This is an excerpt of an article by Jon L. Denby of NYU explaining a Coding 101 course using our curriculum. If you're interested in using Codecademy in the classroom, get started here.

"If you don't speak 'computer' in our current economy, it's a little like not being able to read the street signs; it's a major handicap," says Leibovitz.

Thankfully, there is no shortage of students eager to learn.

Leibovitz's first class, co-taught with programmer David Hu in fall 2012, had only 50 seats available. They were all reserved in less than three minutes of class registration opening, and the wait list grew to 120 students.

While teaching courses at NYU Steinhardt like Video Game Theory, Video Game Industry, and Digital Literacy, Professor Leibovitz realized that many of his students lacked an understanding of how digital systems actually worked. He was looking for a simple way to teach his students computer programming when he stumbled upon the Codecademy website:

I realized it was a really, really good solution for several reasons. First of all, it was something that was modular. You could do it on your own time. You could do several units, or all the units or tracks. It really gave you options.

It was also based on real-world, complete projects—I mean every single track that you have there is based on building a game, building a tip-calculator, building a Blackjack game, building a choose-your-own-adventure game—all kinds of real-world projects. It was written in this language that I thought would resonate tremendously well with our students because it was down to earth, it was English, it was easy to understand.

Continue reading here.

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one—desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd.

This creativity mission has been going on for over five years now, and we are very thankful to all the designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month. This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for June 2013. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!

Please note that:

• All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
• You can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

Something Fresh

Designed by Wallpaper FX from Romania

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

I love Paris

Designed by Dreebies from Poland

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

It smells like Summer!

“June brings the smell of Summer! So let’s enjoy the sunny days getting a surfboard or sunbathing on the beach!” — Designed by WebOlution from Greece

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 2560×1600
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 2560×1600

Ice Creams Away!

“Summer is taking off with some magical ice cream hot air balloons.” — Designed by Sasha Endoh from Canada

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Viking Meat War

“Designed by Ricardo Gimenes from Brazil.” — Designed by Ricardo Gimenes from Brazil

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 640×960, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1050, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 2880×1800
• without calendar: 320×480, 640×960, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1050, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 2880×1800

Harvey Milk

“Designed by Greentree Graphics designer, Amy Coons, from the USA.” — Designed by Amy Coons from United States

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080

National Doughnut Day

“Enjoy June 7th with this National Doughnut Day Wallpaper” — Designed by Andrew Stanton from United States

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Summer

Designed by Bart Goris from Belgium

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080

Skateboarding Day

“World Skateboarding Day.” — Designed by cheloveche.ru from Russia

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Beat the Heat, Go for a Holiday!

“Beat the heat tap your feet! enjoy this summer, go for a holiday!” — Designed by debobrata debnath from India

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Healthy Living

“Learn how to live a long and healthy life, practice a healthy lifestyles, exercise, diet, release stress…” — Designed by Eloise Ha from Malaysia

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Someone Needing Blood Somewhere

“14 May 2013 – World Blood Donor Day. The event serves to raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products and to thank voluntary unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood.” — Designed by Nutan Doiphode from India

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1920×1080
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1920×1080

Father’s Day: Never Lose Hope

“I made this wallpaper to give special attention to all the fathers with severe illness.” — Designed by Yakari Van Dessel from Belgium

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Do You Remember

“Remember the king of pop” — Designed by Hannes Verdoodt from Belgium

• preview
• with calendar: 800×480, 1280×720, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

Fire Hydrant

“Time to pop the fire hydrants as June heats the summer up.” — Designed by Marshall Taylor from Canada

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050

I’d rather be playing cello.

“Day-dreaming about the cello.” — Designed by Jonathan Mellas from USA

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Digitalized Love Typography Sketch

“Digging through my old sketches, I found this one I had almost forgotten about… With a little help from Ricardo, the sketch was brought to life in a jiffy! Hope you like it :-)” — Designed by Iris Lješnjanin from Freiburg, Germany

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 640×960, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1050, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 2880×1800
• without calendar: 320×480, 640×960, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1050, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 2880×1800

Watchmen

“My Soul waits for the Lord more than a Watchmen for the morning” — Designed by Pat Buenaobra from Philippines

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Love Thy Neighbor

“I created a little “Love Thy Neighbor” cross-stitching (with a subtle rainbow-colored nod to LGBT Pride Month), then I put it in a frame and hung it on the wall for everyone to enjoy! :)” — Designed by Jeremy Martinez from USA

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Free

“Celebrating Philippine Independence” — Designed by Dsaurus from the Philippines

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1920×1080
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1920×1080

Balloons at Sunrise

“Hot-air balloon ride on a summer morning.” — Designed by dangerbrain from USA

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1920×1080, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1920×1080, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Hot Typography

“Dear Smashing Mag Team, This is our first contribution to Smashing Magazine Monthly Wallpapers collection. Please spare us if we did not understand & follow any rule. This is simple typographic wallpaper for Hotter June. Designed using 3 colors. We expect to be included in this June Month Wallpapers Collectoin. Thanks in Advance. Team Zanetine. Zanetine Web Design www.zanetine.com” — Designed by Zanetine Web Design from India

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Leaf

Designed by Michael K. and Kai Szendi from Austria

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Wedding Month

“June is a beautiful month with plenty of sunshine and pretty flowers, no wonder it’s a popular month for weddings! I made this calendar to celebrate June and also to celebrate my wedding anniversary!” — Designed by Thuy Truong from USA

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1920×1200

Abstract June

Designed by Glenn Van Haute from Belgium

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1600×1200, 1920×1440

Rath Yatra

“The Jagannath triad are usually worshiped in the sanctum of the temple at Puri, but once during the month of Rainy Season of Orissa, usually falling in month of June or July, they are brought out onto the main street of Puri (Bada Danda) and travel (3 km) to the Shri Gundicha Temple,in huge chariots (ratha), allowing the public to have Holy view (darsana). This festival is known as Rath Yatra, meaning the journey (yatra) of the chariots (ratha).” — Designed by The Dreamer Designs from India

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Rainy Season

“It will be raining cats and dogs during the rainy season in Japan.” — Designed by Evacomics from Singapore

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

Small world

Designed by Oxana Kostromina from Germany/Russia

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1366×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1366×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Join In Next Month!

Please note that we respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. This is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves.

A big thank you to all the designers for their participation. Join in next month!

What’s Your Favorite?

What’s your favorite theme or wallpaper for this month? Please let us know in the comment section below.

Further Reading

• Beautiful iPhone And iPad Retina Wallpapers
• Creating A Lasting Impression
• Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: June 2012

© The Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

One thing I’m constantly asked by aspiring programmers is: What incentive do you need when you want to learn to program? A lot of them have started and stopped. They’ve never been able string together enough time to make real progress. There are amazing resources out there — Treehouse is one of my preferred — but tutorials alone won’t get most people over the hump. You need an idea that you want to build to ground your learning. When I started learning to program in February 2012, I had the idea for Uncover and that was the only way I got through it.

Why do I need an idea?

The main reason you need an idea when learning to program is that learning just to learn is boring for most of us. Of course, you should learn to program to be able to become fluent in the language and underpinnings of technology; but we learn best when we have personal goals that we’re pushing ourselves to reach. In high school and college, we learned to pass tests, to do well in school, and to get a good job. Learning to program outside of school is a different challenge. You need to set your own goals.

When you’re stuck with a problem in a tutorial and keep failing to figure it out, the motivation of knowing that you’ll need to be able to solve it to be able to implement your app will get you through it. Without that, the frustration of temporary failure will deplete your good intentions, you’ll get frustrated, and you’ll give up.

What kind of idea do I need?

The best goal you can have is to learn programming so you can implement something that you want to see built. It doesn’t need to be the next Twitter or Facebook. Your idea should be simple enough to execute on your own or with minimal help from your programming friends. (If you don’t have any, they’re only a friend’s friend away.)

It should be what’s often called a CRUD app, which stands for Create Read Update Destroy. CRUD apps are the easiest to build and require very minimal programming expertise, as you’re only reading and writing code from and to the database. Luckily, most apps are CRUD apps, or at least begin that way.

How do I get started building my idea?

Within a few weeks or more of learning to program you can be writing your first CRUD app. After I had learned the basic syntax of Ruby on Rails, what I did was have a project open for the app I wanted to build while I was learning to program. Then as I went about learning user creation, for example, I could implement it on my app. This leads to having put in place a mishmash of code, no question, but as long as you can get things generally working, that considerable accomplishment will give you the motivation you need to continue learning to code.

That’s how I built the first version of Uncover. Then after a few months, when I had it generally working and continued to learn, I re-wrote it from scratch with my additional experience. The point is that without having an idea in mind that I wanted to build, I would have given up my ambition to program before I had learned anything practical. Having an idea was the very best thing I could have had when I learned to program.

The post Learning to Program Requires an Idea appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

It’s fascinating to watch the evolution of a brand. Companies large and small inevitably change their identity over time. Those branding changes can be inspired by changes of personnel, changes in the cultural landscape, evolution of competitors, and most commonly a change in the company’s focus.

This great infographic from the thelogocompany.net illustrates the evolution of some huge corporate logos from the past century. What’s really interesting is that the identities haven’t always been an improvement: both the 1955 and 1971 VW logos are preferable to the 3D rendered version of today; the classic 70s and 80s YMCA signs have been replaced with a gastly purple and red blob; Xerox’s ‘x’ wrapping a globe doesn’t speak of digitized data in the same way as the 2004 iteration.

Conversely, some brands will be happy to leave the past alone: Apple’s first logo is ghastly (fortunately it only lasted a year); Pepsi’s first logo looks awfully similar to a well known competitor; and Canon’s first logo looks like it belongs on a Thai restaurant.

What’s intriguing, is that tiny shifts in how a shape is drawn produce radically different ideas, something to bear in mind next time you’re sketching out ideas for branding.

Which of these brands has improved the most over the years? Which one should have stuck with what they had? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, VW logo image via Steve Mann / Shutterstock.com

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It’s fascinating to watch the evolution of a brand. Companies large and small inevitably change their identity over time. Those branding changes can be inspired by changes of personnel, changes in the cultural landscape, evolution of competitors, and most commonly a change in the company’s focus.

This great infographic from the thelogocompany.net illustrates the evolution of some huge corporate logos from the past century. What’s really interesting is that the identities haven’t always been an improvement: both the 1955 and 1971 VW logos are preferable to the 3D rendered version of today; the classic 70s and 80s YMCA signs have been replaced with a gastly purple and red blob; Xerox’s ‘x’ wrapping a globe doesn’t speak of digitized data in the same way as the 2004 iteration.

Conversely, some brands will be happy to leave the past alone: Apple’s first logo is ghastly (fortunately it only lasted a year); Pepsi’s first logo looks awfully similar to a well known competitor; and Canon’s first logo looks like it belongs on a Thai restaurant.

What’s intriguing, is that tiny shifts in how a shape is drawn produce radically different ideas, something to bear in mind next time you’re sketching out ideas for branding.

Which of these brands has improved the most over the years? Which one should have stuck with what they had? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, VW logo image via Steve Mann / Shutterstock.com

Fantastic JavaScript Chart Generator – only $37!