Drumbeat/p2pu/courses/readingcode

Course Description

In the Open Web world, we are often working with other peoples' code. This code might be a small standalone Python module or Ruby gem, or it might be a massive open source project. With small or new projects, the code itself might be the only documentation; with large open source projects like Drupal or Django, too often it seems as if we draw a black box around the "core" code and label it "magic". When we have a question or a bug, many times we Google for an answer rather than going to the primary source.

The Reading Code course will remind us that there is no magic-- only logic. We will dive into the mini universes of open source projects and learn techniques for getting oriented, debugging, and simply getting comfortable reading code.

Can you lead this course in September

Yes

Major Project

The major project for the course will involve writing a series of documentation pieces to either add to, extend or improve documentation for the various projects we cover in the course.

Format and Structure

Each week

What you can Expect to Learn

• Reading comprehension
• Diving into the middle of a big project
• Exposure to different languages
• Debugging tools for different environments and languages

What you Might Learn if you Work Hard

• You might end up submitting a patch if you come across bugs or have ideas for enhancements

Thing we won't Cover

• Writing code

What Will I build?

You won't necessarily build anything for this course although you will be "building" documentation

Courseware

• Wordpress code
• Django code