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Category: Fun

#JustCode Challenge Week 9 – Quote Web Service

We’re wrapping up week 9 of #JustCode with a web app that demonstrates a web service, JSON and SQLite. The web app functions as both an app with a UI and a web service. It lets you enter your own quotes which are saved in a SQLite database. The web service randomly fetches a quote and returns it as JSON.

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#JustCode Challenge Week 8 – JumpStart App Launcher

A long, long time ago (1989) one of the first apps I ever made was an app launcher for the Atari ST. I called it JumpSTART. I originally wrote it in GFA BASIC and then later re-implemented it in Pascal (OSS Personal Pascal, technically).

When I got my first modem I went online with Genie and Delphi and uploaded JumpSTART as freeware. Even though it was freeware, I got a few checks in the mail from people that liked it.

I was reminded of JumpSTART when I saw my dock getting crowed. I thought replicating JumpSTART in Xojo would be a good project for week 8 of #JustCode. Though let’s just call it JumpStart this time around.

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#JustCode Challenge Week 7 – Pitch Tracker

As many know, I’m a big baseball fan. I was recently at Sea Dogs game (our local AA minor league team) and was sitting behind home plate alongside many scouts who were carefully watching the pitchers. I noticed several were tracking pitch counts using an app on a tablet or laptop. I thought that would make for an interesting app to make in Xojo, so this week I’ve made an iOS app (I’m on an iOS roll it seems) to track the location of pitches, similar to what I observed the scouts using.

The app shows a grid of the strike zone and you tap where the pitch was. You can use the buttons on the bottom to mark the pitch as a ball, strike or in play changing its color. Click the Reset button to clear the pitches for the next batter.

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#JustCode Challenge Week 6 – Bubble Popper

For this week’s app, I created a simple iOS app where you tap on “bubbles” to pop them. This was actually suggested to me by Dana Brown some time ago as something that would make a great diversion for her son. I have found it helpful with some of my younger nieces and nephews.

This iOS app demonstrates the use of a Canvas and the detection of taps. When all the bubbles have been popped, more are added. It never ends!

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#JustCode Challenge Week 4 – Mini Golf ScoreKeeper

Sometimes the idea for a great little app comes down to solving a silly little problem.

Last month, the family went mini-golfing for my son’s birthday. It was a lovely course called Pirate’s Cove Adventure Golf right next to the ocean. But they didn’t have scoring stands and we had to use a tiny pencil on a little cardboard scorecard to keep score. So this week’s app is a simple iOS app track of mini-golf scores!

The iOS app has two screens. The main screen has a giant Table that lists all the 18 holes. You tab on the detail button for a row (it’s the “I” icon) to go to the scoring screen.

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#JustCode Challenge Week 1 – Color Picker

It’s the first week of the Just Code challenge so I’m starting with something pretty simple. This app lets you choose a color using the system color picker and then shows you the color values in hexadecimal (useful for programming, HTML and CSS), RGB (red, green, blue), HSV (hue, saturation,value) and CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow).

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Jump Right In! Just Code Challenge

I’m often asked by kids and adults how they can start coding and learn to make apps? You could start with the usual books or videos.

But maybe you want to jump right in. When I started programming that is exactly how I learned. I tried things to see what worked and what didn’t work. I also looked at and modified other programs I found.

You can learn to code if you just code.

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