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THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS IN DRAFT AND NOT YET RATIFIED BY THE PROJECT TEAM THE INFORMATION WILL BE RATIFIED IN THE MONTH OF JULY 2021

Project Goals

Whereby coding tutorials and resources on the Internet may be helpful to an experienced programmer, there can be information that is considered "understood" or "implicit". This is a barrier to learning.

Whereby many programming languages and frameworks offer features that are "nice to have" or "cool", these features can be a stumbling block for those learning to code. In addition, certain programming languages and frameworks have features that prevent projects from scaling up.

Whereby early-career professionals are familiar with the early stages of learning to code and are looking for outlets to volunteer, there is a need for a project to provide opportunities and a low-pressure environment to network and further professional growth.

Whereby the college students in the IEEE Pittsburgh Section area have expressed interest in attending coding workshops and access to coding resources and the IEEE Pittsburgh Student Activities Committee is committed to:

  1. Create virtual activities that interest students
  2. Develop and deploy a strategy and plan for first-year undergraduate and graduate student members

Therefore, the following goals have been established:

  1. Provide a free, public learning resource including virtual or in-person workshops for learners 2 times a year. These events will be hosted by multiple facilitators and encourage learning and professional growth for all involved.
  2. Identify and fill in gaps in coding tutorials. Help create order out of the chaos in coding tutorials and other coding resources on the Internet.
  3. For the selected programming languages and frameworks, identify best practices and highlight what features to use and what features to avoid.
  4. Meet as a group at least once a month to review progress, outline action items, and assist each other with finding professional fulfillment through participation in this project.
    1. Meetings will be hosted on vtools.ieee.org and will be posted online 4 weeks before the date of the event.
    2. An agenda will be posted at least 5 days in advance of the meeting.
    3. Agenda items will be pulled from the GitHub issues for the project or other items submitted to the Project Lead ahead of the meeting and must be received by the Project Lead at least 8 days before the meeting to be added to the agenda.

Minimum requirements to join as a contributor

Currently, the project is hosting a virtual "open house" to gauge interest and find volunteers.

You may request to join the project, but must be approved by the project lead (see below for the current project lead information). This process will help ensure that the project expectations are understood and that they align with your expectations for what you hope to get out of the project. At a minimum, you must set up a time to talk over video chat with the leadership team and provide us access to a volunteering or other professional resume/CV.

This project is posted on the Internet and includes open license terms for others to fork the project. While this is possible, we request that you first ask to join the project before splintering off.

Project Leadership

Project Lead:

  • Saul Williamson

Founding Members:

  • Alexis B.
  • Andre G.
  • Ava C.
  • Avram A.
  • Jenna D.
  • Keting Z.
  • Miriam W.
  • Rachel M.
  • Sam D.

Meetings

Upcoming:

February 8, 2021

Meeting link: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/257072

Attendance:

  • Miriam W.
  • Sam D.
  • Avram A.
  • Alexis B.
  • Saul W.

Agenda:

See below agenda for January 25, 2021.

Minutes:

The group provided introductions including experiences with coding. The conversation centered around the soft-skills that would benefit engineers. There was also the strong feeling that "stick-to-it-ness" is required in this industry and there is often hit-or-miss for events offered to students. The root cause for students not engaging in events or taking way important skills was not identified. Nonetheless, an event that holds net benefit for single attendee should be considered a measure of success for the event.

The outline for how to acheive teaching soft-skills still needs to be outlined.

Alexis shared about the TechGirlz organization. Saul signed up and will investigate if there is a possible collaboration or way to benefit from the existing efforts by this organization.

January 25, 2021

Meeting link: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/257070

Attendance:

  • Andre G.
  • Ava C.
  • Keting Z.
  • Rachel M.
  • Saul W.

Agenda:

Betsalel (Saul) Williamson, a member of the IEEE Pittsburgh Student Activities Committee, is looking for you, a passionate engineer (at any stage of your career), to volunteer and assist with development of a coding tutorial designed for first-year college students and early-career engineers.

This is a collaborative effort built to help others propel their understanding of coding and help pass on industry know-how including practical skills in version control, automated testing, and documentation.

If you are interested or want to hear more, sign up for the virtual QA on January 25th and February 8th to learn how you can get involved. We are looking for a wide range, and depends on the interest. For a minimal commitment, just showing up to support discussions, review content, or if you want to take lead on authoring content that could be more involved.

This is a great opportunity to meet other engineers and to bolster your resume.

Link to event on January 25th 7-8 p.m Eastern https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/257070

Link to event on February 8th 7-8 p.m Eastern https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/257072

The current iteration of the tutorial is at https://github.com/betsalel-williamson/Programming-Tutorial/wiki .

The unique edge for this tutorial is that it has a high attention to detail and includes broader instructions so that those new to programming not only have the information to get their machine setup, but can learn industry best practices that usually aren't spelled out in classes and during internships.

The tutorial was initially developed in 2018 by Saul in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh's Student Electronics Resource Center https://sercpitt.weebly.com/ to help students fill in the gaps. The tutorial helped a dozen IEEE students increase their understanding of C and how to build automated tests with TCL.

Minutes:

Group discussed initial goals and outline for the collaborative project. There are items to sort out and explore regarding the future direction of the project including minimum system requirements and expectations for the end user.

Additional ideas discussed included:

  • Jupyter notebooks
  • We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can use examples available on the Internet, but creating an outline to prioritize materials so that it is easier to learn.
  • The tutorials should leverage what we know and help those who are learning
  • We need to outline when to use specific coding tools and when not to
  • The ability to meet in person and provide food in the future is exciting
  • We can use GitHub issues to project manage and keep track of progress and work items
  • Providing workshops are helpful and allow those who are looking to learn the ability to reach out to a person for help. A lot of Internet forums are perceived to be insular and unwelcoming.

Notes for Programming Tutorial

  • make templates to make it easier to manage in the long run
  • create contribution guidelines
  • invite others to contribute (1/1/2021, on linkedin)
  • replace sed commands with a search for first line and n lines afterwards to avoid needing to worry about rewriting examples
  • need list of pre-reqs for building the source M4, astyle ...
  • https://www.tcl.tk/doc/styleGuide.pdf is helpful, add it to the tutorial appendix
  • implement fix for makefiles, need to have broken and fixed versions so that the wiki instructions make sense