How to think like a Computer Scientist [free 13-hour coding course]

Here are this week's five links that are worth your time: 1. Learn how to think like a computer scientist. Watch this Comp Sci professor code his own motion-detecting avatar from scratch in real time. He doesn't even use the internet. Just JavaScript, HTML, and his intuition. This is a master class in creative problem solving with code. (13 hour YouTube course): 2. Learn all about the JavaScript object data structure. This beginner's guide will teach you some Object-Oriented Programming concepts like Key-Value Pairs, Dot Notation, and Constructors. (20 minute read): 3. One of Silicon Valley's most notorious failures was Color. The startup raised $41 million and launched their mobile app in 2012 only to shutter it after almost nobody used it. What happened? They did not test their product with end users. If only they had built a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) first. Well, that is what you are going to learn how to do with this course. You'll build an MVP that you can immediately use to get feedback from your friends and family. (1 hour YouTube course): 4. CSS is an essential tool. It's also a flexible tool. To highlight this, here are 10 different CSS approaches for centering a DOM element. If you code along with these examples, you'll be able to add these approaches to your CSS toolbox. (15 minute read): 5. A Checksum is the result of a cryptographic hash function. You can use Checksums in Linux to compare two copies of the same file across networks, to verify their integrity. Has one of the files been changed? Corrupted? When was it last updated? This quick tutorial will show you how to use the Linux cksum command. (6 minute read): Did you know that every day more than a million people use freeCodeCamp? Only 8,281 people donate each month, but we are extremely grateful for each and every one of them. I invite you to join these kind people, and to support our charity's mission: Quote of the Week: “Computer science inverts the normal. In normal science, you're given a world, and your job is to find out the rules. In computer science, you give the computer the rules, and it creates the world.” — Alan Kay, Developer, Computer Scientist, and Father of Object-Oriented Programming Happy coding. - Quincy Larson Teacher at I share useful things on Twitter at If these emails aren't worth your time, you can turn them off: