It’s all about human nature. Remember when you first hit a three-pointer in basketball and then told everyone in the neighborhood about it? What about your first bike, and how admiringly did you show photos of it to your friends at school?
Many companies have built an entire business around people's desire to show off their accomplishments and appreciate others. Services such as Instagram and Facebook have already become an integral part of the life of a modern person. There's nothing wrong with posting a photo from the gym and your diet of salad and guacamole, then popping into your favorite fast food place and spending the evening watching your favorite TV show.
So, do not be surprised. There is a special site for developers where they “show off” their well-composed and perfectly working code. https://github.com is a mecca for all programmers, where everyone from novice web designers to large companies like Microsoft or Apple put their code on public display.
The first thing you need to do is create your own account, where you will publish your successful work. The service also helps to monitor the development of existing projects and always keep them at hand.
Use a full name instead of a gaming nickname for your account, be serious.
Git is a program that allows you to create special “repositories” folders where all the files that are involved in your project will be stored. In order to interact with the service, you just need to install this application on your computer. See all the necessary installation information on the official website: https://git-scm.com
Once you've got an account and installed the Git version control system on your computer, you can start using the version control system to collaborate with other developers and publish your achievements.
For the service to work correctly, you must properly configure the system and establish interaction between your device and Git.
When all the necessary programs are already installed, you need to connect your account to your device. To do this, you need an IDE and a little magic.
Open a terminal inside your Integrated Development Environment and write the following set of commands below, which will help you do the basic initial setup of interacting with Git.
$ git config --global user.name "John Doe"
// This command sets the username that will be used later in all your projects made on this computer.
$ git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com
// Enter your current email address.
Ready. Magic works outside Hogwarts! Thanks to the two lines written in the terminal, you have set up your local Git account.
Now let's try to put your project on public display.
We assume that you are already familiar with the basics of creating websites and know what HTML and CSS are. If not, then sign up for the relevant educational courses from Beetroot Academy, which will help you understand the basics of website building and gain the necessary skills to master the prestigious and in-demand profession.
So, if you know what HTML and CSS are, then you can already make a simple website. Let's say that you have a .html file and a .css file that are in your IDE, and you need to create a GitHub repository and share your code with other developers.
To do this, open a terminal and cast the following spells:
$ git init
// This simple command initiates Git and creates a repository structure that will be populated with project files.
$ git status
// Allows you to find out if the system is tracking changes in the repository.
$ git add -A
// Forces Git to watch for changes in the entire project folder.
$ git commit -m “My first commit”
// Creates a project checkpoint that you can always return to.
As a novice developer, it was incomprehensible for me how text commands launch complex processes inside the computer and initiate interaction with remote servers and batch data. You don't need to delve into studying such nuances at the very beginning. Just trust the process.
After the manipulations, the version control system on your computer will monitor the changes locally. Still, now you need to upload, or as my colleagues say, “push” the repository to GitHub.
To do this, log in to your account and click “Start a project”:
Then choose a name for your project:
// Be careful about the Description field. This will help specialists unfamiliar with your project to better understand the essence of your work.
Now upload your local repository to GitHub. To do this, use the following commands generated by the service:
// Commands should be executed one by one.
Your remote repository has been created, and you can share it with your colleagues, teachers, and employers.
A very attractive feature of the service is free website hosting, which allows you to view not only the code but also displays the web page directly in the browser.
Let's find out what the Github pages service is and what it is eaten with!
The built-in GitHub pages feature will help beginners not only show their code but also how it looks in action! As they say: “A picture is worth a thousand lines of code!”
All you need to do is click on the right place on the screen two times in a row. We know it's hard, but we are sure you can do it!
So, find the Settings icon, as in the picture, and click here:
Then, scroll down to the GitHub pages section, select the desired branch, and hit save:
After that, you will receive a link that will lead to your personal website, which will be hosted absolutely free.
Thus, the Git version control system and GitHub service are the main tools for teamwork, code demonstration, and exchange of all kinds of information. Do not neglect the service's functionality and use it to the fullest, especially since the coolest features are completely free!
“Every novice developer is doomed to repeat the same mistakes, this is called experience," — Albert Einstein.
So, Tip #1: Get information only from reliable Internet sources
As you guessed, Einstein never said that, and we were trying to deceive you. This time it was a lie for good. There are many forums on the net that are teeming with those who want to “help”, which can easily turn out to be scammers or complete laymen. Choose sources of information carefully. This is especially true for serious projects and privacy issues. By inserting part of the code from an unverified source into your project, you risk losing access to your account and endangering the data of all project participants.
Tip #2: Be serious. Seriously!
Nothing spoils the impression as much as the nickname DeMoNKilleR1988 in a working account on GitHub and comments to the code like: “LMAO!!! It works!” or “Dude, check this out, i copied it from an Indian youtube guy!” Keeping a formal communication style and being specific in your intentions will serve your career well.
Tip #3: Commit from the beginning
You should not store the entire project on your computer and upload everything to GitHub at once. Viewing the number of commits made is available to everyone. A gradual, painstaking process of change is more trustworthy than a repository that came out of nowhere overnight. Made one feature? Make a commitment!
Tip #4: Leave clear comments
Expanded and detailed comments in the code allow you to better understand the logic of the process and architecture. Today you understand why this feature works, but will you be able to remember it in a week, a month, or a year? We thought so.
Tip #5: Be honest and don't copy other people's code
Using parts of code borrowed from open sources is a common practice in the development environment. However, don't overuse it. If you copied 100 lines of someone else's code and added your own 2 lines, this does not make the project yours. Use other people's knowledge, but adapt and change it based on your needs. Plagiarism is not encouraged.
I'm sure you understand that Git and GitHub are not as difficult as it may seem. Next, we will consider even more interesting moments from the daily practice of programmers. Stay tuned for more!
Not quite unusual for computer fonts, Times New Roman has been around since before computers became a thing. The British newspaper The Times commissioned it in 1931 as a retro update from a regular 19th-century font to something more solid with a strong 18th-century vibe. Old broom sure knows the corners (or so the saying goes), but you can see how the font may feel outdated in the 2020s.
It would not be a stretch to say Times New Roman looks ancient, as we already know it was designed this way. Even Roman in the name is a nod to the Italian school of printing from (15th century!). Seeing old-fashioned characters on a groundbreaking visual device, CRT screen, was weird enough. Now that we have modern LCD screens with much higher resolution and fidelity, a font capturing aesthetics from 300 years ago feels crystal odd.
Fonts classification is usually much more objective than old-fashioned or modern. One reason why Times New Roman may give an archaic vibe is that it is a serif font. All letters (or other characters) come with decorative lines, which range from very subtle to indeed something you would see in an 18th-century newspaper. Note how you can’t see any tails on the letters in this article—or almost any website created in the last 10 years.
Serif and Sans serif versions of Inria font from Black[Foundry]
Times New Roman, much like a lot of newspaper fonts, is rather narrow. It is a mostly business decision: you gotta fit in as much text on a page as possible—even during the times (ha-ha!) when the ratio of ads to stories was much lower. At the end of the day, all publications did that and it’s not like many people would’ve changed morning newspapers just because one is a bit easier to read than the rest.
Computers, however, do not have the same limitation. You don’t pay more for publishing an article or sending a document with much more reasonable line spacing and kerning than the average Victorian newspaper. If it’s the intermediary audience (e.g. client that commissioned an article) that needs to save costs, they can always change character size or pick a narrow font themselves.
Furthermore, the mobile boom is not helping narrow fonts like Times New Roman. Most devices connected to the internet now have a vertical layout. Trying to squeeze in extra characters on screens with little horizontal space will bring nothing but frustration for the reader. Interestingly, The Times had to adapt similarly in print: they had to create yet another Times New Roman-inspired typeface after moving from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004. These days, a narrow font is a compromise on usability that you don’t actually have to make—and people would appreciate it if you didn’t.
One could argue that a document in Times New Roman screams laziness or indifference. If the sender didn’t change the default option to something more balanced, it communicates that they either did not want to make your experience better or did not bother to do that. That kind of attitude does not help to secure a job or scholarship.
On the other hand, certain institutions would have you use nothing but Times New Roman. Some universities strongly encourage if not outright mandate the use of Times new Roman for papers, and so do scientific journals. Older government forms coming as templates to be filled out in Word would not play nice if you try to change the font. That being said, such restrictions are getting scarcer, especially with the rise of Mac. The OS and default office-like apps there have a default font different from Times New Roman (and a new one every few years at that).
The current default font on MacOS
Summing up, the cardinal sin of Times New Roman is defaulting to it without consideration. The font is a must in very few scenarios, but you see it much more often than that. Even Microsoft agrees something has to change: the default font for Word has been Calibri since 2007.
The above-mentioned Calibri is a spiritual successor to Times New Roman. It is now the default font for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. It is a sans serif font (no decorative lines) that looks perfectly fine on both screens and paper.
If you want to ditch the default and stay sleek, Georgia is a great option. It is a serif font but letter strokes are much more subtle than what you see with Times New Roman. Georgia does not look outdated and works better for vertical screens, as it is not too tight on the horizontal space.
Should you feel like going barebones, Helvetica is the right font. It is a sans serif font looking as bland as it gets—in a good way. Helvetica lacks elements that would make it look too modern, but it also has no archaic elements that would make the font too classic. I think we can trust Apple on that: they used a spin on Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, as the MacOS system font for two years.
Somehow, I felt a big future for tech when the Internet connection was provided in my dormitory
I'm from Kramatorsk, Donetsk region. I studied in Kharkiv and was supposed to become a radio-electronic engineer, but in 2001 I understood exactly what I wanted to do. It was the time when the Internet “appeared” in our dormitory. I liked what was happening there and felt a future was behind it. So I switched to web development. I bought some books, and for the next two years, I had the luxury of free time to study without having to work. 2003 I graduated from the university, and within one month, I found my first work as a PHP developer. I was the happiest junior developer who was paid for the work he liked. I remember my first salary — $250 transferred via Western Union from the USA — was like a fortune. Back then, there were no web developers among my friends. Compared to nowadays, it wasn't that hype. But for me, it was evident that this was a future. I told my friends that all the companies I knew would need a website or should be represented online somehow. And I wanted to be a part of this evolution.
Pink Floyd, my lifetime project, and three kids
I was always a fan of the music of the 70s, and Pink Floyd was my favorite band. But there was no website dedicated to Pink Floyd in Russian or Ukrainian. So I decided to do that on my own. I reached out to the person who did the official newsletters about Pink Floyd to help me with that, and long story short — I made a website, and it turned18 recently. This fan website is the most extended project in my life, but I switched it off because I didn’t want to contribute to the Russian-speaking community anymore. The most crucial thing is the following. Remember I mentioned that person who worked on the official newsletters about Pink Floyd? She is currently my wife, and we are bringing up two kids. We used to make jokes that we actually had three kids — our first one was the Pink Floyd website.
From a web developer to a start-up founder
After two years of work in Moscow, I was back in Kyiv. I didn't like living in Russia, so moving back to Ukraine was obvious. At this time, I stepped out of web development, and in 2007 I started my own business. All went well, but the political regime of Yanukovych reminded me of Russia, so we decided to move to Poland and work remotely. Since 2014, when the war started, it has been impossible to run my business in Ukraine.
And after a 7-year break in web development, a dozen hours of upskilling, and 60 interviews, I have found a new job in Berlin as a senior back-end developer. Now in 2022, I'm a co-founder of the tech startup countX, and all my engineering team is from Ukraine.
How I met Beetroot Academy
It was a coincidence and proof that networking rules. One of my colleagues, Alex, also works as a teacher at Beetroot Academy, so I've heard a lot about this online school. When Alex introduced me to Dmytro, CEO of Beetroot Academy, I was ready to start our partnership. He told me about the fundraising campaign on a mission to help Ukrainian people affected by the war start a new career in tech. So I couldn't stay away from it and donated for scholarships — the less I could do in these challenging times. Now seven women from Donetsk and Luhansk regions are studying at Beetroot Academy, and I’m happy to be their mentor.
Why I support tech education for Ukrainians
Ukrainians, especially men who are out of the country, live with the feeling of guilt. My life is safe, but my three classmates are now fighting against Russia, risking their lives. People try to find their own way to help Ukrainians win this war, overcome the consequences and rebuild the country. So do I.
I already had an idea of investing in tech education. That is where I can contribute as a professional and entrepreneur, so I chose to support the future of Ukraine this way. Many Ukrainians affected by war want to enter the tech industry and need an opportunity to do that. Tech education is one of the most impactful and cost-effective ways to help Ukrainians restore their lives and fight poverty after the war ends. I believe our country will be the next tech cluster after Silicon Valley in the USA and Bengaluru in India. Moreover, I want many Ukrainians to be a part of that success story. I contribute to it by donating for scholarships and would like to encourage others to support Beetroots Academy’s mission.
Imagine a house. To have it running steadily, there should be a good foundation, building blocks, proper infrastructure, good furniture, designs, and usability functions. In web development, the front-end developer is somewhere in between the processes as he takes the ideas from the UI\UX team to turn them into clickable websites that work. Back-end developers, PMs, and QAs take care of the other vital parts, such as proper foundation, team and project management, and testing.
So there's actually a front-end and back-end. We won't say which one is easier. Let's just leave one picture here for your understanding.
To light up a room, you have to click the button. Ensuring it is clickable is a job for a front-end developer; ensuring there is a light is a task for a back-end developer. Front-end web development is the art of using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a set of other tools for a website/app for a user to see and interact with them.
Basic front-end development glossary
In front-end web development, there are vital terms you should know. We bet you've heard most of them, so let's just keep them handy in the list below.
Programming languages or codes
For example, HTML
In development, you need to speak a language everyone understands — your machine, your code compiler, your user, and your project manager. Below are just a couple of languages we use in the front-end. They look different to everyone, but mean the same and help achieve the result — have the webpage ready and running.
HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, is the code developers use to structure a webpage. Remember seeing a webpage made up of blocks, paragraphs, or tables? HTML helps with that. It originates from a code developed by WHATWG some 30 years ago, in 1993.
JavaScript, conveniently referred to as JS, is a programming language considered one of the cores for front-end development. Designed over 26 years ago, it is now used in almost every webpage you see. Even on the Beetroot Academy website, too :) JS is used to create animation, control multimedia, and generally work with dynamically updating content, buttons, banners, etc.
Here, you can also look at some Javascript libraries — jQuery, React.js, and more here on Kinsta, for example.
Front-end development tools
Git, Google Fonts, W3C, and more
Compilers, linkers, code editors are essential for every front-end developer. These are basic tools that you will use in your daily routine — as home technicians use multitools for repairing the leakage, for example.
To name a few, there are Google Fonts to help you work with fonts, W3C Markup Validation Service to validate your code, and many more.
Version control tools are also part of the list here, used for monitoring changes to your code. We guess you strive to make your code better and better each time. Hence, version controls will help manage the evolution of your code as it becomes clearer and more effective. Git is the most popular, and it's open and free of charge.
Design principles in front-end
In front-end development, we use responsive design to ensure our content fits every (or almost every) gadget and looks good on it. Recall how you open a webpage on your iPhone, reopen it on your laptop, and send it to granny's email — and it still looks good on your grandparents' old-fashioned computer? That's responsive design in action.
Design automatically adapts to given dimensions, so all users feel comfortable interacting with the content. The feeling is the key here — because the front-end is mostly about what the user feels while using your web piece.
CSS, closely connected to HTML, is a code used actually to style an HTML doc. It has everything to do with the colors, styles, and other properties.
Looks quite interesting, huh? Now that you're familiar with the basic front-end development glossary, it's high time to learn the front-end. We hope you find this glossary helpful, no matter which tech direction you will choose. Keep it in your saved links to come back once in a while.
Join our next group in May and start learning with tech industry experts to gain knowledge you need to work as a junior front-end developer.
While such languages as Python and PHP have existed for quite a long time, C# is regarded as a young programming language. Danish software engineer Anders Hejlsberg developed it in the year 2000. Today, he still works for Microsoft as the lead architect of C#. Anders Hejlsberg is also known for being the chief architect of Delphi and the original author of Turbo Pascal.
C# was originally named COOL, whereby the acronym stood for “C-like object-oriented language”. Alas, Microsoft could not hang onto this “cool name” because of trademark law.
C# is pronounced, “see sharp”. The name was taken from the musical notation, whereby a sharp symbol points that the written note should be played a semitone higher. The “sharp” suffix has been used by several other .NET languages that are editions of present languages, including J#, A#, and the functional programming language F#.
The base syntax of the C# is similar to C-style languages such as C, C++, and Java. This programming language most directly represents the underlying Common Language Infrastructure (CLI).
If you plan to create apps for the Microsoft platform, you should definitely learn C#. The developers favor this language for being easy to use and well-designed. Also, it is often recommended programming language to use when creating games through the Unity Game engine.
C# used for:
A list of programs and applications written in C# includes Microsoft Visual Studio, Paint.NET, Windows Installer XML, Open Dental, FlashDevelop, KeePass, NMath, Pinta, Banshee, OpenRA.
Here are a few reasons to work with this particular programming language:
The future looks bright for C# because of its popularity, versatility, and existing creations. If you want to have a solid foundation to become a master developer, you should learn this “cool” programming language.
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