how-to-hack-your-summer.md

Spend the summer experimenting with code and design, and actively seek inspiration.

If you have any suggestions: 🌵 this repository, add your bits and then send us a pull request.

We 😍 feedback!

Unless otherwise stated, all our recommendations below are free (as in free beer).

Code

To practice your Web-making skills and learn some new tricks, Codecademy is a decent place to start. In particular, check out these tracks:

• HTML + CSS
• Make a website
• jQuery
• Make an interactive website
• JavaScript
• Web Projects
• YouTube API
• Command Line

We also recommend:

• Dash: do everything but project 4 Build a CSS robot, which is rather gimmicky
• Playto: complete all three tutorials
• CSS Diner, a game to master CSS selectors
• Codewars: reach at least Novice level on the JavaScript challenges
• Stack Overflow: sign up and start asking questions
• GitHub: if you haven't already, sign up, create your first repository and start using it. Read and contribute to our how-to-git guide

Learn to touch-type

• Typing Club course
• Touch Type game

Read

The building blocks of programming is a 9-minutes guide that explains you when, why and how to use the universal building blocks of every programming language (examples in JavaScript).

If 9 minutes is too much for you, try JavaScript for cats.

By the way, what is code?

Watch

• The future doesn't have to be incremental, a talk by Alan Kay
• The future of programming, a talk by Bret Victor
• Inventing on principle, another talk by Bret Victor

Design

We like Hack Design, in particular:

• Graphic design principles
• Typography
• User experience
• User interface

We also recommend:

• UX myths
• What makes them click
• Pttrns
• User interface design patterns
• PatternTap
• User flow patters
• Brief history of UX
• The Web ahead
• Interviewing humans
• Invisible design
• 13 ways designers screw up presentations
• Making things people want
• The unexotic underclass
• The Web's grain

Inspiration

Keep a sketchbook / blog / whatever works for you, but don't let your 💡 slip away.

Briefs

To put your ideas into practice, give yourself a brief and work on it.

If you're stuck for ideas, here are a few briefs that you can tackle:

1. After intelligent life has been discovered on another planet, NASA gets in touch with you. They want to give the aliens access to the WWW so that they can learn about life on Earth. Your task is to design an interface to establish first contact with the alien users.

2. The year is 2035 and the Tate-Google Gallery has commissioned you to create a Web-based retrospective exhibition looking at the defining moments of life in the second decade of the 21st century.

3. It is the winter of 2016 and Scotland has declared independence from post-Brexit UK. The government fears Wales and Northern Ireland will follow suit and has asked you to redesign the Union flag to represent England as a single sovereign state.

4. We’re catching a train, and we have only a short time to buy a ticket at the station. Do we join the massive queue at the ticket office or try the ticket machine? We tackle the machine. Instant confusion: when is Off Peak, Anytime? Now there’s a queue behind you..

   Design a sequence of interfaces that are informative, legible and easier to navigate when buying a train ticket.