Programming Languages

You’ll be using a lot of programming languages in the Lede Program, let’s take a quick look at a few of them.

Python

Python is a multipurpose programming language that is at home crunching, parsing text, or building Twitter bots. We use it extensively in the Lede.

HTML

HTML isn’t technically a programming language, it’s a markup language. A hypertext markup language, to be exact. HTML is used to explain what different parts of web pages are to your browser – this is a paragraph, there’s a header over there, maybe a footer down at the bottom of the page.

CSS

If the web were left to its own devices, it would be nothing but black text on a white background. Web developers use CSS – cascading style sheets – to dress it up. Headlines become bold, links change colors, and tables get backgrounds all thanks to CSS.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language that’s in charge of interactivity on the web. When images wiggle or popups annoy you, that’s all JavaScript.

While it’s historically been used for the fronted (i.e., your browser), JavaScript has making inroads the past few years into the backend via node.js.

git

While git isn’t a programming language, it’s certainly often used with them – it’s a version control system. Version control is a way of keeping track of the history of your code, along with providing a structure that encourages collaboration. Github is the most popular cloud-based service for keeping track of your code using git, and we make heavy use of it during the Lede Program.

SQL

SQL – Structured Query Language – is a standard language for interfacing with databases. Whether you’re working with a tiny SQLite file or a powerful PostgreSQL server, SQL is the common tongue that ties it all together.

R

R is a programming language that is used widely for mathematical and statistical processing.