Hackers Guild, Bongohive’s programming group, is back with a bang. For the past two weeks, the tech hub was the place to be to learn about all things tech in captivating educational sessions by programmers from within and from outside Zambia. The first session was held from Monday 24^th to Friday 28^th March and taught Git(Version Control).

How do you bring together an eclectic mix of tech enthusiasts and web developers? By giving a JavaScript development day, of course! The session, which took place on Wednesday 9^th April, covered the basics of programming in JavaScript as well as some fascinating applications.

The hub was thrilled to have Connor “James” Leech as our presenter for the day. James is a software developer who holds Degrees from the Universities of California and of Cape Town. He has been developing JavaScript applications for the last two years and is currently involved with Firebase (Firebase was one the applications he discussed during the Tech talk).

For those who don’t know what JavaScript is, do not worry. We have you covered. JavaScript is a dynamic programming language. It works hand in hand with a web browser such as ‘Chrome’ or ‘Firefox” on both the client and server side. This basically means it works on any machine that has a browser and on any platform whether it is ‘Mac OS’, ‘Linux’ or ‘Windows’.  Although it does not require an internet connection, you may need one to download updates.

From the JavaScript basics we moved on to some applications using jQuery, Node.js, leaflet.js. Then we were taught how we could incorporate every tool learned to create our very own map, like that of Google maps using their API. Google had better watch out!

To end a captivating day, James gave a talk about Firebase; what it is and how it works. Firebase is a scalable, real-time backend for web application. It works with Libraries such as Web, Node.js, Obj-C , Java. For more information, visit https://www.firebase.com/docs/faq.html.

The event was packed to capacity and, needless to say, a big success. It drew in some old faces as well as new ones, most conspicuously students from the University of Zambia (UNZA). We were also excited to see more women in the audience. Go Girl Power!

Well, it has been a great week over here at Bongohive. We cannot wait to see what happens in the coming months.  If you are interested in any of our programs or if you want to check out upcoming occasions, go to the Hackers Guild website, or visit our Facebook page here or twitter feed here. Hope to see you at the next event.