If you think back to your high school geometry class, you might remember that "If/Then" statements were used in solving mathematical proofs. But even if maths wasn't your thing, you actually use If/Then statements every day: "If it's raining outside, then I will bring an umbrella." Or, "If I eat this doughnut, then I will be very guilt- um, happy."

Sphero might be best known for their brilliant Star Wars robots - R2-D2 and BB-9E are all kinds of awesome. But the company is about more than making nifty playthings. The Sphere Mini is a spherical robot that acts as a gateway for kids to get into programming, as well as a funky little gaming device.

From HTML to CSS, there are hundreds of programming languages out there, and companies across every industry are willing to pay top dollar for those skilled in them. While you could go the conventional route and sink four years of study at a university, SitePoint Premium offers an alternative that will get you up to speed with today's top programming tools for a fraction of the time — and money.

You're at your desk coding and you hit a brick wall. Maybe it's a strange error, or round after round of fruitless debugging. Or maybe you're just trying to understand quaternions. How can you get past the problem when caffeine and staring into the middle distance fail?

Dear Lifehacker, I hear you mention open source software fairly often, but I don't quite understand what that means in relation to what I use everyday. Any help?

Are you a coder or white-hat hacker looking to make some money on the side? Bug bounty hunting might be the perfect gig for you.

While computers are poor at creativity, they are adept at crunching through vast numbers of solutions to modern problems where there are numerous complex variables at play. Take the question of finding the best delivery plan for a distribution company -- where best to begin? How many vehicles? Which stretches of road need to be avoided at which times? If you want to get close to a sensible answer, you need to ask a computer.

Stack Overflow's "Documentation" site was an attempt to create collaborative documentation for software. A year on, the company has essentially admitted the initiative was a bust and although it has "learned quite a bit" from the experience, Documentation itself is biting the digital dust.

iOS: LowRes Coder is a fun app that lets you craft your low-resolution, pixelated games that resemble arcade favourites of yore. It uses the classic BASIC programming language to bring your games to life.

JetBrains has been working on its Visual Studio competitor, Rider, for almost two years, but this week marks its exit from beta and into the realm of retail. The cross-platform .NET and web development IDE has a lot to offer, though its subscription-based pricing may see it struggle against Microsoft.

As your programming skills increase, it becomes more important that you maintain a consistent coding style. When it comes to curly bracket placement, capitalisation and variable naming, it's best if you and your fellow developers are all on the same page.

Good podcasts are hard to find, especially on the topic of software development. Fortunately, we have kind souls like Reddit user "mohamed3on" who are willing to curate the better ones and compile a list for the rest of us.

As a developer, you might have a general idea how modern 3D games create their scrumptious visuals. It doesn't hurt however to have more specific knowledge, especially if you do any sort of work involving 3D graphics. Even artists will find it beneficial to know how the models and textures they create are transformed into 2D images.

Over the past three weeks, the /r/ProgrammerHumor subreddit has reinvented the on-screen volume controller hundreds of times over. Starting with one user's sideways slider, users have created funny volume controls based on laptop screen angle, fidget spinners, battery power, latitude and longitude, and the digits of pi. I've gathered some highlights here. For maximum appreciation, imagine how each one sounds.

Visual Studio is the go-to development environment when it comes to making .NET apps, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the alternatives. JetBrains of Resharper fame has its own IDE, called Rider, which is pretty feature packed -- and still being improved upon. Unfortunately it hit a speed bump a few months back, running afoul of licensing issues with .NET Core.

HBO's Silicon Valley made fun of the old coding argument between tabs or spaces for indentation. But it turns out it's no joke, at least when it comes to making money as a developer. Stack Overflow's recent programmer survey revealed an interesting tidbit: devs who uses spaces make around 8.6 per cent more than their tab-tapping counterparts.

If you aren't a programmer, you're probably not going to know this, but there's a vicious rivalry lurking in the code of every app you use. If code isn't written consistently -- using either the tab or the space button to create indentations -- the format can get all wonky, making it difficult for multiple authors to contribute to the code. While the methods produce virtually the same result, lines have still been drawn.

The full-blown version of Visual Studio its still limited to Windows machines, but if you want a similar experience on non-Microsoft platforms, the open-source Visual Studio Code is about as close as you can get. Official builds are available for macOS and Linux and thanks to a fellow by the name of Jay Rodgers, you can get it on Chromebook and the Raspberry Pi.

There are hundreds of notable programming languages out there, but few can hold a candle to Python's user-friendliness and versatility. That's why many aspiring programmers choose Python for their first foray into computer science, and thanks to the Complete Python Programming Bundle, you can too, even if you're a complete coding newbie.