Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. It can make writing text for the web a breeze and simplify formatting. As John Gruber, one of the co-creators of Markdown, explains:

“Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).”

In other words, a variety of programs understand Markdown and can convert it to readable text.

In this article (and in the video below), we’ll take a closer look at Markdown and how it works.

Why do we use Markdown?

Markdown is a simple, beginner-friendly way to format plain text. It’s not the best tool for everything, but it definitely has its place. Here’s an analogy that might help:

If you had an intensive project building furniture, a nail gun would be helpful. It’s fast and powerful. But, if you were hanging up a picture on your wall, a nail gun wouldn’t be right for the job — a hammer and a nail would work just fine and be just as fast.

Similarly, Markdown may not be as full-featured as HTML, but it’s fast, simple, and beginner-friendly. In fact, you may use it from time to time already. Reddit and GitHub both encourage users to format their comments using Markdown. You can also use it in text editors like Evernote.

How does Markdown work?

Gruber, who we heard from earlier, goes on to explain that Markdown is composed of two things:

• A plain text formatting syntax.
• A software tool, written in Perl, that converts plain text formatting to HTML.

Markdown vs. HTML comparison

To help illustrate how Markdown works, let’s take a look at how it compares to HTML. Here’s how you’d create a header, hyperlink, and list in Markdown:

## What is Markdown?
See [Markdown](www.markdownlink.com)
**List of tips**
1. *One asterisk makes the text italicized.*
2. **Two asterisks make the text bold.**

And here’s how the code above will look once rendered:

Of course, you can achieve these effects using Microsoft Word, but it tends to be more tedious. Unless you know the shortcuts for everything, you’re constantly stopping the flow of your writing to bold, italicize, change headings, and make bulleted or numbered lists.

Of course, another option is HTML.

What is Markdown?
See Markdown
List of tips

  
One asterisk italicizes
  
Two asterisks bold

This HTML code is written to produce the same result as the Markdown code above. Here’s how it looks once rendered:

As you can see, HTML is more complicated, especially for a beginner. You have to remember to close every tag. It’s very easy to make mistakes. While HTML is somewhat intuitive once you know it, Markdown is significantly more so.

How to use Markdown

You can save files written in Markdown with .Markdown or .md as the extension. From there, you need a Markdown application that’s capable of processing the Markdown file.

Markdown applications use a Markdown processor to take the Markdown text and convert it into HTML, which is then viewable on the web. Or, you can export the Markdown into other formats like PDF or Docx.

Where can Markdown be used?

The best places to use Markdown include:

• Websites: Markdown was designed for the web. It’s especially good for straight-forward, text-heavy sites like blogs. It’s also used on websites with a significant amount of user-generated content, like Reddit and Evernote.
• Documents and notes: If you want to write a quick note or document without having to stop, reach for your mouse, and click buttons to format, Markdown can come in handy. It’s also handy for writing to-do lists, and several apps support it, including WriteMonkey and SublimeText.
• Email: Some email clients (like MailMate and Airmail) support Markdown. You can also write an email in Markdown and export it to your email client or install a browser extension.
• Technical documentation: Writing technical documentation is already involved. It makes sense to use a streamlined formatting system that allows you to focus on what you’re saying rather than your formatting.

How to learn Markdown

The best way to learn Markdown is to use it. Here are some of Markdown’s formatting symbols and what they mean.

There are several online Markdown editors that you can take for a test drive. Markdown Tutorial walks you through a basic tutorial. Dingus is another option for trying out Markdown, and you can find more options here.

Next steps

Markdown is useful and easy to learn, but it’s also limited. For example, you can’t change colors or fonts. If you want to do more, you’ll need to branch out into other languages, such as HTML/CSS.

HTML provides the structure of web pages. CSS takes things a step further by defining the layout of the page and adding stylistic elements. To start learning either language, check out the courses below:

We also have a Skill Path that teaches you how to build websites from start to finish. It covers HTML, CSS, responsive design, accessibility, and more. You’ll also complete projects that you can add to your portfolio to show off your skills to current or prospective employers.

Web Development Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy

Web Development is the practice of developing websites and web apps that live on the internet. Whether you’re interested in front-end, back-end, or going full-stack, the content in our Web Development domain will help you get there.

Every app and software product is a work in progress. Once you download an app, it’s very likely that your device will periodically download updates for that app. With each update, you may not notice anything different, or perhaps you’ll note some relatively minor, incremental changes.

Most of these minor changes and feature updates result from sprints, which are planned and executed to keep software up to date without introducing too many big changes at once. Sprints are common in the world of software development, and anyone working to become a Front-End Developer, Back-End Developer, or Full-Stack Developer should be familiar with them.

In this article (and in the video below), we’ll go over what sprints are, why people use them, and how they work.

What is a sprint?

Essentially, a sprint is a set amount of time that a development team has to complete a specific amount of work. Sprints are generally planned to last about two weeks, though they can be as short as one week or as long as a month.

The big advantage of the short time frame of a sprint is that developers are forced to focus on pushing out small, incremental changes rather than large, sweeping changes. As a result, far less debugging is required, and clients using the software can get a more seamless experience with the product.

A sprint can require any sort of programming expertise. You might use Swift or Kotlin for front-end development to PHP or Node.js for back-end tasks. You might also use SQL for database management or Python for machine learning projects.

Why sprint?

Given that sprints are so limited in scope, you might be wondering why developers sprint at all. Why not “marathon” instead?

It turns out that there are a few reasons why developers prefer organizing software updates into smaller-scale sprints rather than large-scope “marathon” projects. Let’s look at some of the most common.

Sprints reduce debugging time

Suppose you’re working on a project involving thousands of lines of code. You excitedly start running it, and then your program crashes. What went wrong?

When you and your development team have thousands or tens of thousands of lines of code, debugging becomes one of the most time-intensive tasks in the project. And, all that time debugging means that there’s little progress made in the actual software product.

With sprints, there’s much less time spent debugging because there’s simply less code to check. It’s a bit like playing “Where’s Waldo?” Would you rather look for Waldo in a picture the size of a postcard or the size of a movie poster?

Sprints introduce change gradually

Even the most adventurous of us have to admit that some changes take time to get used to. For example, imagine waking up to find that everything in your favorite app has changed — from menu titles to color schemes to where your favorites are located.

Chances are, you’d need some time to adjust to the new changes. You might even feel less excited to use the software — which is exactly what developers want to avoid. By gradually introducing feature changes through sprints, developers can ensure that they’re introduced in a way that doesn’t disrupt the end-user experience.

Sprint planning

Though the sprint itself might not last long, there’s a lot of careful planning behind it — what goals should be achieved, how long it should last, and when to start.

Sprint planning involves product owners working with Software Engineers and various technical teams to ensure that the sprint outcomes are relevant and achievable. Product owners go by various titles, but they’re generally responsible for managing the many projects involved in a product’s development.

So, how do people plan sprints?

First, it’s important to remember that sprints aren’t designed to address every technical issue and wish-list improvement. Instead, the product owner and technical team work together to outline what the most important issues are at the time and how they can be addressed during the sprint.

Below are a few questions that product owners and technical teams might ask when planning a sprint. Note that while product owners are typically in charge of a product’s development, many decisions come from higher up in the company.

Which technical issues are affecting people’s experience the most?

The software issues that annoy app developers aren’t always noticed by the general public. Still, software hurdles that developers can overcome with a simple workaround might be quite frustrating for other people using the product. Sprint planning involves figuring out which features and updates would have the greatest business impact.

Which potential improvements are aligned with our short-term and mid-term strategies?

Even if it seems that every other app developer is coming out with Feature X, the product owner may decide to hold off and focus efforts instead on Feature Y, which could be more relevant or useful for the app’s target audience.

Which features will be most relevant at the end of the sprint?

Starting work on a new Thanksgiving theme for your app won’t make much sense if your sprint ends around the new year. A product owner is aware of holidays, demand cycles, and other external factors, and schedules sprints so that more people find the new features and improvements useful and relevant.

Which features and issues need to be most urgently addressed?

Sometimes, there’s a technical issue that could expose the company to legal or financial trouble. Perhaps a potential security weakness was found, or maybe there are new privacy regulations to address. These features get special priority to avoid future legal problems and losing public credibility.

What are the human limitations for the sprint?

It’s one thing to plan the perfect sprint on paper, but at the end of the day, it’s a team of real people who need to carry out the sprint project.

Are there enough team members with the right programming expertise to do the sprint? Are team members already juggling other projects? If so, which tasks take priority? And, of course, is the proposed sprint deadline a reasonable one?

Staying flexible during a sprint

Even when a sprint lasts just a couple of weeks, the reality is that business needs can change quite suddenly at any time. Halfway through the sprint, you may find that the product owner wants to change some of the fundamental sprint goals or even the sprint timeline.

If this happens, the important thing is to stay positive and flexible. Companies are chasing a moving target when figuring out how to create the best software and apps in the shortest amount of time.

Who’s involved in a sprint?

Depending on the goals and timeline involved, a sprint can involve just a few developers or dozens of team members. During the planning phase, the technical team also decides what kinds of people to include in the sprint, such as Front-End Developers, Back-End Developers, or Full-Stack Developers.

Now that you know more about sprints and how they work, the next step is to keep building on your knowledge as a developer. If you’re not sure what to learn next, our Career Paths help you focus on learning the specific skills you need to succeed as a new developer.

Web Development Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy

Web Development is the practice of developing websites and web apps that live on the internet. Whether you’re interested in front-end, back-end, or going full-stack, the content in our Web Development domain will help you get there.

Ruby is used for a wide variety of programming tasks, and it has a lot of cool built-in commands that make what could be very complicated tasks pretty easy. It’s considered one of the easiest programming languages to learn, and it’s a favorite among programmers. But, to master any language, you’ll still need to practice practice practice!

To put your Ruby skills to the test while continuing to build your knowledge of the language, here are 10 challenges you can try. While finding the actual solutions for each challenge is up to you, we’ll explain the logic you need to use to ensure Ruby gives you the right result and provide a tip or two to help you find the right expressions to create your function.

1. Numbers greater than 5

This problem involves finding the number of integers with a value greater than 5. In Ruby speak, you could put it like this: Given an array, count how many items are greater than 5.

To solve this, you begin by outlining the logic, then translating it into code. An array is a collection of data.

For example:

Array = [17, 7, 3, 6, 10, 1]

First, you go through the entire array and ask if each number is greater than 5.

You then create a “count” variable by checking if each number has a value higher than 5. If it is, you count it, and if not, you don’t.

2. Prime number algorithm

To create an algorithm that finds prime numbers, you have to decide if the number in question can only be divided by itself and 1. To do that, you have to check if the number can be divided by itself and each number below it, down to 1.

The process in Ruby is to check whether each number is divisible by these integers, and if it is, then Ruby designates it as a prime number.

3. Calculate the sum of prime numbers

When calculating the sum of prime numbers, you first have to identify the prime numbers within an array. You then have to add all of these prime numbers together. In Ruby, you can call an expression that selects the prime numbers from an array and then use the “reduce” expression to add them together.

4. Factorial numbers

The factorial of a number is the product of all the positive integers that are less than or equal to the number in question. For example, for the number 6, the factorial would be 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 = 720.

For Ruby, the logic involves first telling Ruby the number to begin with, which is your target integer. For the example above, you’d start with 6.

You’d then tell the program to multiply that number, then each one below it, by the integer that is one less than it. To get you started, in Ruby, the line accomplishing this task could look like this:

number = number – 1

5. Check for repeated digits

You can use Ruby to analyze a number to see if it has repeated digits in it. Your objective is to use Ruby to validate whether or not the number is made up of a series of the same digit in a row.

For example, the number 555 would qualify. A number with only two out of three digits repeating, such as 554, wouldn’t qualify.

The key to solving this Ruby problem is to isolate each digit in the series and then compare them to each other. To do this, you separate the digits and put them in an array, which allows Ruby to look at them as individual units.

6. Fibonacci algorithm

A Fibonacci Sequence is created by adding two numbers to create the next number in the sequence. You then sum that number with the one preceding it to get the next number,, and so on.

For example, if you have the sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, then the next number in the sequence is 55.

To do this in Ruby, you can use a “while” expression to create a starting value and then tell Ruby which integers to add together.

7. Missing number game

For this problem, you make a function that examines an array of numbers ranging between 1 and 10 that’s missing one number and have the function find the number that’s missing.

For example, the series of numbers could be [2, 1, 5, 4, 6, 9, 7, 8, 10]. This array is missing the number 3. The goal of this problem is to write code that figures out that the number 3 is missing.

Ruby has an expression called “findmissingnumber” that you can use to examine the array you’ve written. You can instruct Ruby to compare that array to one that has the missing number, and Ruby’s internal logic can pinpoint the integer that “should” be there.

8. Reversing arrays

In this problem, your objective is to reverse the order of the numbers in an array. For example, if your array was [8, 2, 9, 4], you would want your code to return [4, 9, 2, 8].

To accomplish this in Ruby, your primary tool will be the “reverse” expression, which examines an array and flips the order of the values in it. You’ll also use a “while” expression and designate the position of each number to dictate which numbers to apply the “reverse” expression to.

9. Return the following number from an integer passed

In this problem, your goal is to create a function that uses a number as an argument, then increases it by a value of one. For example, if the number in your argument is 3, you want 4 to be returned, or if your argument number is -8, you want the number returned to be -7.

In Ruby, you’ll use the “addition” expression to do this, which adds a value to the value that’s in your argument.

10. Return the sum of two numbers

This challenge calls on you to write a function that adds together two numbers within an argument. For instance, if you have an argument like this: (5, 4), you want your function to add them to get their sum.

For Ruby to do this, you’ll also use the “addition” expression, which tells Ruby to add the two values within the argument.

Code challenges are a fun and low-stress way to test your programming and problem-solving skills. Plus, you can use them to help you prepare for an upcoming technical interview. To learn more about Ruby, check out our Ruby courses below:

Ruby Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy

Ruby is a dynamic, general-purpose programming language most commonly used for Web Development. Its key designer, Yukihiro Matsumoto, said that Ruby was designed for humans, not machines, making it a favorite of many developers and tech companies. Its most popular implementation is with the powerful…

Whether you’ve been learning how to be a Front-End, Back-End, or Full-Stack Developer, you may have come across the concept of Agile software development. It’s a popular term today, though many people aren’t sure how it compares to its main counterpart, waterfall development.

If you’re curious about what Agile software development is and how developers implement Agile, then you’ll want to keep reading — or watch the video below.

Why do we create software?

People design and develop software to turn a specific idea into a reality. That idea should solve a problem that people have now or will have in the near future.

Let’s take, for example, messaging apps. You probably have at least a couple of messaging apps on your phone, and you can probably name a few more. But, suppose that you wanted to create a new messaging app.

The first question you might ask is, “How is my messaging app better than the others out there?” With so much tight competition, you need to innovate quickly if you want your software — and your software company — to succeed.

Your messaging software needs to either do something completely new or do something better or more efficiently. To achieve this, software companies adopt two main approaches to software innovation: incubation and iteration.

Incubating waterfalls

The incubation approach to software development is a bit the way it sounds. Teams of Software Developers incubate by:

• Thinking about an idea for a while
• Doing the necessary research
• Developing the software

The result of the incubation approach is a full-fledged product that works as intended from the beginning. Rather than being presented as a work-in-progress, incubation products appear on the scene ready to go. You might even say they “waterfall” into the market.

Agile iteration

The iteration approach to software development is quite different from the waterfall approach. Rather than come out with a rich, full-featured software product, iterative software development results in a relatively barebones product, known as a minimum viable product.

The goal of the iterative, or Agile, approach to software development is to come up with the simplest product that people will want to use. Once the product is released, developers continue to apply Agile methods by:

• Fixing bugs
• Making improvements
• Adding new features based on client/market demand

4 Values of Agile

The Agile approach can be used for any software project, whether you’re developing an app with Go or Swift or working on back-end development with PHP. But, while Agile involves specific software development workflows, it’s much more than that.

Agile is a holistic approach to company culture. In fact, there’s an entire Agile manifesto authored by the original developers of the Agile approach back in 2001. The Agile approach incorporates four main values.

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

While any Agile developer would agree that processes and tools are helpful during software development, individuals and teams should carefully consider which ones to use.

While the traditional approach might be to justify why an established process or tool shouldn’t be utilized, Agile developers always first ask why a process or tool should be used.

2. Working software over comprehensive documentation

Have you ever played a board game that takes an hour to figure out before you start having fun? Agile developers hate those kinds of games.

The same is true for software that requires you to read through a ton of documentation or instructions before you can start using it. Instead, Agile developers aim to create software that’s as intuitive and simple to use as possible.

3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Contracts are necessary for any business, but Agile developers see their clients as more than someone sitting across the negotiation table.

Successful Agile development means involving the customer at all stages of the development process through daily meetings, transparency, and constant feedback.

4. Responding to change over following a plan

Change happens all the time, usually when you least expect it. An Agile approach means that the software development team is alert to external changes that affect the product and willing to immediately adjust the development plan to respond to the change.

12 principles of Agile

Along with these four values, the Agile approach embraces 12 principles, which can be found in the Agile Manifesto. If English isn’t your first language, no problem — the Agile Manifesto is available in almost 70 languages.

Scrum: The most popular Agile methodology

Many methodologies implement Agile values, from just-in-time frameworks to methodologies adapted from the lean principles of manufacturing. Let’s explore the scrum methodology — one of the most popular ways to implement Agile software development.

Sprints are the backbone of scrum

Even after Agile developers release the first version of a software product, the work doesn’t stop there. Developers then gauge and prioritize which software features should come out next.

Just like the original software, Agile updates are incremental. The development cycles for these small-scale updates are called sprints, which last anywhere from a week to a month. We go more into sprints in another article.

Sprints are short-term, keeping with Agile values. If something needs to be changed in the middle of a sprint, Software Developers rethink the plan and adjust the sprint goals and time accordingly.

The daily scrum

In keeping with the collaboration and interaction values of Agile, sprint projects include daily scrums, which are brief meetings to discuss progress, feedback, changes, and next steps.

These meetings are often done with everyone standing to keep people focused on each other instead of their phones and computers.

The scrum master

As you can imagine, multiple sprints take a lot of team effort, especially when time is tight and requirements change at the last minute. That’s why there’s always a scrum master — who keeps an eye on the entire sprint team.

The scrum master isn’t always a technical expert but instead focuses on the project management side of the sprint to make sure that team members stay motivated and manage their time well.

What else should developers know?

Now that you understand what Agile is and how it’s different from waterfall development, you’ll want to make sure you’re learning the right hard skills too.

Whether you’re interested in becoming a Front-End Developer, Back-End Developer, Full-Stack Developer, or something else, our Career Paths can help you figure out which skills you need to succeed in your new career.

Web Development Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy

Web Development is the practice of developing websites and web apps that live on the internet. Whether you’re interested in front-end, back-end, or going full-stack, the content in our Web Development domain will help you get there.