Confident Coding: Learn How to Code and Master the Essentials

✍ Scribed by Rob Percival, Darren Woods

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 385
• Series: Confident; 13
• Edition: 3
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Coding is one of the most in-demand skills in the job market. Whether you're a recent graduate or a professional, Confident Coding offers the career insights and technical knowledge you need for success.

A unique combination of technical insights and fascinating career guidance, this book highlights the importance of coding, whatever your professional profile. For entrepreneurs, being able to create your own website or app can grant you valuable freedom and revolutionize your business. For aspiring developers, this book will give you the building blocks to embark on your career path.

This new and improved third edition of the award-winning book gives you a step-by-step learning guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, building iPhone and Android apps and debugging. Confident Coding is the essential guide to mastering the fundamentals of coding.

About the Confident series...
From coding and data science to cloud and cyber security, the Confident books are perfect for building your technical knowledge and enhancing your professional career.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Introduction
Learning in-demand skills
Who are we?
How to use this book
Supporting material online
PART ONE Why coding?
01 Why coding is important and what it can do for you
Becoming more efficient
Communicating with technical people
Understanding how software works
Knowing what it takes
Building your own website or app
Building a web presence
Starting your own business
Taking on extra responsibilities within your current role
Aim to stop ‘selling your time’
Combine coding with your professional expertise
Coding is fun
Coding and specific industries
Summary
02 What coding is
What is coding?
Let’s write some code
Why are there so many programming languages?
Summary
PART TWO Languages
03 HTML
What is HTML?
Why learn HTML?
Formatting text
HTML lists
Images
Forms
Tables
Links
HTML entities
iFrames
Summary
Further learning
04 CSS
What is CSS?
Why learn CSS?
What does CSS look like?
What is internal CSS?
Classes and IDs
Divs
Fonts
Styling text
Aligning text
CSS project: clone a website
Summary
Further learning
05 JavaScript
What is JavaScript?
Why learn JavaScript?
What does JavaScript look like?
Internal JavaScript
Changing styles with JavaScript
If statements
Updating website content
Loops
Generating random numbers
JavaScript project: guessing game
Summary
Further learning
06 Python
What is Python?
Why learn Python?
What will this chapter cover?
How do we get started with Python?
‘Visitor Registration’ with Python
Variables in Python
Lists
For loops
While loops
If statements
Regular expressions
Splitting strings into lists
Getting the contents of a webpage
Python project: extracting visitor contact data from a webpage
Summary
Further learning
PART THREE In practice
07 Website development
Why build a website?
How do websites work?
What is a domain name, and how do I get one?
What is web hosting, and how do I get it?
Content management systems
Self-coding your site
Website development project: build a website
Summary
Further learning
08 Building an app for iPhone or iPad
What is an app?
Getting started: downloading Xcode
Adding labels to our app
Adding a text field
Adding buttons
Running some code
Interacting with the user interface
Making buttons interactive
Variable types in Swift
Building an app for iPhone or iPad project: Visitor Registration app
Summary
Further learning
09 Windows desktop application programming
Desktop applications evolution
Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition
C# programming language
Installation of Visual Studio
The Solution Explorer
Adding functionality to our application
Coding our button click
Running our application
If else conditional statements
Building your application
Optimizing for release
10 Building an app for Android
Downloading and setting up Android studio
Running your first Android app
Adding text and buttons
Making the app interactive
Making a toast
Building an app for Android project: performance review reminder app
Summary
Further learning
11 Debugging
Why learn debugging?
How to write code that requires minimal debugging
Debugging HTML and CSS
Debugging JavaScript
Debugging Swift in Xcode
Debugging Java in Android studio
Summary
PART FOUR Future-proofing your career with coding
12 Using coding to enhance your career
Creating an app for your business
Starting a blog
Finding tasks that can be automated
Using Python to extract email addresses from a website
Automation on MacOS
Automation on Windows
Summary
13 Coding and entrepreneurship
What’s coding got to do with entrepreneurship?
Getting ideas
Products vs services
Your unique selling point
Validating your idea
Creating a minimum viable product
How much to charge?
Do things that don’t scale
Summary
14 Pursuing coding further to become a developer
Should you become a full-time coder?
What languages should you learn?
Web development
App development
Getting freelance jobs
Expanding your online presence
Writing a software developer CV
The interview
Summary
Conclusion
Index