Hello, and welcome to the Developer Student Club at the University of Birmingham!
We're really proud to be part of a a new, worldwide initiative, lead by Google! Throughout the year, we're going to be running developer clubs, with talks, workshops, mini-hackathons, and anything else that you guys want.
The idea of the program is to try and link the theory that we learn at uni, with the practical skills required in the real world. So, during our sessions, we're going to be using industry-standard tools, common APIs, and a whole variety of different technologies to build awesome real-world projects that can go on a CV or portfolio.
Essentially, we're here to help you out, so if there's anything that you think we should run, then contact us!
Projects
Here you can see a list of some of our previous epic projects/workshops that we've had!
Quantum Workshop
Nov 23, 2022
Dr. Miriam Backens, lecturer and researcher at UoB, gave an introductory talk to quantum computing. We covered the basics of quantum computing, some of its applications, and the theory behind programming a quantum computer. ๐คฏ
Then, IBM gave us a tour of their quantum computing SDK, Qiskit, and we got to play around with builing our own quantum circuits and running them! โ๏ธ
The slides from Miriamโs talk are available on their personal webpage.
What Is Open Source?!
Oct 12, 2022
Justin gave a workshop on why open source is awesome and how to contribute to open source projects. ๐ป
During the workshop, we explored the benefits of open source, how to find open source projects to contribute to, and how to contribute to them, ultimately culminating in pull request #352 to the CSS website!
Git Workshop
Feb 16, 2022
Victoria and Dan hosted a โGit Workshopโ as an introduction for first years and second years to Git - a version control system widely used in industry and by ourselves.
In the workshop, they covered installing git, making commits, need-to-know git commands, merge requests and more! Towards the end of the event, we carried on workshop tradition by having all the attendees fork a repo and sign the guestbook by making a pull request.
Discord Bot Workshop & Botathon
Nov 26, 2021
Following the growing success of our Discord server, we ran 2 related Discord Bot events.
Discord Bot Workshop
On Friday evening, we gave members a crash course on all things discord.py, giving them all the tools they needed to make a discord bot themselves.
We also recorded an online version for people who couldnโt attend in person.
Discord Botathon
On the Saturday, we ran a 5 hour Discord Bot Hackathon with teams making their own bot using knowledge from the day before. The winners won a Raspberry Pi Zero each, but everyone was the real winners as we all got plenty of pizza.
Python Workshop
Oct 13, 2021
After an 18-month gap of not being able to hold in person events, we were eager to get back into things with more workshops.
We kicked off with a Python Workshop early in 2021, specifically aimed at students who hadnโt used Python before.
The workshop covered everything from the basics of how python works, inputs, data structures, and of course the traditional โHello World!โ Resources are available here.
Google Hashcode
Feb 20, 2020
We hosted a Google Hashcode Hub to encourage and help people take part in Googleโs global coding competition! It was massively successful, attracting many students from across all years of study.
Despite some livestreaming difficulties, everyone had a fantastic time playing with the problem, some teams coming fairly close to the finalists ๐
Android Workshop
Feb 17, 2020
Will ran a fantastic introduction to Android app development with Java, covering all the basics that make mobile apps tick ๐.
During the workshop, we explored setting up a development environment, creating a basic guessing game app, and previewing it in the Android emulator.
Docker Workshop
Nov 27, 2019
Justin ran a fantastic workshop as an intro to docker, a fantastic tool to help manage deployments of software! ๐
We covered all the essentials, from what containers actually are, to running them, and building our own images and playing around on Katacoda! ๐๐
