Lesson 09: Using the Drupal Development Tools

Edit: Parts of the screencast became corrupted and were unrecoverable. We're doing our best to re-create the video elements, but we don't know if we have anyone available for that. If you'd like to volunteer, please drop me an email at andrew at squidgystudios dot com.

All about Drupal.org's developer tools and how to maximize your workflow by using the Drupal Way. http://groups.drupal.org/node/2955

~ As always, If you'd like to lead an upcoming lesson, even if you're not a master ninja, you should express your skills and desire to lead a class ~

Lesson 02: Coding Standards, Keeping code clean

Class will convene again this Thursday at 8pm EST (GMT -5). We will gather in #drupal-dojo, get on a worldwide Skypecast and fire up an improved screen-sharing application to do our lesson. We will also take time to debrief the work so far, talk about what we'd like to do going forward, and answer misc questions about the group and about Drupal.

The Lesson Plan:

1. Sound Check: make sure everyone can get on Skype and is in IRC
2. Debrief: talk about how we've been doing, about moving the regular lesson time to Sunday and/or starting other times
3. Drupal Coding Standards: what they are; why they matter
4. Keeping Your Code Clean: where to put stuff; how not to kludge
5. Keeping Your Code Safe: how and why to use Drupal functions for text, links, input fields and database queries
6. Making Your Code Intelligible: the Tao of commenting
7. Dojo Challenge!: review a patch for Drupal 5.0
8. Documentation: lets keep the great documentation coming!

Feel free to comment on this post with feedback. I'm especially interested in collecting links to documentation folks may want to read ahead of time, and/or we should look at improving as a result of this lesson.

See you in the Dojo!