Code Avengers!

Today I got to put my hands on a great website called Code Avengers. It’s geared more for younger kids so I am definitely jealous that I did not have this around as tool to get me more into programming. Code Avengers does a great job giving you real world examples of the responsibilities of a programmer. I created a username and got started right away again with learning how to use the alert command as well as var. 

 
The lessons are very very easy to begin with as the website like, like I said, is geared towards the younger crowd looking to get interested in what programming feels like. The only thing I didn’t like was the stupid satellite shooting game the website keeps trying to get you to play in-between lessons as some sort of reward. I JUST WANT TO LEARN MORE CODE.

Other than that, lessons 4 contain a lot of math and I got a refresher on a lot of simple mental math that programmers definitely must be proficient at (so I’m told)

One thing though that might scare kids off is that to be a programmer often constitutes getting a computer science degree WHICH is considered ENGINEERING. Yea… engineering. For those of you out there in the college crowd you know that’s an insane amount of work.

One little thing that I did re-learn today was the /n command that indents your string to a new line. I know it’s very little but I want to document even little things like this. I can’t remember off the top of my head if /n is the same in other languages.

We shall see.  

“Hello World!”

Today, I decided to take my first steps into programming by looking at the first 2 lessons in Lifehacker’s Night School. 

The “hello world!” statement is the most famous first steps for programmers and it will be the same for me as I take my first steps into learning javascript for the first time.

In these two lessons, I was re-introduced into the familiar terms; strings, booleans, and variables.

Strings are alpha-numeric characters that are allowed in programming and are contained within quotation marks.

Booleans, I have been reminded that they are true or false statements that act like on and off switches. For example, you can ask your program “is this video playing?” If it was, your program would report back a true statement and if it wasn’t, you’d be returned with a big fat false.

In my first program, I confidently walked through my “Hello World!” statement after being introduced how to start strings in javascript. (each programming language is different)

After lesson 1, lesson 2 introduces the user into how to do variable statements in javascript. I re-learned in javascript how to declare a variables. I followed the tutorial and learned how to make a programming telling the user how many fruits the user ate. Advancing further, the tutorial teaches how programs that you use to write programming code can do calculations. This is demonstrated by stating a variable and then adding addition or subtraction signs in-between them to denote that their numerical values should be added or subtracted.

 

Spreading myself even thinner by learning Javascript.

All my life I’ve had ADD and have never EVER been able to pinpoint what my interests were because truth was, I am simply interested in everything. Go on, hand me a rock, I’ll draw a penis on it. NOW IT’S INTERESTING. In all seriousness, because of my lack of ability to focus on one subject of study, my dream has always been to major in everything . Revealing this to my parents, they told me I was “spreading myself too thin” and a complete idiot.

This blog is to celebrate their words and help me take a step with each post highlighting something new I’ve learned about javascript.

If you’ve read this far, I offer my thanks for allowing me to be a part of the internet that actually is noticed.

Cheers,

Randy