Start Here
A Quick-start Guide for people that want to Do What You Love!
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
~ Arthur Ashe
Why?
The world is not perfect.
We have all worked somewhere we didn’t love.
We have all felt the frustration of using products that have flaws
that we were unable to fix ourselves.
We have all experienced being in an environment that
didn’t support us in doing all we can do in the world.
The aim of dwyl is to address all of these issues simultaneously:
please read our mission
to understand our focus on personal effectiveness
as the starting point for all positive change.
If you’d like to know more about what we value,
please read our manifesto.
The short version is:
“Treat others as you would like others to treat you” ~
The Golden Rule
If you want to be part of the solution, join us:
https://www.dwyl.com
If you haven’t read Simon Sinek’s book “Start with Why”,
we highly recommend taking a few minutes to watch his Ted Talk:
https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action
Who?
dwyl is a rapidly expanding community; here are a few
of the familiar faces contributing to our projects:
Join us in finding a problem you want to solve and will
love working on.
What?
Q: What is dwyl?
A: dwyl (pronounced “Will” but with a “D” in front of it) is a community of people on a mission to change the world using technology.
We are starting by making the tools we need to help us (and the people we care about) get things we love done.
Our first App is Time which helps people track any time based activity.
And we are making Everything Open Source along the way,
so that you too can Do What You Love!
We have plans to build many other features and we’d love you to join us!
Here are a few on the roadmap:
- Tudo (pronounced to-do) helps you and your team track what you are working on
- When? syncs calendars and selectively shares availability with others to discover the best time for an activity/event
- Birthday/Special Event Helper [AKA The Card & Gift App]
What question do you want to answer?
Our Approach: Scratching Your Own Itch
We believe in scratching our own itch.
This means solving a problem you (or someone close to you) personally have.
If you don’t have any personal experience in a field
you aren’t going to do a good job of spotting/solving a problem in that area.
Taking the “Business School” approach of finding a “Big Market” and then identifying a problem to solve works for some companies,
but we prefer the approach of solving something we are personally passionate about regardless of the (size of the) “market”.
Read:
https://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Whats_Your_Problem.php
How?
If you want to get involved with building great tools people love, this section contains everything you need to know.
What do I need?
Access to a computer, preferably a recent (but not expensive) one (Chromebooks are Great!).
That’s it.
Do I need to Write Code to Contribute?
No. Everyone can contribute, from proposing and voting on ideas,
to simplifying wording to helping people understand our apps.
Please drop by and tell us what you think! 
Setup (for Coders)
If you want to start writing code now and don’t already have your machine set up, see: https://github.com/dwyl/dev-setup
We also have a new developer checklist which we encourage you to review on the various online services you should know about and set yourself up on:
https://github.com/dwyl/start-here/blob/master/new-developer-checklist.md
Web Development Fundamentals
We have listed the skills you need to know in the order you need to learn them.
Basic Computer Skills
If you don’t feel confident using a computer, don’t despair!
We’ve all been there.
There’s no “secret” to becoming an expert, just experiment! If you get stuck, Google.
If you’re still stuck after an hour, ask for help!
If all else fails, restart your computer and try again (that’s what everyone does).
Touch Typing
Before you dive into programming, learning how to touch-type on your
computer is the single best investment you can make.
All this means is practising typing with the “correct fingers” until you don’t have to think about where the keys are.
Some of the best programmers we know can type faster than most people can think … take a moment for that to settle in.
You need to be able to type blindfolded to become a true maestro (at anything computer-related).
A few touch-typing tutorials anyone can (should) do a few minutes per day. There are many variations on the classic QWERTY layout. You should choose a tutorial that’s compatible with your keyboard layout:
- Keybr: https://www.keybr.com/
- English (US), English (UK), German (DE), German (CH), French (FR), French (CA), French (CH), Italian, Portuguese (BR), Cyrillic
- Typing Club: https://www.typingclub.com/
- BBC - Dance Mat Typing: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3c6tfr#zg8nsbk] (https://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3c6tfr#zg8nsbk)
- typrX: https://app.typrx.com
- Typing.com: https://www.typing.com
- English (US), English (UK), English (CA), Spanish, AZERTY (FR), Italian, Portuguese (PT), Portuguese (BR), Norwegian, Icelandic, Dansk, Swedish, Chinese, Japanese, and many more (by far the most thorough of the bunch)
- Typing.io: https://typing.io/
- English/US, focuses on typing code specifically with emphasis not only on letters but also special characters
You can connect your touch-typing practice with learning to code, by using the code samples in your learning resources to practice your typing. Learning to touch-type accurately is therefore important for creating the proper muscle-memory for the code (Markdown, HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc) that you are learning. Here are resources that explain the importance of typing out code by hand:
How to Learn How to Learn
Software-development is constant learning, so it is useful to think consciously about how one learns.
General Thoughts on How to Learn
A popular course is Learning How to Learn on Coursera taught by Barbara Oakley and Terry Sejnowski. It serves as a general introduction to concepts about learning how to learn, with a slight emphasis on neuroscience.
The following articles by Blaz Kos from AgileLeanLife well summarise a lot of the basic concepts on efficient learning:
We feel socially obligated to mention Richard Feynman:
Learning to code has many a steep learning curve, but apparently so does becoming an astronaut!
How Learning to Code Benefits the Mind
Learning to code will challenge you in all sorts of ways, and as long as you push through the challenge, that is good for you!
How to Learn Applied to Programming
Here we present more specific information about learning how to learn and your studies in programming.
- Hacking Passion: Katrina Owen breaks down practice into drills, simulations, case studies, direct practice, and imitation. Which kinds of practice are you applying or not applying?
- Learning Fluency: Sara Simon talks about learning to learn how to code from the point of view of her many interests such as Chinese, theatre, and chess. Here is the article
- The myth of the “Real Javascript Developer”: Brenna O’Brien describes the constant learning journey that is learning to code.
Specific Advice about Learning Programming
Here we present specific advice on learning programming. Remember to type out code by hand!:
How the internet works
Before setting off to build for the web you may appreciate acquiring some context
as to how it all comes together. There is a fantastic Coursera course called
Internet History, Technology, and Security
that offers just this. The course is put together by an enthusiastic instructor who walks
you through the historic events that led to the design of the internet that you
use everyday. It is full of interviews with the folks who contributed many important
bits along the way.
We consider the above course to be the most thorough general introduction to how the Internet works, and we recommend you eventually work your way through it. In case you cannot make the time commitment right now, the following links provide shorter introductions and other points of view:
Command Line
The command line is the basic way to communicate with a computer. The following links provide an introduction:
Text Editor
A text editor is the basic tool a programmer uses. Perhaps your main experience is with a WYSIWYG text editor such as Microsoft Word. If you need to become more familiar with programmer’s text editors, we recommend the following links:
We use Atom, but Sublime is another popular text editor which is good for someone starting. Emacs and Vim are famous old text editors which have a much steeper learning curve. We include information about them for “culture”, since they form such a basic part of the programming landscape ( see holy war of the text editors):
Markdown
If you’ve never heard of Markdown, get started now: https://markdowntutorial.com/
You can refer to this book for learning purposes.
HTML5
You can learn 90% of what you need to know in HTML in a couple of hours, including practice time (from scratch):
Learn HTML5 in 1 Hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDyJN7qQETA
The rest of HTML5 you will learn just-in-time
(only when you need to know it).
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is what makes the web attractive. If you want to see the power of CSS, visit ZenGarden:
https://www.csszengarden.com/
CSS3 beginner (or refresher) Tutorial (in one hour):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUxH_rWSI1k
Further CSS learning
JavaScript
Love it or hate it, JavaScript is Ubiquitous. Becoming a JS Ninja is essential.
Ines has prepared some great notes on
JavaScript The Good Parts.
Keep “The Good Parts” in mind while you are writing (and reading) JS.
Watch this 1 hour intro tutorial series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGdd9qNwQdQ&list=PLoYCgNOIyGACTDHuZtn0qoBdpzV9c327V
and then scan through this 1.5 hour tutorial to pick up some extra points:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fju9ii8YsGs (and tell us if you get stuck).
Git + GitHub
If you are completely new to Git (Version Control) and/or GitHub,
we suggest you check out the following:
Open Source
You know enough Git and GitHub to make a pull request on an open source project. Before making your first open source contributions, it is useful to gather some context.
What is Open Source
History of Open Source
Contributing to Open Source
Open Source Communities
Where to Start on Open Source
General Resources
Design
Building something for someone else is hard.
You don’t necessarily know that person.
And worrying about someone else’s “experience” with your app can be a full-time job.
However, it is an essential process for everyone involved in software to partake in.
The very best pieces of software are differentiated by the quality of their User Experience design.
Experiences are, by nature, personal, contextual, ephemeral, and affected by things beyond your control. The job of designing one is essentially one of embodying the real people that will be using your product and imagining what the experience would be like for them. You should try to take into account as much contextual information about your users state of mind, occupation, preference towards sans-serif fonts, etc. These details will weave a picture of the real humans on the other end of your app and help you make decisions about site structure and navigation as well as other less obvious things like content hierarchy: what should the user see first?
Further Reading on Software Design
We are in the process of developing our own reading materials to help you learn about UX and UI design.
In the meantime, here are some recommended links:
Ready to Get Involved?
If you want to help improve any aspect of the code, star :star: this repo on GitHub and we will add you to the organisation.
Curious about what technology we are using?
If you want to know more about the Technology “Stack” we are using
see: https://github.com/dwyl/technology-stack
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