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
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
(and been unable to fix them).
The aim of dwyl is to address both of these issues simultaneously.
If you'd like to know more, 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: http://www.dwyl.io/
If you haven't read Simon Sinek's book "Start with Why", we highly recommend taking a few minutes to watch his Ted Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action
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.
Q: What is dwyl?
A: dwyl (pronounced "Will"
but with a "D" infront 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 share availability with others to discover when the best time for an activity/event is
- Birthday/Special Event Helper [AKA The Card & Gift App]
What question do you want to answer?
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
If you want to get involved with building great tools people love, this section contains everything you need to know.
- Curiosity - "I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
- Enthusiasm - "Enthusiasm spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment." - Norman Vincent Peale
- Shoshin (Beginner's Mind) - "I'm not young enough to know everything" - J. M. Barrie
- Persistance - "If you wish to be out front, then act as if you were behind.” - Lao Tzu
- Work Ethic - "work super hard ... every waking hour" ~ Elon Musk
- Time - if you only have 1 minute there's something you can do now!
- Great Google Skills - the ability to formulate a good question (so you can get a useful answer from Google) is (more than) half the challenge in any
codingtask - Self-reliance: when you get stuck on a task, knowing when to ask for help and when to persevere through to find the answer yourself
- But don't worry, we're here to help!
- But don't worry, we're here to help!
Access to a computer, preferably a recent (but not expensive) one (Chromebooks are Great!).
That's it.
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!
If you want to start writing code now and don't already have your machine set up, see: https://github.com/dwyl/setup
We also have a new developer checklist which we encourage you to review:
https://github.com/dwyl/start-here/blob/master/new-developer-checklist.md
We have listed the skills you need to know in the order you need to learn them.
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).
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:
- Keybr: http://www.keybr.com/
- Typing Club: http://www.typingclub.com/typing-qwerty-en.html
- BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3c6tfr#zg8nsbk
If you've never heard of Markdown, get started now: http://markdowntutorial.com/
You can learn 90% of what you need to know in HTML in a couple of hours (from scratch):
- HTML Tutorial for Beginners in 1 Hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TBU_jLZuG4
- Learn HTML5 from Scratch in 1 Hour: Learn HTML5 in 1 Hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s37GTK6JFcI
The rest of HTML5 you will learn just-in-time (only when you need to know it).
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is what makes the web attractive. If you want to see the power of CSS, visit ZenGarden: http://www.csszengarden.com/
Complete Beginner (or refresher) Tutorial:
- CSS Tutorial for Beginners in 1 Hour: https://youtu.be/hChVrWENonE?t=9s
- CSS3 Tutorial (in one hour): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUxH_rWSI1k
- Getting started with CSS: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Getting_started
- The CSS Almanac: https://css-tricks.com/almanac/
- Shay's Learn to Code HTML & CSS: http://learn.shayhowe.com/html-css/
- Code Academy CSS: http://www.codecademy.com/en/tracks/htmlcss
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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCa7yTZV4tQ (and tell us if you get stuck).
If you are completely new to Git (Version Control) and/or GitHub, we suggest you check out the following:
- Beginners Guide to Git: https://guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/
- Interactive Workshop: https://github.com/jlord/git-it
- @NataliaLKB's Tutorial: https://github.com/NataliaLKB/learn-git-basics
If you want to help improve any aspect of the code, star ⭐ this repo on GitHub and we will add you to the organisation.
If you want to know more about the Technology "Stack" we are using
see: https://github.com/dwyl/technology-stack
