This site is in transition while I migrate my PHP and Ruby courses over from CCSF and CSM. Though the California Community Colleges are sinking (ever so slowly and painfully), I do have time to move my courses and ensure that they will be available to anyone who’s interested in getting into Web programming.
Courses
My introductory PHP and Ruby courses will be available June 1, 2012. Eventually my Python and HTML5 courses will make it over. My college courses run for 18-weeks, but I will be rewriting my WiseBison courses to be self-paced, modular, month-long classes.
Besides putting my the courses here, I’ll have my blog, code tips, PDFs, free stuff, and reviews. If you’re interested in updates while I’m getting set up, sign on to the RSS feed.
Keep hacking…
Welcome to WiseBison.com. This web site will be the home of my CCSF and CSM Ruby, Python, and HTML5 courses. The courses will cover the content of in my college classes, with the same reading, coding assignments, and quizzes. The courses will all be self-administered and self-paced. I will eventually create some short-term instructor-led (by me) courses around these topics. The first courses will become available June 1, 2012.
This will also be my blog, replacing my HackingtheValley.com blog. Check back now and then to see what’s going on, or sign up for the RSS feed to stay up to date.
Keep hacking…
The future has arrived and I can’t ignore it—I’m going to add schema-less databases (MongoDB and Redis) into my PHP, Ruby, and my soon-to-be Python courses. I ran a few tests last week and I’ve got to admit that I was totally impressed. Mongodb was especially interesting. I’ll be showing my intermediate PHP students MongoDB next week.
I admit that when I saw these “No SQL” dbs several years ago, I turned up my know-nothing nose and hoped they would just go away. Oh, how the times do change.
I demo-ed Rails for my PHP students tonight—the famous blog in 15 minutes demo. The room was filled with blown minds. That’s is the usual reaction when I show Rails to a PHP audience—shock and awe. Some are amazed that Rails makes some tricky things ridiculously easy, and some feel that I’ve been hiding the good stuff from them.
Still, Rails’ beauty isn’t enough to pursuade a student to switch from PHP to Ruby. It’s simply that PHP has more mindshare—and more job potential—than Ruby. My students are pragmatic; they see PHP as a better investment of their time than Ruby, a language they’ve never heard of.
I can’t blame them. Despite my crush on Rails, I’ve never worked on a Rails project other than my personal sites. Though PHP is a homely language, noisy with braces and semi-colons‚—and bizarre inconsistencies—it pays the bills. That’s hard to give up for a pretty face.
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