How to: Mar 22, 2024
1. freeCodeCamp just published a massive TypeScript course to help you learn the art of statically-typed JavaScript. Most scripting languages like JavaScript and Python are dynamically-typed. But this causes so many additional coding errors. By sticking with static types – like Java and C++ do – JavaScript developers can save so much headache. This beginner course is taught by legendary coding instructor John Smilga. I love his no-nonsense teaching style and the way he makes even advanced concepts easier to understand. And you can apply what you're learning by coding along at home and building your own ecommerce platform project in TypeScript. (10 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-typescript-for-practical-projects

2. On this week's podcast, I interview Phoebe Voong-Fadel about her childhood as the daughter of refugees, and how she self-studied coding and became a professional developer at the age of 36. Phoebe worked from age 12 at her parent's Chinese take-out restaurant. After college, the high cost of childcare forced her to leave her career so she could raise her two kids. After two years of teaching herself to code using freeCodeCamp, she got her first job as a developer. (1 hour listen in your browser or favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/stay-at-home-mom-to-developer-podcast/

3. How can two people communicate securely through an insecure channel? That is a fundamental challenge in cryptography. One approach is by using the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange algorithm. freeCodeCamp just published a handbook that will teach you how to leverage Diffie-Hellman to protect your data in transit, as it moves from between clients and servers. This handbook dives deep into the math that makes this possible, and uses tons of diagrams to explain the theory. It also explores older solutions, such as Hash-based Message Authentication Code. And you'll immediately put all this new knowledge to use by building a secure messaging project. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/hmac-diffie-hellman-in-node/

4. Spring Boot is a popular web development framework for Java, and it's used by tons of big companies like Walmart, General Motors, and Chase. Dan Vega is a prolific teacher of Java. He developed this new course to help more people learn the latest version of Spring Boot so they can build enterprise-grade apps. His passion for Java really comes through in this course. (3.5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-app-development-with-spring-boot-3/

5. Learn Microsoft's ASP.NET web development framework by building 3 projects. You'll start off this course by learning some C# and .NET fundamentals while coding a menu app. Then you'll dive into some advanced features while building your own clone of Google Docs. Finally, you'll bring everything together by building a payment app. Along the way, you'll get familiar with Microsoft's powerful Visual Studio coding environment. (2.5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/master-asp-net-core-by-building-three-projects/

Quote of the Week: *"‘TypeScript is silly because it just gets turned back into typeless code when you hit compile.’ Oh man do I have some upsetting news about C++ for you."* — Jules Glegg, Game Developer