Coding All-in-one for Dummies

The demand for people with coding know-how exceeds the number of people who understand the languages that power technology. Coding All-in-One For Dummies gives you an ideal place to start when you're ready to add this valuable asset to your professional repertoire. Whether you need to learn how coding works to build a web page or an application or see how coding drives the data revolution, this resource introduces the languages and processes you'll need to know.

Peek inside to quickly learn the basics of simple web languages, then move on to start thinking like a professional coder and using languages that power big applications. Take a look inside for the steps to get started with updating a website, creating the next great mobile app, or exploring the world of data science. Whether you're looking for a complete beginner's guide or a trusted resource for when you encounter problems with coding, there's something for you!

• Create code for the web
• Get the tools to create a mobile app
• Discover languages that power data science
• See the future of coding with machine learning tools

With the demand for skilled coders at an all-time high, Coding All-in-One For Dummies is here to propel coding newbies to the ranks of professional programmers.

Nikhil Abraham is the CFO of Udacity, an education company that teaches technology skills that help launch or advance a career. Prior to joining Udacity, Nik worked at Codecademy where he taught beginning coders across a variety of professions. He is also author of Coding For Dummies and Getting a Coding Job For Dummies.

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

Book 1: Getting Started with Coding 5

Chapter 1: What Is Coding? 7

Defining What Code Is 8

Understanding What Coding Can Do for You 9

Surveying the Types of Programming Languages 13

Taking a Tour of a Web App Built with Code 16

Chapter 2: Programming for the Web 19

Displaying Web Pages on Your Desktop and Mobile Device 20

Coding Web Applications 26

Coding Mobile Applications 28

Chapter 3: Becoming a Programmer 33

Writing Code Using a Process 33

Picking Tools for the Job 38

Book 2: Career Building with Coding 43

Chapter 1: Exploring Coding Career Paths 45

Augmenting Your Existing Job 46

Finding a New Coding Job 52

Chapter 2: Exploring Undergraduate and Graduate Degrees 59

Getting a College Degree 60

Enrolling in an Advanced Degree Program 65

Interning to Build Credibility 68

Chapter 3: Training on the Job 73

Taking a Work Project to the Next Level 74

Learning on the Job and after Work 75

Freelancing to Build Confidence and Skills 79

Transitioning to a New Role 80

Chapter 4: Coding Career Myths 83

Educational Myths 83

Career Myths 87

Book 3: Basic Web Coding 93

Chapter 1: Exploring Basic HTML 95

What Does HTML Do? 95

Understanding HTML Structure 96

Getting Familiar with Common HTML Tasks and Tags 102

Styling Me Pretty 107

Building Your First Website Using HTML 109

Chapter 2: Getting More Out of HTML 113

Organizing Content on the Page 113

Listing Data 115

Putting Data in Tables 118

Filling Out Forms 124

Practicing More with HTML 127

Chapter 3: Getting Stylish with CSS 129

What Does CSS Do? 129

CSS Structure 131

Common CSS Tasks and Selectors 135

Styling Me Pretty 146

Chapter 4: Next Steps with CSS 151

Styling (More) Elements on Your Page 152

Selecting Elements to Style 157

Aligning and Laying Out Your Elements 163

Writing More Advanced CSS 172

Chapter 5: Building Floating Page Layouts 173

Creating a Basic Two-Column Design 173

Building a Three-Column Design 185

Building a Fixed-Width Layout 193

Building a Centered Fixed-Width Layout 196

Chapter 6: Using Alternative Positioning 201

Working with Absolute Positioning 201

Managing z-index 206

Building a Page Layout with Absolute Positioning 208

Creating a More Flexible Layout 212

Exploring Other Types of Positioning 216

Flexible Box Layout Model 221

Book 4: Advanced Web Coding 231

Chapter 1: Working Faster with Twitter Bootstrap 233

Figuring Out What Bootstrap Does 234

Installing Bootstrap 235

Understanding the Layout Options 236

Coding Basic Web Page Elements 243

Build the Airbnb Home Page 247

Chapter 2: Adding in JavaScript 249

What Does JavaScript Do? 249

Understanding JavaScript Structure 251

Coding Common JavaScript Tasks 253

Writing Your First JavaScript Program 263

Using JavaScript Libraries 267

Chapter 3: Understanding Callbacks and Closures 269

What Are Callbacks? 269

Understanding Closures 274

Using Closures 277

Chapter 4: Embracing AJAX and JSON 279

Working behind the Scenes with AJAX 279

Putting Objects in Motion with JSON 289

Chapter 5: jQuery 295

Writing More and Doing Less 295

Getting Started with jQuery 296

The jQuery Object 297

Is Your Document Ready? 298

Using jQuery Selectors 298

Changing Things with jQuery 300

Events 302

Effects 305

AJAX 309

Book 5: Creating Web Applications 311

Chapter 1: Building Your Own App 313

Building a Location-Based Offer App 313

Following an App Development Process 315

Planning Your First Web Application 316

Exploring the Overall Process 317

Meeting the People Who Bring a Web App to Life 319

Chapter 2: Researching Your First Web Application 325

Dividing the App into Steps 326

Identifying Research Sources 333

Researching the Steps in the McDuck’s Offer App 335

Choosing a Solution for Each Step 338

Chapter 3: Coding and Debugging Your First Web Application 341

Getting Ready to Code 342

Coding Your First Web Application 342

Debugging Your App 350

Book 6: Selecting Data Analysis Tools 351

Chapter 1: Wrapping Your Head around Python 353

What Does Python Do? 354

Defining Python Structure 355

Coding Common Python Tasks and Commands 357

Shaping Your Strings 363

Building a Simple Tip Calculator Using Python 365

Chapter 2: Installing a Python Distribution 367

Choosing a Python Distribution with Machine Learning in Mind 368

Installing Python on Linux 371

Installing Python on Mac OS X 372

Installing Python on Windows 374

Downloading the Data Sets and Example Code 378

Chapter 3: Working with Real Data 387

Uploading, Streaming, and Sampling Data 388

Accessing Data in Structured Flat-File Form 392

Reading from a text file 393

Reading CSV delimited format 394

Reading Excel and other Microsoft Office files 396

Sending Data in Unstructured File Form 397

Managing Data from Relational Databases 400

Interacting with Data from NoSQL Databases 401

Accessing Data from the Web 402

Book 7: Evaluating Data 405

Chapter 1: Conditioning Your Data 407

Juggling between NumPy and pandas 408

Validating Your Data 409

Manipulating Categorical Variables 414

Dealing with Dates in Your Data 419

Dealing with Missing Data 421

Slicing and Dicing: Filtering and Selecting Data 424

Concatenating and Transforming 426

Aggregating Data at Any Level 430

Chapter 2: Shaping Data 433

Working with HTML Pages 434

Working with Raw Text 436

Using the Bag of Words Model and Beyond 442

Working with Graph Data 447

Chapter 3: Getting a Crash Course in MatPlotLib 451

Starting with a Graph 452

Setting the Axis, Ticks, Grids 455

Defining the Line Appearance 458

Using Labels, Annotations, and Legends 462

Chapter 4: Visualizing the Data 467

Choosing the Right Graph 468

Creating Advanced Scatterplots 475

Plotting Time Series 478

Plotting Geographical Data 481

Visualizing Graphs 483

Chapter 5: Exploring Data Analysis 489

The EDA Approach 490

Defining Descriptive Statistics for Numeric Data 491

Counting for Categorical Data 495

Creating Applied Visualization for EDA 498

Understanding Correlation 504

Modifying Data Distributions 508

Chapter 6: Exploring Four Simple and Effective Algorithms 511

Guessing the Number: Linear Regression 512

Moving to Logistic Regression 515

Making Things as Simple as Naïve Bayes 518

Learning Lazily with Nearest Neighbors 522

Book 8: Essentials of Machine Learning 527

Chapter 1: Introducing How Machines Learn 529

Getting the Real Story about AI 530

Learning in the Age of Big Data 541

Chapter 2: Demystifying the Math behind Machine Learning 553

Working with Data 554

Exploring the World of Probabilities 563

Describing the Use of Statistics 568

Chapter 3: Descending the Right Curve 571

Interpreting Learning as Optimization 572

Exploring Cost Functions 576

Descending the Error Curve 578

Updating by Mini-Batch and Online 581

Chapter 4: Validating Machine Learning 585

Checking Out-of-Sample Errors 586

Getting to Know the Limits of Bias 589

Keeping Model Complexity in Mind 591

Keeping Solutions Balanced 592

Training, Validating, and Testing 595

Resorting to Cross-Validation 596

Looking for Alternatives in Validation 597

Optimizing Cross-Validation Choices 598

Avoiding Sample Bias and Leakage Traps 601

Book 9: Applying Machine Learning 603

Chapter 1: Starting with Simple Learners 605

Discovering the Incredible Perceptron 606

Growing Greedy Classification Trees 610

Taking a Probabilistic Turn 615

Chapter 2: Leveraging Similarity 623

Measuring Similarity between Vectors 624

Using Distances to Locate Clusters 626

Tuning the K-Means Algorithm 630

Searching for Classification by k-Nearest Neighbors 637

Leveraging the Correct K Parameter 638

Chapter 3: Hitting Complexity with Neural Networks 643

Learning and Imitating from Nature 644

Struggling with Overfitting 653

Introducing Deep Learning 657

Chapter 4: Resorting to Ensembles of Learners 661

Leveraging Decision Trees 662

Working with Almost Random Guesses 670

Boosting Smart Predictors 673

Averaging Different Predictors 676

Chapter 5: Real-World Applications 677

Classifying Images 677

Scoring Opinions and Sentiments 691

Using Scoring and Classification 703

Recommending Products and Movies 710

Index 725

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.