How to learn to use Fuse from scratch

How-to Discussions
1

Hello “Fusers”!

My name is Rasmus, I’m 26 years old and has never coded before, well yeah I tried Codecademy, but I quickly gave up because of the steps being non-motivational.

I have wanted to get into coding for a while, because I have some ideas for some apps, which I think will draw a lot of users. I have simply just put it on hold, because I lacked direction, as in now one I know could say “This is what you need to learn, you can use this to learn it and you will be able to do this and that”, and then there’s been the whole thing about learning different langauges to code, which seems kind of overwhelming.

But then I saw Fuse on a Facebook advertisement! And I thought to myself “THIS IS MY CHANCE!”.

So my question is, where should I look to learn to code with Fuse? Should I only learn xml, and where is the best and most userfriendly place to learn xml? Or should I also learn JavaScript and some other languages?

I’m a noob with dreams and ambition and will to learn, so please don’t tear me a new one :wink:

Thank you in advance

2

Hey there Rasmus!

First of all let me say we’ve all been beginners before, and I really hope nobody previously has “torn you a new one” when asking questions like these. Everyone has to start somewhere, and asking questions takes a lot of courage, so props to you for doing that already :slight_smile:

As for what you should learn to use Fuse, I would suggest first just going through some of our tutorials; in particular, our basic getting started tutorial. The idea is to make something first, even if it’s basically just copy+pasting (and ofc don’t actually copy/paste; you need to get it “in the fingers” as we say), THEN study what you wrote and learn how it works. This should get you to a point where you can at least read some code and try some basic things yourself, so next I’d try looking at some of our other examples, and try to understand them. In particular, the new animated menu icon and basic UX animation examples are smaller and easier to follow than some of the larger ones.

A small aside: our UX markup isn’t technically 100% XML, but it’s mostly similar. Reading a tutorial like this one should be really helpful for just learning the syntax, but the examples and documentation on our site will help you more with actually making stuff. Beyond just creating tags etc, there isn’t too much XML-specific stuff to learn to use Fuse.

JavaScript is a bit of a different story - luckily for you, though, it’s everywhere; so it’s a pretty good skill to invest a bit into anyways. Unfortunately I usually recommend codeacademy for learning JS, but it seems that didn’t quite work for you. A quick google/skim gave me some other options I might recommend:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Learn/Getting_started_with_the_web/JavaScript_basics

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/javascript/

http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/02/javascript_tutorial_-_lesson_1/

I’m sure other forum users can point at many more; they’re everywhere :slight_smile: . A lot of JS tutorials will also have you do a little bit of HTML in addition, which isn’t bad at all - working with UX/JS is pretty similar to HTML/JS. It’s of course very hard to pinpoint a best way to learn anything, as everyone learns differently. But in general grinding through many different tutorials from many different places seems to work pretty well for me at least. At the end of the day, a lot of the pragmatic side of programming comes from getting a feel for your tools, even if you don’t fully understand how they work. So keep in mind that while you may not understand everything, you’ll pretty quickly understand more than enough to move yourself closer to your goal.

And of course, our community is pretty friendly! Feel free to post any issues you run into in the forums here, or we may be able to help you in our slack community as well.

Whew, that became a bit lengthy, haha. Hope this helps, and good luck :slight_smile:

3

Hello Rasmus,

It’s great that you are interested in learning to code:) Fuse is a great environment and tool to learn and build apps. The video tutorials will definitely help, and looking and reading into the Fuse documents should assist you in great lengths as well.

Regarding JS, most people recommend Codecademy, but since you mentioned that it was not motivational enough, I found some other resources you can look into. I am not exactly sure what kind of coding material or environment you specifically prefer, but I hope that these sites can direct you in some way.

CodeSchool is pretty similar to Codecademy in terms of their teaching style, but CodeSchool provides fun and interesting tutorial videos. Unfortunately, CodeSchool is not free, and to watch most of their tutorial videos, you most likely have to pay either the monthly or yearly fee. https://www.codeschool.com

This is another site where you can learn more about JS as well as other languages such as HTML/CSS. http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp

In addition to these sites, you can also practice your code here. https://jsfiddle.net/

If you are really passionate about learning, you should also check out the MOOC courses offered at most Ivy League universities such as Stanford. This particular course is a beginner course and does not require any prior programming experience.

http://online.stanford.edu/course/computer-science-101-self-paced

Like Jake mentioned, it’s really difficult to pinpoint the best way to learn, but I found that sticking with one resource and finishing it helped me get through and understand a bit more. I am also new to learning to code so I know it can be difficult sometimes finding the best ways to learn. So if you find something that seems to work for you, my suggestion is that you stick with it until you finish and then move on.

Good luck to you as well:)

4

Thank you both very much! Many references and very helpful :smiley:

I will look into as much as I can muster :slight_smile:

But, I don’t get the feeling, that my question was answered whether or not I need to learn JS and other languages or just one? Which I presume is what you are referring to as UX? :slight_smile:

What I missed in Codecademy was being explained why this does that, and that does this. I like to know why things does stuff, and how they do it, it gives me a better understanding of the whole cycle. Just like when I learned about engines in ships - or just engines in general. It not enough for me to know, that because of the engine moves pistons up and down, it also moves the vehicle. I need to know what makes the pistons move and why and how. If that makes any sense :confused:

Anyways, I can’t wait to get into this!

I have an idea of making the most user friendly and sweet looking movie catalog, and also a meme database/creator where one can use simple search words to find a meme that fits any situation.

5

Haha, those are great app ideas!

Yeah, when I say UX or UX Markup I mean the language we use to build our UI’s. These are the .ux files you’ll see in the example projects and the projects you create. You’ll need to learn that language, and our video tutorials, existing examples, and documentation are great places for that.

At the end of the day you will also need to encode some logic that doesn’t make sense to do in a markup language like UX, and this is what JavaScript is for. So you’ll also need to learn that and use it to some degree. But most of the code you’ll be writing for your apps would be UX markup.

When you’ve gone through some tutorials and are feeling up to it, you should start on one of your project ideas as soon as possible! The best way to learn is through the experience of reaching one of your own goals, and it sounds like the ones you’re reaching for are pretty doable. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with :slight_smile:

6

Thanks! :smiley: I am a movie collector with over 1320 original DVD’s and Blu-ray discs, so a catalog to be able to find them is a must. The catalog I use atm, I have been using for the past few years - but they stopped improving it and fixing bugs :frowning:

And I hate to sit in a debate, and have to look through Google for a good meme.

Ok, I thought so :smiley: So UX and JS, got it :slight_smile:

  • But what is UX Markup? Sorry for the stupid question, it’s probably not hard to find out, is it the same as just UX?

Haha! Logic that makes no sense :smiley: funny oxymoron!

Thank you for your info, very encouraging and helpful!

7

You can take guidance to learn Fuse. several helping sites are there to make you understand regarding this side. I started to learn it from eduhelphub.com at the very beginning, and it is good to understand the entire think easily. So as also applicable for you.