Coding for Designers, Managers, & Entrepreneurs III

Overview

Do you want to experience what it is to go from idea to code? If so, this is the place for you! This is the third course in the Coding for Designers, Managers, and Entrepreneurs Specialization. If you’re a hands-on collaborator with developers, this course is specifically designed for you. In this course, we’re going to focus on creating application logic (controllers) with Javascript, including interfaces to external API's and resources you can leverage to do a lot quickly. Coding for Designers, Managers, and Entrepreneurs III and its specialization will help you build a creative confidence and competence that will make you an even better collaborator on digital projects. This course was developed at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and is taught by top-ranked faculty. This course will close for new learner enrollment on 13 June 2025. The University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business is creating a series of courses on Coding with AI (including Algorithms, Interfaces, and Data Models) that will be available early in the summer of 2025.

Syllabus

Automating Your Gruntwork with Javascript

At its core, software is about automating tasks that machines can do better than humans, and you'll go straight to the heart of that with this week's case and related practice. You'll use Javascript to extract, transform, and load/render external data- a Google Sheet.

Creating & Managing Users with Google Firebase

More than ever, modern software development is about integrating pre-existing code and services. Rarely is a modern application built from scratch. As you’ve seen, creating and maintaining code is a lot of work, so it’s better to leverage basic building blocks that someone else has created and is maintaining. This week, you’ll work with some code that interfaces to Google’s Firebase, a popular ‘back end as a service’ platform.

Creating Your Web Application III

Like the first two courses in the specialization, in this last week you’ll apply what you’ve learned to your coding project. You’ve got a lot more breadth in your coding skills now, which is awesome! However, now it’s even more important that you anchor yourself in the user story and prototype you selected to make sure you know what you’re trying to have happen with your code. Otherwise, it’s easy to end up confused. While I hope you’re now comfortable using it, you do not have to use Google Firebase, though that’s certainly an option. Note 1: If you started here in the specialization, you’ll want to work from the options in the brief to build a prototype on JS Fiddle in HTML and CSS, and then layer in some Javascript. Note 2: If you’d like to start with a new concept from the brief for this course, that’s fine.