Programming for Non-Programmers - Intensive Workshop

Learn the fundamentals of front-end and back-end programming, plus try your hand at writing some code of your own.

Are you a creative or entrepreneur that wishes you could speak tech with your web development team? Maybe you wish you could code a bit yourself? Programming for Non-Programmers is workshop series designed to help non-programmers communicate more efficiently with developers. Because leading a development team (without being a developer yourself) can sometimes feels like “talking about dancing”, we’ve created an interactive and friendly environment in which to learn the basics.

If you're running a tech start-up, it's essential that you familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of web development. Ultimately knowing how to "talk to the talk" will help you communicate better with developers, and overall just look really cool.

Session I [Fundamentals]

• Front-end programming vs back-end programming
• What coding languages should I use for my next project?
• Which CMS is right for the job?
• What are the stages of web development?
• What deliverables do I need to provide my developer? (FYI - This is important and often neglected or done poorly)
• Reading code & basic developing principles to get us started
• 7 concepts of programming that are the found in every programming language
• Understanding Javascript Variables & Functions

Session II [Front-end Development]

• What is HTML5 really?
• HTML/CSS best-practices
• Basics of divs, classes & IDs
• Making a basic portfolio landing page
• Setting up FTP, hosting, domains, DNS & sub domains

Session III [Backend-end Development, SQL Databases, & APIs]

• How to manage a LAMP development stack (ie. Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
• How to write an SQL query and manage a MySQL database
• How to write some back-end scripts (using PHP) and how it communicates with our front-end code (HTML/CSS)
• What is an API?
• As a non-developer how do I know which APIs are right for my project?
• How can I integrate data from services like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare into my project?
• How do I read through and parse some basic XML and JSON?
• Work through a live project where we can practice coding some basic HTML/PHP/SQL

Prereqs & Preparation
You must bring a laptop to class (Mac preferred, as the examples on screen will be for the Mac OS).

Take note of the start time/end time for each session.