1/21/15 Update

This is a list of updates and interesting things that happened in Byte Club from ~November to 1/21/15

1. Mr. Follet from the NSA spoke to us.

• Mrs. Follet in the high school has a son in the NSA, so we got him to give a presentation to us
• He was a math major from Lafayette who actually ended up going into their Math and Computer Science program and eventually entered the NSA
• The NSA doesn't just have jobs in computer science; they have jobs in a plethora of fields such as Math, Electrical Engineering, Cryptography, Foreign Language, Business, and others, so you don't need to just be a computer science or math person. This was a very eye opening opportunity for us to see what government jobs entail

2. Hour of Code

• Our school held an hour of code to increase interest in computer science
• All of the current computer science students received passes that they could give to another student in order to let them go to Ms. Reed's room to participate and try coding for a period during the school day
• Most of the students that participated in the Hour of Code went on Hourofcode.org or codecombat.com
• The event was a big hit in our school, we had a lot of students and even some teachers participate and many students seemed to have a new appreciation for computer science

3. App troubles

• Around mid-December the team working on the school app found a large problem: if they were to continue using AppFurnace, they would have to pay $1000 in order to publish the app.
• So they now have to restart the app from scratch with a different IDE
• Let this be a lesson to those of you doing projects in the future: read the fine print and make sure that whatever you are using doesn't blindside you with fees
• The app team is now using Phonegap's API with Aptana studio and Github in order to work on it, which means the app will be completed in a different language now

4. Byte Club Gits Ready

• Because of the positive experience the school app team has had with Github, we have decided to move all the Byte Club projects into Github as well
• This lets the officers manage how far everyone is and make sure that everyone is on schedule since everyone is under the same Company (Cedar Crest Byte Club). Additionally, GitHub helps each team manage their own projects and makes it easier for groups to share code.

So that should cover everything that happened. If anyone has anything else the Byte Club did during that time frame, please contact their secretary, Andrew Dalzon.