Intro to Programming for Communicators

We've been talking a lot about programming, data and communication in conjunction with our partner group Hacks/Hackers (this meetup is being sponsored by both ONA and HH). We've seen some interesting projects and collaborations. But now might be a good time to cover some basic programming skills, just to get everyone on track. This will be the first of several workshops that we can host over the next year to familiarize people with programming and Web development.

You don't need any prior experience with programming or Web design to attend.

In this 2 hour workshop, we'll cover:

Why do I need to learn to program? Programming languages Strings and numbers What's a variable? Math and concatenation Alerts and prompts Booleans - true or false If Statements and Loops Functions, Objects and Methods You won't be an experienced programmer at the end of this session, but you will gain a better understanding of programming concepts and terms. We'll be using Javascript, but we will discuss how these concepts apply to any programming language that you might use.

Bring a laptop. All you'll need is a browser and an html editor (a free one like Komodo Edit or Text Wrangler is fine) or text editor (Notepad or TextEdit). Or, it's fine if you just want to sit in and observe.

Note for TextEdit - before coming to the meetup, please go to Preferences and change the following:

Under New Document Tab, choose Plain Text Under Open and Save, make sure the first two items are checked under "When Opening a File:" Cindy Royal (cindyroyal.com) will instruct the group. She's been teaching Web design for the past 12 years, first as a phd student at UT and now as an Associate Professor at Texas State.

And, stay tuned for a message about the Web Dev Holiday Bash coming up in a few weeks.