CCFA15_week_10.md

Week 10: Research & Development

How we feelin?

"rabbot’s mind" by hexmoire

Today

1. Finish Git demo (finally!)
2. Discuss "Web Design, The First 100 Years"
3. Talk about research & prototyping.
4. Time project demo

Git er done!

Ok, now you probably have two folders to deal with for your class site. Hopefully they're both in your Code folder, but if not we can move them:

1. A folder called something like "[username].github.io-master" that you edited several weeks ago for the assignment (in class we downloaded it as a .zip file)
2. A folder called "class-site-git" that we pulled from GitHub in class using the git clone command.

So what we want to do is move the contents of the first folder (with our changes in it) to the second folder. How do we do this? Copy/paste!

Back to the Terminal!

$ cd ~/Code

$ ls

$ cd class-site-git

$ ls
$ ls -a

Saving changes to Git

$ git status

$ git add .

$ git status

$ git commit -m "Add updates to class site"

$ git status

Pushing changes to GitHub

$ git push

Now if you go to your git repo, you should be able to see the updates!

Discussion

"Web Design, the First 100 Years" by Maciej Cegłowski

Project Ideas!

Discuss with your peers. Share the idea you researched and talk about what you know/don't know.

R&D

Testing airplane lenses used in map making at the U.S. Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C

Design = Infinite Loop

Infinite Loop by Rob Nichols

The first step is knowing what questions to ask!

Rummy

Research

Research Library, Nanking Univ'y

Research tips

• Make a list of questions first. What are the things you need to investigate? Break it into pieces
• Look for examples first! Even examples that use different tools can be helpful. Searching GitHub helps.
• Dig deeper! Look through the documentation
• Find somebody who's already solved the problem and ask! Why not?

Some starting points

• GitHub
• Documentation for the tool you're using
• Stack overflow
• Class site resources!

Development

Prototypes & proofs-of-concept.

Dark Matter Manufacturing

Prototype:

Final Product:

Triangular Series video

Some approaches when prototyping:

• Build it smaller
• Build it out of paper, or some other tool you are familiar with
• Make it ugly but functional
• Fake it but make it pretty!
• Build it in many separate pieces, then put them all together
• Try building a simple version two different ways
• Try to do the hardest part first
• Take it one step at a time!

Time project demos

Running a Python server:

$ cd [path-to-project]
$ python -m SimpleHttpServer

More info and instructions here!

Next Week

I will spend some time Saturday looking over your proposals and get back to you with suggestions, etc.

Office Hours

We can talk about your projects and catch up on conferences.

• Sunday: 4-7pm
• Tuesday: 7-9pm

Let me know if you plan on coming! Also, let me know if you'd like to meet but can't make these times!

Assigments

"The way to create something beautiful is often to make subtle tweaks to something that already exists, or to combine existing ideas in a slightly new way."

-- Paul Graham

1. Review prototypes
2. Read Paul Graham, "Hackers and Painters"