Programming By Stealth

In this week's installment, Bart explains how to create two simple Bootstrap components, the Jumbotron and badges. A Jumbotron is a show-case area at the top of a website's front page that shouts out the site's main message and usually has a call to action. Badges are the little bubbles next to titles or within buttons that contain extra information. Often they contain a number, such as number of unread messages, or a short phrase like "New!" or "Best Value". It's a pretty easy lesson and the homework looks fun too as we figure out how to add badges to count the number of open alert windows and add a Jumbotron to our work.

In this week's installment of Programming By Stealth Bart introduces us to Bootstrap Components how we can use jQuery to extend Bootstrap. This is the first baby step into JavaScript with Bootstrap. I'm glad Bart started slowly because my JavaScript muscles are just a bit stiff and dusty. You can find Bart's tutorial over at bartbusschots.ie/.... Please consider supporting Bart's work on Patreon.

Bart takes us back to Bootstrap content, now that we know all about breakpoints. He never told us when we were looking at things like margins and float and the display tag that they are also breakpoint-aware, because we didn't know about breakpoints yet. It's an easy lesson and it's great fun to learn more about how responsive design is done with Bootstrap. You can follow along with the audio with Bart's awesome tutorials at bartbusschots.ie/...

In this week's installment of Programming By Stealth, Bart Busschots explains Bootstrap breakpoints. Breakpoints allow the designer to define how a web page reacts depending on the size of the viewer's screen. He explains how through some very simple Bootstrap classes, we can allow a semantic tag to be in the "correct" order for screen readers and search engines, and yet have the layout be visually appropriate across all screen sizes. Follow along with Bart's detailed tutorial shownotes at bartbusschots.ie/...

Things take a turn for the mind-bendy in this installment about Bootstrap as Bart Busschots explains the Bootstrap Grid. He teaches us how containers have rows, rows have columns and the number 12 is really important. In the end he leads me to understanding but it was a bit of a bumpy road getting me there. You'll probably swim right through it without difficulty because of Bart's fabulous shownotes at bartbusschots.ie/.... If you a

We continue learning about how to style our HTML with Bootstrap as we take a look at styling images, figures, and tables. These Bootstrap classes are really easy to use and make such a difference in the look and feel. You can find Bart's tutorial shownotes and the downloads at bartbusschots.ie/....

We finished learning the Bootstrap Utilities last time so this time we get to start learning about continue to learn about Bootstrap moving on from the Utilities into Bootstrap Content. Content is kind of an odd word; it means Bootstrap's styling of regular HTML tags for things like headers, paragraphs, lists and tables. We have a lot of fun playing with our recipes in this episode, learning how to easily style them to be much prettier. Bart's fabulous tutorial shownotes are at bartbusschots.ie/...

In this week's episode of Programming By Stealth, Bart Busschots takes us through the last bit of the Utilities for Bootstrap 4. We'l refer to the WABAC Machine (kids, ask your parents about Sherman and Mr. Peabody) to installments 8 and 9 comparing positioning with CSS vs. Bootstrap. Thenwe'll learn about sizes and float utilities, Flexbox utilities, and Screen Reader utilities. It's great fun and of course Bart has his excellent companion tutorial at bartbusschots.ie/... and you can find Dorothy's awesome index of all things Programming By Stealth at podfeet.com/blog/pbs-index.

We're finally back to a new episode of Programming By Stealth after a few weeks chatting with different things like GDPR and DNS with Bart Busschots. In this installment, Bart starts explaining the Utilities available in Bootstrap. We'll learn how easy it is to use the pre-built CSS styles in Bootstrap to color text, add borders, spacing, text alignment and fonts all with semantic phrases that actually make sense! In an odd bit of luck, Bootstrap had been updated and Bart's code didn't reflect the new version. In most shows, this would be a problem but the change allowed Bart to walk me through how to figure out what was wrong and how to access the Bootstrap documentation to fix it. The best way to learn something is to break it first, or at least Bart and I feel that way. Bart's most excellent shownotes are at bartbusschots.ie/...

We're finally back after spring break, and we're going to be moving on from JavaScript while we learn about Bootstrap. Bootstrap is a set of open source libraries which provide pre-built foundations for creating responsive and good looking websites. It's an easy episode with easy and fun homework I think you'll enjoy. Before we got started I talked about a fantastic post Will (aka @beiju) wrote to me to help me understand JavaScript objects better. If you've been struggling like I have or just want a nice reference written in conversational style, check it out at Objects in Javascript Explained (for PBS) – by Will aka @beiju

As our last episode of Programming By Stealth before our spring break, Bart wraps up our Cellular Automaton. He goes through his solution to the PBS 49 challenge first, and then he walks us through three examples of how a user could produce three different representations with our code. He demonstrates how to build a Conway Game of Life, the Maze Rule, and Brian's Brain. It's fun to see it all wrapped in a bow ending this long project. We'll be back on March 31st with a whole new project. Bart's full tutorial shownotes are at bartbusschots.ie/...

This week Bart and I celebrate 50 episodes of Programming By Stealth. As Bart points out, we've been at this for two years now. I'm so happy he's stuck with me on this and he says he's got literally years of material yet to go. To commemorate this occasion, Bart got the crazy idea to build a web app live on video. We used a YouTube Live Hangout on Air while he shared his screen. He started with a blank canvas and when he was done we had a working web app. The video is probably a better experience over at podfeet.com but the audio is supplied for those who prefer it. We did try to narrate what was going on to help with the audio.

As promised last week, Bart Busschots brings us the second half of Programming By Stealth 49. We start by going through a lot of revision on JavaScript objects. It's really great to have all of this all in one place, and I got to ask a few questions that have been bugging me for a long time. I understood every bit of this and really enjoyed it, but I'm not going to lie, his little 6-part test after the revision baffled me a bit. But after we slog through that part, Bart gets us back on track improving our Cellular Automata. I never realized that we didn't actually define whether our cells are dead or alive!

In this week's episode of Programming By Stealth, Bart had intended to work on improving our Cellular Automata, but we ended up spending a lot more time on reviewing the challenges from last week that we stopped before getting to the new stuff. The good news is that we're going to do the Cellular Automata improvements in only one week (it will be PBS 49B), and we have no homework for the week! As always, Bart's excellent tutorial shownotes are available at bartbusschots.ie/....

Bart decided to take a closer look at the JavaScript keywords 'this' and 'static' and boy am I glad he did. He said it was the hardest lesson he's put together so far. It's a convoluted topic but he gives great explanations as always. You can find his tutorial at bartbusschots.ie/...

In this installment of Programming By Stealth, Bart teaches us about inheritance (relationships between classes) and polymorphism. Now he said polymorphism is a concept that throws most first-level college students, but in an odd twist, I didn't find it confusing at all! Plus, he lets us play with cows, ducks and turkeys in his example so it's loads of fun. We also have a great new study tool created by Dorothy, aka MacLurker. She created an index of terms so you can jump right to the blog post where Bart talked about the term. I've been using it and it's grand! You might want to bookmark podfeet.com/blog/pbs-index. As always, Bart's most excellent written tutorial is available at bartbusschots.ie/....

In this installment of Programming By Stealth, Bart adds one more thing to the list of changes to arrays, and that's the spread operator. Then we'll learn how to get rid of the "const self = this" kludge for callbacks using the arrow functions. After that, we learn the basics of classes, a concept introduced in ES6 which brings JavaScript into the world of other C-style languages. Bart's excellent written tutorial for this installment is available here: bartbusschots.ie/... Bart at the end asks a question - would you be interested in learning how to build command line apps using JavaScript? So far we've only be working on web apps, but command line apps will allow us to manipulate things in the file system, the network and even to the Internet itself without using a web browser. Let us know via email to me at allison@podfeet.com, or write up your thoughts in our Facebook group at podfeet.com/facebook or our Google Plus group at podfeet.com/googeplus or you can even tweet us at @podfeet and @bbusschots

In this week's Programming By Stealth, Bart starts by actually giving me credit for leading him to rethink his strategy on the use of const and let. He was nudged along in the strategy by the most awesome Jill. Then Bart goes on to reveal even more of the joy that is JavaScript ES6. He explains ES6 Arrays, how to loop through Arrays, and in a change that brings a tear to my eye, the simpler way you can now loop over Strings and how concatenation is a thing of the past when building strings. This is truly a joyful show! As always, Bart's detailed tutorial is available at bartbusschots.ie/...

In this installment of Programming By Stealth, Bart Busschots teaches us new ways to deal with arguments and objects in JavaScript ES6. We learn how to set default argument values for functions in a way that is self-documenting. He explains how variadic (aka Rest) arguments allow you to shove all of the arguments of a function into an array. Then he walks us through how to use for ... in loops to loop over objects. He reminds us of the difference between instance and static properties and explains how for ... in loops work with both kinds of properties. I really enjoyed this episode and followed almost all of it on the first time through!

In this installment of Programming By Stealth, Bart spends most of the time talking through his solution to the previous challenge, where we added start and stop buttons to our Game of Life. In his solution he actually modifies the prototype to accommodate the ability to add these buttons. He explains his process and his decisions along the way. I'm not going to lie, this one confused me quite a bit in the middle but we both hope it's because we've been away from the hard-core JavaScript for quite a while. Once we have that under our belts, he starts explaining some of the cool, new features in JavaScript ES6 where we abandon var and replace it with let and const. He explains the value of these new terms (and the problems they solve!) Bart's full tutorial is available as always at bartbusschots.ie/...