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At CodeToday we want as many people as possible to get a taste of what computer programming is about. Most non-programmers think that coding is cryptic and complex, but it doesn't have to be. We believe that if programming is introduced in a way that helps beginners understand how we need to communicate with the powerful but not very clever computer staring at us, then we can get it to do whatever we want (well, almost).
We are setting a challenge for all of you out there, whether you live in our local neighbourhood or thousands of miles away:
Can you write your first ever computer program by the end of the week?
If you've answered no, that's the wrong answer - please try answering the question again.
How will you manage this? Where do you start? That's where we come in with our free micro-course that will guide you (that's all of you) to do this in 5 short blogposts.
The program we will write (sorry, you will write) is a very simple game which I have named "Goblin Hunt." It's a simple game because we're only doing this in 5 short blogposts, but you will write it, not download it from the App store.
All of the Lessons from 0 to 5 are available on this Blog (yes, that's zero - we start counting from 0 in computing). Lesson 0 guides you on what you need to do before you can start programming in Python, the programming language we will be using in this course. Lessons 1-5 will guide you step-by-step in building the game, introducing some of the basic concepts in programming and explaining why we're doing what we're doing. This will give you a taste of what programming is like, and the sense of achievement you get when you write code and it works.
Look for the Lessons in the main Blog page or in the recent posts section. You can go straight to Lesson 0 here, which is where you need to get started. Please follow us on Twitter @codetoday_ to get updates on programming and more.
How many people can we get to complete this challenge? Don't let us down…
