simplonco/acw-whatsapp-workshop

companion content to the Africa Code Week "Your Own WhatsApp" workshop # Your own WhatsApp - Intro - Hi! I'm Andrei and I'll be your host on this whirlwind journey trough software development. - I have to admit that this workshop's name is a marketing trick on my part, to lure you in (since you're reading this, it worked!). You won't be learning how to build an app that works exactly like WhatsApp. WhatsApp already exists, so it would be pretty pointless. And WhatsApp is really valuable because everybody's on it. But you will be learning how to build something pretty close, and in a very short amount of time. In fact, because of the choice of tools we'll be using, you will be able to get something working much faster than whole teams could of just years ago! - Why this workshop? - Africa Code Week is about getting young people interested in programming, and while Scratch, the programming environment used in kid's workshops is great, no matter what your age is, you might be interested in learning how to create "real" software, whether you have an idea of an app you want to create, are just curious, or wondering if you should pursue it as a career - the Internet is full of learning resources, but it's overwhelming if you're just getting started - we want to eliminate with this course: everything you need to know you should find here! And if you don't, please use the "issues" feature of GitHub to ask your question, or give your suggestion for enhancement. - How to read this document - if you're starting out, you might want to go read trough without skipping (except perhaps if you need extra info in the appendices) - if you've already have some experience, you could skip to the part about how to build the app - but really, come back to the earlier parts as well, there is surely something for you too! - What is programming? - we don't really know (we've been programming for 50 years, which is nothing at the scale of History) - we call the discipline "Computer Science", which is the worse name - it's not about computers, and it's not a scie …