In August 2016, GE’s CEO said he wanted every new hire to learn to code. And I must say, I do agree! In today’s digital, data-driven, self-service world, everyone should learn to code. But, to clarify, I’m not necessarily referring to programming in C# or Swift (like I do), but rather “coding” for automation.
Many of tools (“high-high-level languages?”) exist to simply coding through the use of a drag-and-drop user interfaces and useful pre-built functions and integration. Examples are Scratch for kids, Lego Mindstorms’ EV3, IFTTT and of course, Workflow.is, which I’ve been posting a lot about recently!
And, anyone who uses Excel on a daily basis should really spend some time learning Excel Macros aka. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)… although this is really programming and certainly cannot be called simple!
I think Workflow is a great way to start to “code” something useful! So to help, here are my Workflow posts and what you’ll learn. All this is original content!
Learn to get user input and pass it to a built-in Workflow function Show Definition - the easiest guide, using Dictionary Definitions via the Workflow App.
Learn about other Workflow functions to retrieve Contacts, retrieve Calendar Events Replace Text, and control flow with If, all in a Action Extension - through the steps to Add a Cheap IDD call prefix to a phone number prior to dialing.
Learn to create a notification center aka. Today Widget, get location data, and save as a CSV-formatted text file on iCloud Drive - by using Workflow to Track Travel Expenses.
Learn about QR codes, iOS Uniform Type Identifiers (UTI) and the vCard format - Scanning a contact via a QR code.
Learn to replace strings and extract the URL query string in a Workflow Action Extension - just to workaround Youtube’s restriction on Picture in Picture (PiP) on Safari iOS.
Learn about passing data in a URL query string, and extracting text data from a returned data with a Regular Expression - see Retrieving an exchange rate .
Learn to use iOS URL Schemes, and URL encoding prior to passing query strings - by creating Workflows Using Google Maps.
Happy coding!
Updated 29 April 2017: Added a workflow for Youtube guide.