Using Amazon Echo to Control Lights and Temperature

Coming off of their popular Fire TV Stick, Amazon is venturing further into the home with something in a completely new category. Amazon Echo’s marketing page states that it is, “Always Ready, Connected, and Fast. Just Ask.” The service it provides...

Deploying a WordPress Theme with Git

You probably think I’m crazy just after reading that title. “Zach,”, you say, the words escaping your lips with a growing sense of urgency, panic, and fear, “isn’t it a HUGE AMOUNT OF OVERKILL to deploy changes to a WordPress theme using git?”

Followings in Sinatra

Let’s say that you’re building an app using the wonderful Sinatra, a lightweight web application development framework. You’ve got a User model/table created and you’d like one user to be able to follow another user. This relationship has to be persisted...

Creating an FTP Server for our Students

Note: Looking for the source code? It’s right here.

Hello there, everyone! It’s been quite a fun few weeks here at NYCDA , from our Angular + Swift lectures all the way to the AMA I did on Reddit yesterday. That was fun!

I’m here to tell you all...

What Does Swift Mean for Programming Education?

For those who may not have heard, Swift is the new programming language Apple released at their World Wide Developer Conference earlier this week to power iOS and OS X application development into the future. In the past, these applications were written...

Using Environment Variables to Safely Store API Credentials

As you begin to integrate third-party services into any application you’re building, you’ll probably need a set of “keys to the castle”, the API key and/or secret to tell this third-party service you are who you say you are.

A Basic User Authentication Model in Rails 4

Most developers already understand how user authentication works and just want to integrate it into their app straight away. However, going with a package like Devise or using Rails’ built-in hassecurepassword method as someone who is just getting...

Integrating ActiveRecord Into a Sinatra Project

This article is just a tad bit more advanced then our last one on How the Internet Works.

Sinatra is an open-source and super lightweight Ruby web application development framework. It’s a great way to learn about web application development without...

How The Internet Works

Part of the prework for our Introduction to Web Design and Development 100 class used to include an article about how the internet works. Since the article was taken down, we’ve been searching for a replacement. Most of these candidates for the spot...

SMS: The New Spam Frontier

Text messaging and e-mail are two entirely different beasts. E-mail is something you can catch up on. If I don’t answer my e-mail for a day nobody will worry about my health or personal safety. If I get a text though, I’m seemingly expected to reply...