Coding Bootcamp: Course authoring

Basics

• We use reveal.js for our slides,
  but this should be transparent to you
  
• We write slides either in Markdown or as a Jupyter Notebook
  
• More details follow

Markdown slides

• Write slides in GitHub flavoured Markdown
  
• Start title text with ## followed by a space
  
• Start bullet items with * followed by a space
  
• Separate each slide from the next with two empty lines
  
• Add hyperlinks using the [text](URL) syntax

Example

## First slide title
* Bullet item 1
* Bullet item 2
 
 
## Second slide title

Code listings

• Code listings are automatically highlighted
  
• Start a code listing with three backticks followed by the language's suffix
  on a single line
  

• Example:

   ```java
   ```cs
   ```sql
   ```js
   ```HTML

• End code listings with three backticks on a single line
  
• Indent Markdown code with a space to avoid it being interpreted by reveal.js
  
• Prepend a space when closing a script tag in HTML listings (</ script>)
  

• Avoid two blank lines in the code; they confuse reveal.js.

Images and other media

• Place images in the media directory under the corresponding course
  directory
  
• Insert media on a slide with the syntax ![](media/filename)
  

• Example:

  ![](media/hello.png)

• Use the PNG format for clipart and JPEG for photographs

File organization

• Each lecture is written as a single Markdown or as a Jupyter Notebook file
  
• Name the file using Java variable identifier rules
  
• Suffix the Markdown file name with .md
  
• Example: unitTests.md
  
• Suffix the Jupyter file name with .ipynb

Folder organization

• Place the file in one of the following folders
  
• java: Java material
  
• cs: C# material
  
• common: Material common to both courses
  
• admin: Course instructor and administrator material

Linking lectures into a course

• Within the courses directory create or edit a Markdown file named after
  the course
  
• Use a level-1 title for the course
  
• Use a level-2 title for units
  
• Enter each lecture as a separate bullet
  
• Example

# Coding bootcamp: Java specialization
## Test driven development and object-oriented programming
* [Hello world!](java/hello.md)
* [Constructing and using objects](java/objects.md)
* [Python classes](common/pythonClasses.ipynb)

Contributions

• You can perform small changes directly on the GitHub repository
  
• For substantial work it is recommended that you work on a local repository
  
• Commit your changes with proper commit messages
  
• Do not forget to push after committing

Editing and build tools

• You will need to have the following tools installed
  
• A Unix shell
  
• Git
  
• Pandoc
  
• rsync
  
• Jupyter Notebook
  
• This setup is trivial on Mac and Linux systems
  
• On Windows systems we recommend the installation of Cygwin
  
• Anaconda simplifies the Jupyter Notebook installation

Building and deploying

• First clone the GitHub repository
  
• Run make to build the presentation and note handouts
  
• This generates the material in the web directory
  
• View the presentations and handouts through this link
  
• Pushing your changes will result in an automatic update of the web site

Style

• Use lower case in titles, Not Title Case
  
• Start each bullet item with a capital
  
• Don't punctuate at the end of bullet items
  
• Spell-check what you write
  
• Use British spelling
  
• Don't pack your slides with text
  
• Take care of capitalization: JavaScript, SQL, Java, C#, Git, GitHub
  
• Put names of code and commands in backticks, e.g. `main` or `git`
  
• Avoid lines longer than 67 characters