Announcing Coding Math Video Series

Those who know me personally, or have followed my work on this site for the last twelve and a half years (has it really been that long???) know that I go in and out of all kinds of programming subjects. From the early Flash experiment days I was always into math and physics and interactivity. I’ve created some fairly popular games (Falling Balls, Gravity Pods). I’ve enjoyed creating algorithmic art at www.artfromcode.com, of which several pieces have been published or used in various contexts. And I’ve had a couple of gallery shows with my art. I’ve coded various other mobile apps. I’ve created a couple of very popular UI component sets – BitComponents, which were purchased by a company called BeamJive and published under their own name, and later the open source MinimalComps, which enjoyed huge success and popularity. I’ve worked on various build and process management tools, such as STProjectMaker, which has been pretty popular itself. I’ve revived my love of electronics from my youth and have posted a few things on that, which people have found useful. And of course I’ve written a dozen or so books on coding and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world. This is all above and beyond any coding I’ve done in my day job. Not a bad hobby!

So I jump around a lot, but as time goes on, I’ve been struggling to figure out that one thing that really drives me. When all is said and done, I think it comes down to teaching and educating others. That’s the one thing that I keep coming back to. I love to learn something and distill it down to its basics and then teach others in a way that is way more clear and easy to understand than all the stuff I had to wade through to learn it in the first place. Even when I create some piece of art or a game, and don’t publish the source code for that, I still have an urge to explain to others how to achieve the same effect, or mechanic, or whatever.

That’s one of the things I initially loved about conference speaking. But more and more, conferences are highlighting the more inspirational speakers. “Look at all this cool stuff I did. Work hard and someday maybe you can be like me.” Even the more technical speakers are generally just promoting some methodology they subscribe to or framework they created. There’s generally little room for teaching or education other than the few full or half-day workshop spots that some conferences do.

Writing books is awesome, but is a long, drawn out, several-month process before anyone but yourself sees anything that you write. This is true whether you’re working with a publisher or just doing self-publishing. And then people need to go buy the book to get anything out of it. I’ll probably do some more self-published books, but they will be shorter form I think.

Blogging is awesome. Or was awesome. I guess I just got burnt out on blogging. Does it show? 🙂

Earlier this year I was dabbling in woodworking. Set up a basement workshop and started watching videos by this guy Steve Ramsey on his Youtube channel, Woodworking for Mere Mortals. I don’t do so much on the woodworking front now, but I still watch every video he puts out, because he is so freaking awesome.

So I got thinking, maybe I could do something vaguely similar with coding. And thus was born…

The Coding Math Channel!!!

That’s http://www.youtube.com/user/codingmath

I cover a lot of the whys in the first video, but from what I’ve seen, a lot of coders struggle with math. They understand the language they are writing in, but when they are doing a layout or an animation or some kind of effect, they get bogged down in what formulas to use or what numbers to feed in, or what to apply those formulas to. This is something that, for some reason, has always clicked for me. And apparently, once it clicks for me, I’m able to explain in a way that helps it click for other people. I realize I’m tooting my own horn here, but this is what many people have said about my books and talks and blog posts. So I believe them.

Anyway, I figured I’d try to go over some useful math concepts, particularly as they relate to coding – the bits of math that coders need to know and will find useful. And not just cover the math as a disconnected, abstract thing, but use that math in code to demonstrate some kind of effect that you could really use in your own day-to-day programming. The video format is great for being able to draw rough sketches in real time while explaining some concept, and then switching over to demonstrate that concept while coding in real time, then showing the results in the browser – in real time. A flow that is not nearly as smooth in a book or blog post.

As of this writing, I’ve got four videos up there. I held off promoting this until I had at least a bit of useful content up there. I’m hoping to do minimally one video per week, probably publishing it on Monday mornings. I have a nice list of topics to cover, and if there’s any specific things you’d like to see covered, shout it out.

I know the production quality on these isn’t awesome. But I’m a noob here. Learning a bit more about the recording and editing process every time I do one, so bear with me. I think it will improve. 🙂

Also covered in the first episode is the rationale behind using HTML5/JavaScript as a base for these lessons. I’m not counting out the possibility of using other languages in some episodes though, as appropriate.

So, there you have it. Hope you find it useful.