Category: Tips

Learn to develop web applications the modern way – Part 3
In the programming industry like others, you will find many terms(vocabulary) which are not usual in common speech. In this article of the series about “learning how to develop web applications in the modern way”, allow me introduce to some of those terms. In case you missed reading some parts, click here to read part one or click an item in the table of contents below.
1. Prerequisite
2. Web design vs Web applications development
3. Extending is smart!
4. Components of a Web application.
5. Powering web applications with WordPress
6. The do list application
What is extending in programming?
In simple terms it’s the opposite of developing applications from scratch. In detail it means a coder will write his/her own application from the start to finish without using and relying on other programmers code. Therefore to extend is when a coder starts with someone’s code to develop an application or feature.
In Object Oriented Programming paradigm, to extend means to derive/instantiate objects which inherit features in terms of method and properties from existing class(es).
What are the advantages of extending?
1. It makes programming a lot easier because you don’t have to write every line of code by yourself.
2. It is cheaper than starting from scratch which will require a bigger team and tools for the team besides investing in the team to learn how to work together.
3. Availability of help from all corners though this depends on the choice of framework. Most programmers choose a framework which has a large number of contributors, the profile of the founder, the number of tools in place and how old it is.
4. Easier learning curve due to availability and supply of learning material on top of a comprehensive documentation.
5. Ask me how people become better than others at coding and I will tell you that the secrete is hidden in reading code written by others whether good or bad coders.
My personal recommendation is to spend more time creating solutions than learning how to create solutions. In the upcoming part, share about the basic and major components of a Web application.
Merry Christmas and a marvelous New year.
December 23, 2017
Our volunteer's hurting set back!!!
The trendy today in a country commonly known as peaceful and a pearl of Africa since the landing of the Europeans dating back 100s of years ago is the total opposite.
It is sad to accept but it’s true, the reality and what we have to find a solution for. I used to hear the so called group of angry youths going around Kampala beating innocent civilians and stealing from them what belonged to them. This were just stories on the internet until recently when 3 of my own people, one of them almost lost life to this group. The other two lost belongings such phones, laptops etc.
One of my people is a young skilled, hard working web design and volunteer aspirant who volunteered to redesign our website youinspireyou.org. Whose way of living has been made difficult by the greedy lazy group of thugs who stole two laptops from him while in a public taxi.
How did it happen?
At around 10:00am Calvin took a taxi from Bukoto heading to Kampala city center, on their way they realized there was a lot of traffic jam which prompted them to U-turn through a different route.
He recalls, being requested to properly close the door closest to him. Then a lot of things happened in this short period of time.
Upon noticing disappearance of the bag were the laptops, that’s when he was sent out of the taxi.
What does this mean?
- Reporting the case to police won’t really help because so many people have lost their belongings in a similar or worse process but no help has been offered to them besides spending some amounts of money to police.
- We have to take it and agree that Calvin won’t be able to earning a living until after several months.
- The development of youinspireyou.org website will pause until further notice. Meaning the arrangement of our community technology skills program( Mobile Digital Hub) has been dented/negatively affected since one of the most active volunteers has no means of contributing anymore.
- Most importantly is to replace the laptops, therefore we have to raise above $1200 and replace the two laptops.
How do you handle such cases in your location?
November 12, 2017
What will be able to do in 2018?

From experience I know either set your goals for the new year a few months before the end of the current year and be guaranteed some success or end wondering why you’re not developing as some of your colleagues and age mate. Not to mean to compete though, just emphasizing taking full responsibility.
Last year, I planned to be a better coder, tech trainer, team member than the years before.
At the moment of this writing am enjoying every moment I spend with fellow founders and employees at Gagawala Graphics limited. A branding agency located in Kampala, Uganda along Nasser road, where I double as a web developer and operations manager. We intentionally work in an open work space, producing crystal clear prints, graphics, webs and mobile apps. Doubling responsibilities has never been as easy as said however much it’s a joy to see accomplishments in a good timing and through a peaceful way. Ours is a brand where people don’t get bigger salaries but everyone reports at work everyday, inclusive weekends sometimes.
Towards mid 2016, I met someone who would actually be a fellow coder and great friend. I hadn’t found a challenge before until I met him. We shared ideas about our work and personal goals. You can really see someone energized and ready to face any code challenge in favor of helping businesses improve. He sets himself deadlines and meets them most of the time, he loves to help out friends if they are failing with a code challenge. It’s for Ronkas that I manned up and coded my first ever Hybrid Mobile app, which has taken me about 10 months. Being able to extend WordPress and build a custom API which serves our mobile app, has not only challenged me, it has made me a better coder and a web developer.
I have also held a couple of tech training classes throughout this year teaching the basics of technology in local communities, to web development at Hostalite Cyber Academy and Metajua a coffee processing company.
To be sincere am happy 2017 have achieved some and looking to 2018’s task. So what’s in the goals?
Languages.
With the availability of internet which looks to get cheaper next year, I hope to use this opportunity to learn some French and Swahili, which will be a big inspiration for the taking on Chinese. China an interesting country that I would love to visit someday maybe to import some tech items to my country or even export skills. I decide to learn French, because I love it and am looking forward to make friends which our neighbors in Kenya and would love to communicate effectively as much as possible.
Career upgrade
My path into technology started with selling translated movies to being a typing to serving in an internet cafe as assistant helping clients who were not comfortable to search on their own, repairing and troubleshooting computers and networking them to make sure they share resources efficiently.
During my free time, I could learn about coding in HTML, PHP and little bit of JavaScript. When I left internet cafes, I co-found a business offering computer repair, network setups and consultation to internet cafes and small offices. Cutting the long story short I was aspiring to be a web designer which have done for some years and now want to upgrade to web and hybrid mobile app development. That said, in the new year I should be a MEAN or MERN stack developer. Able to use Mongo db, Express, ReactNative and NodeJs efficiently.
Music
As of now all I can say is that the piano has got 8 notes which are C, D, E, F, G, H, A, B also called 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 keys on the scale. These notes run across the low and high pitch sides whereby the low pitch is the left whereas the high pitch is the right of the piano. The player has got 10 fingers numbered started from the thumb as 1 to the little(pinky) as 5,
At the moment am able to play the 8 notes as well as the C, D and F chords. Looking forward to a better piano and guitar player before end of 2018.
I have a feeling I want to communicate and connect with many people of different life backgrounds and my involvement in such things will help.
Want to advise me anything or wanna share with me your goals, let’s meet in the comments.

October 8, 2017
Our dreams have been awaken!

One of the reasons we started a community Mobile Digital Hub, is to introduce as many people as possible to technology in Uganda and around the world. Fulfilling this that task won’t only teach most Ugandans about technology, it will also encourage learning of many important skills for life.
We discovered that most people who applied for the training were older than 19 years and had either little education background or none at all. When we introduced them to internet, and they learned how to carry out simple research with the internet you could see each of them one searching something of their own interest. One of them was searching about money lending businesses, the other was searching about the best schools in Uganda perhaps because she has a daughter who could start to go to school soon.
On the graduation day we gave out both certificates of completion and participation, we also received a lot of feedback from the learners. [Photos coming soon]

September 17, 2017
Aspiring to be a programmer?
Since I started programming I have been asked one question, isn’t what you’re doing hard?
I think it’s in human nature to be afraid of something we don’t have an idea about or we extremely have little information about. In fact most of the time it’s because of lack of passion that will make things look hard.
First of all they are many types of programming, depending on the type one can be harder than other for some people.
That said in my opinion don’t judge programming before you actually get involved, because if you do chances are you may love it more than anything else you’ve ever done before.
Programming has helped me help businesses in my country establish a website, it is also helping me learn a lot of different things in life because of the tasks am sometimes presented to besides of helping teach others about something life changing.
My advise. If you are to try programming and don’t want to waste time.
1. Don’t live in fantasy, live in reality. Give it a try and if things are not interesting feel free to quit and try something else.
2. Learn the programming fundamentals before diving into a programming language. Learn the theoretical definition of programming, variables, functions, conditions, loops, initialization, declaration, construction, destruction, instantiation, data types, identifiers, expressions, statements, termination, invoking.
3. Make friends with programmers in your city. Programmers don’t have a life indeed but they can create one with people who understand them most. That way it’s easy to exchange ideas.
4. Choose the type of programmer you want to be so that you can specialize in tools required of that particular programming type. For example, you may concentrate on HTML5. CSS3, JavaScript if you want to be a web frontend programmer or JAVA if you want to be an applications developer. You may even want to take a computer science course, if you want to one day develop things IDEs, Text Editors and compilers.
5. Keep revising, practicing, sharing and learning. Remember moving forward like a snail is much better than moving backword like a landslide.
The above are my personal opinions and I have developed them based on the 5 years of web development experience.
You’re welcome to program.
September 10, 2017
A millionaire despite offering a world changing product for free for over 20 years.

Today I would like to publish about the creater of the web who happens to inspire me a lot because I resonate with his works.

If you don’t know him, his real name is Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee from United Kingdom, born on June 8th, 1955 and a professor, computer scientist, engineer and public speaker widely known as Tim Berners-Lee.

I think during his early days of employment there was a challenge to share and update information not only by the researchers where he used to work at CERN. In 1980 he proposed a solution which would for decades be change the entire planet.

So he proposed a project based on the concepts of hypertext, to solve this problem among researchers.

Though HyperText Markup Language was achieved in 1990, a decade after his proposal, he provided it to the world free of cost without any patents and licenses whatsover. In my personal opinion, I doubt if google, facebook and numerous popular web platforms would be in existence the HTML invention and being free of charge. Would I be able to send emails and blog?

Some sources say his networth is $50M, rich enough to retire. The challenge we face today as young men and women is our ability to put in a lot of efforts to solove a problem we all face and open it to world for free.

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee has never put it to rest, at 62 years, a World changer he is still an advocate for the web, he has never made HTML private, he still teaches and talk to people.

A take way from all this. People matter.

Photo credit to http://olayemiogunojo.com

August 30, 2017
Ordering for a new logo? Here are some tips for you.

A logo is a sensitive symbol of our causes and businesses/organisations. Most of the time they communicate our character in the market, so they are subjective.
In this article, I would like to share one important consideration for anyone planing to make a logo by themselves or order one from professional graphics designers. The critical part of the logo today is ease of use on numerous devices and technologies.
Some years ago that flexibility wasn’t much of a requirement because logos could be mostly shipped on print media.
Technology growth is quickly changing that. In that a logo should now be produced in various versions characterized by dimension and color.
Therefore a new logo or even a old but revised one should at least have three basic versions:- the standard version, alternative version and mobile version.
The standard version
This version is what you are likely to get if you design a logo for yourself or even from a professional designer who doesn’t care much about the other versions.
Pros
It is in full color.
It is big enough(dimension) which makes it good for any print.
Cons
It may not work well on small devices like mobile phones, tablets and websites.
The alternative version
As much as it’s important, this version is usually ignored by many logo owners. It is also called the negative or grey scale logo.
Pros
It comes at a dimension of the standard logo though in monochrome.
Being monochrome it can be used in most of the partners’ media especially the mobile, web applications and websites.
Cons
Since it’s monochrome, it can’t be used anywhere if your logo originally comes in more than one color.
Mobile version
The mobile version is a small logo in terms of dimension(width and height) made in both full color and monochrome. It is an important logo for mobile applications and websites. If the standard logo is complex i.e has many symbols which may not be visible shrink mode, effort should be taken to remove some of those symbols in this version.
Pros
It will fit and represent the brand on the widely used devices today.
It is good to be used as an icon, for a mobile application and website fav icon.
Cons
It is not good for print media.
Bonus: It is good discipline to always have the original editable versions of the logo and any graphic for your brand. Without them flexibility is not paramount as you stand a high chance of color and dimension inconsistency in the future publications.

August 17, 2017
Why Bootstrap is a bad fit for WordPress Themes

Since its release in 2011, Bootstrap has quickly become the most popular front-end framework on Github. This popularity also has an impact on the world of WordPress themes, with authors using the f…
Source: Why Bootstrap is a bad fit for WordPress Themes

June 14, 2017
Why haven't you developed a single Mobile App yet?

Are you interested but have never gotten the courage to take the chance or have tried but upbeat by the long learning curve?
First of all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, so you are not to blame. I personally love to create solutions for myself and the other people around me.
I utilize the skills I have to create the solutions. Take for example, by having a HTML, CSS and PHP skills, I’m able to run a web agency which also gives printing and graphics design services. At this agency, I work as the operations manager and leader of the digital department.
Due to business dynamics, there is need to learn a new skill to strengthen my personal portfolio as well as that of the company.
What comes to my mind is developing mobile apps which can solve real life problems. For this I will concentrate on developing Android apps not Windows and iOS, due to my target consumers. Since am not a fan of Java, I chose to go Hybrid way because at least I wouldn’t have to learn a lot, I will port my HTML, CSS, PHP and SQL knowledge to reach my target. Additionally, I would have a chance of compiling my mobile app code, for other platforms as well we grow without investing money for another developer yet the client’s budget is too low.
Recently I posted about setting up the Android Hybrid App development environment article, to let you know how practically it’s easy to get started.
Right now, am creating my own App, which will be used for personal finance book keeping, with features such as automatic notification a few days towards loan date expiry, loan amortization and so much more as time may allow. I hope to an api and remote storage in the cloud, in future to be able to attract more people to use it.
I think by now, I would have completed developing the app but looking at available resources, couldn’t manage learning one.
Listen I have set 10 days, of researching and studying about JQM. In a few days, I have been able to develop the login and logout screens.

April 2, 2017
5 Units to educate 100,000 people in Uganda.

A while ago I discovered my calling which is about educating or teaching others. Fulfilling my why is not a comfortable zone and I must discover how.
I already set my dream affirmation for what I think is a brilliant goal. First of all, it’s not the only goal I have in regards to improving technology skills and employment opportunities in Uganda. However by analyzing several ideas, I believe it’s the sustainable one than the others. My goal is to teach over 100,000 in Uganda, in 3 years about technology and fallback to monitor progress and impact.
The number looks big especially reflecting to my personal financial ability and the availability of resources.
Courageously, an organisation in Tanzania (http://poweringpotential.org) is using almost 90% of the technology we shall use for our Mobile Digital Hub.
What happens is that we shall use single board computers (Raspberry Pi), connected to a LED Monitor together with a USB Mouse and Keyboard. We shall install a favourable but light linux distro, open office, google chrome and firefox browsers and notepad++ open source software to cut costs. Additionally the project will run on green solar energy, and the trainers will be volunteers. We take this approach so that we can reach as many communities where people can not afford a computer as well as are not in position to pay study fees for computer lessons.
I kindly request for your advise/help in all ways to realize this dream and have people empowered.
Thank you

March 19, 2017