A gentle introduction to Drupal coding

This session is made for folks that are new to coding in general or new to Drupal coding in particular. The goal will be to cover the concepts invloved in working with Drupal code. We won't be doing any hands on work nor diving deep into PHP. There may be code snippets in the presentation to illustrate some of the topics but this is more like a lesson on what tools you have in the woodshop and basic carpentry concepts, rather than a tutorial on how to build a cabinet. This is specifically targeted at people who do not know what FAPI or a "hook" is and are trying to wrap their head around these new concepts. We'll start off with some basic discussion about working with Drupal as a framework and what that even means. What exactly is an API? How is coding with Drupal different from just using plain old PHP? Then we will go through an overview of how Drupal's code is set up and the various APIs and systems you can work with. We'll look at the various pieces and how they relate to each other. Specific things to be covered include: - What exactly is a hook? - How does the theme system work? - What is FAPI and why does it rock? - What is the menu system and how does it differ from the menu module? - How do you interact with the database? After the review of the major pieces, we'll touch on important, related things like coding standards and security. Then we'll finish up with community resources to help you on your coding journey.