third Django book from realpython.com with the goal of completing the 560-page PDF by June 4th. Join the #realpython channel if you’re interested in this study group.

A couple of weeks ago, @shethrives11 hosted hangouts for a study group that completed the free MOOC EdX course on *Bootstrap (HTML/CSS)* and ended with a show-and-tell hangout. Congrats to everyone who learned Bootstrap via the course!

Shout-out to @sacha, @guidouil, @pcorey, @mjesuele, and all the mentor volunteers who hosted beginner-friendly hangouts for *meteorJS* using Discover Meteor in the last few weeks. If you participated in one of the classes, please help them out by filling out this survey if you haven’t already.

*PROJECT CODING COLLABORATION AND WEEKEND HACKING*

Shout-out to @katsuro, @colbycheeze, and others who’ve scheduled hangouts over the past few weekends to work on and share progress about personal coding projects. Shout-out to everyone who’s participated, too! ☺ They’ve been really fun.

This past weekend, @colbycheeze invented a new way to use google hangouts: instead of a “silent hangout” where we worked on our individual projects, we collaborated on a meteorJS voting app inspired by one of the project challenges from Free Code Camp. Colby added us all as collaborators to his github repo. Then, we shared screens and helped each other tackle individual features for the app.

SCREENSHOT: Everyone screensharing as we worked on a collaborative voting app on Saturday.

If you’ve ever learned a lot by working on a project with a group at a hackathon, it was basically like that — except we shared screens in the hangout, weren’t under any pressure, and took breaks at our leisure.
Colby may be proposing future hangouts like this, so if you’re interested in collaborating on future meteorJS projects with him or leading your own, talk to us on Slack!

*NEW CHANNELS ON SLACK*

New channels that you should join if you’re interested:

• #geneticalgorithms (created by @dgosbee)
• #emberjs (created by @wuworkshop)
• #go-lang (created by @sarkan)
• #mean (created by @abdulhannanali)
• #sql (created by @lpnotes)
• #raspberrypi (created by @choppa790)
• #java (created by @shinjw)
• #laravel (created by @brentvardy)
• #bootstrap (created by @sbe)
• #ionic (created by @richardh)
• #coworking (created by @wuworkshop) — a space for independent contractors, freelancers, and remote workers to share resources and discuss challenges.
• #nyc
• #collab-project-coding

If you’re a member of the Slack group, you can create your own channel too!

Heads up that if you’re interested in #theodinproject curriculum specifically, you can now join a TOP-specific space in the form of a new slack group created by @john_lampe, @bryantt23 and @kevinmulhern. (Update: The Odin Project also has an official Slack too.)

*CODEBUDDIES META*

Telescope, the open-sourced meteorJS platform the CodeBuddies app is built on, underwent some exciting developments — it got refactored! This means the CodeBuddies app also needs to go through some refactoring before small bugs can be fixed. You can join the #codebuddies-meta channel if you want to discuss making a pull request to the project or if you want to discuss any bugs you think should be prioritized.

SCREENSHOT: Three different study hangouts happening in the same night.

*EXCITING UPCOMING EVENTS AND UPCOMING STUDY GROUPS*

1. The *#show-and-tell* channel needs some love. Would anyone be interested in an hour-long hangout where presenters take 5 minutes to present something they’ve been working on, and then the rest of the participants spend 5 minutes giving optional feedback? Participants could share advice, help with a code review, or answer any questions the presenter has. If so, leave a message in the #show-and-tell channel!
2. *Continuation of collaborative project coding* — if you’re interested in more hangouts of the type that @colbycheeze hosted last weekend (see story of this past weekend above), please join the new #collab-project-coding channel to indicate your interest and to share ideas for collab projects!
3. *Data visualization study group* — Is anyone (like @parinda) interested in data visualization — e.g. using d3.js and other tools to create meaningful visualizations with data? Please join the new #data-visualization channel to discuss projects, resources, and learning.
4. *HTML/CSS study group* — Is anyone still in the middle of trying to master HTML5/CSS3 (the building blocks for knowing enough to push up a static personal webpage) and interested in joining a small study group to complete the Khan Academy HTML/CSS tutorial and build a personal static website within the span of 3 weeks maximum? If so, let me know — some of us in the community might like to volunteer as mentors.

*DID I MISS ANYTHING?*

Let me know if I missed anything! I’ll add it to the next update.

*IN OTHER NEWS*

Happy first-month anniversary to this slack community, which now has 399 members! CodeBuddies.org, the google-hangout-meetup part of this community, also now has 743 signups. If you know anyone who might be interested in the learning/knowledge sharing here, feel free to invite them to this Slack community with this link: http://codebuddiesmeet.herokuapp.com.

P.S. I highly recommend getting the desktop app for Slack if you haven’t already. It helps getting updates and participating in Slack (especially if you’re a member of *several* slack communities) a lot easier.