Welcome to day seventy four of coding! You’ve now got hair down to your ankles, all graying, the length of your fingernails makes it tough to type, and we’re now on Advanced Autolayout for iOS Applications. Ready to start?
We’re going to start off today with the Learning Variables app, which you can download for free from the App Store for Mac or iPad (go to that link to jump to either store).
That will introduce us to the concept of variables and we’ll have a bit of fun building stories with those variables.
After a little bit of that, we’ll move back to the Everyone Can Code Puzzles book. This chapter is a big step up from previous chapters. We leave behind Learn to Code 1, which is the playground we’ve used so far, and leap into Learn to Code 2.
We also might use the Spirals playground and Answers playgrounds.
You can find them in the More Playgrounds bar at the bottom of Swift Playgrounds. Answers appears in the Starting Points section, and Spirals appears in the Challenges section.
So make sure you’re all set up for 1pm, Irish time! See you then!
We’ll be practicing our loops with some more Learn to Code 1. We’ll also take a look at a new playground that might spark some ideas about how you’d use loops.
If you’re really ahead of the game, go to https://www.thecodehub.ie/playgrounds/ on your iPad and subscribe to The Code Hub’s Playground feed. We’ll be using the Turtle Graphics – Simplified playground for an example of loops in action.
Chapter 4: Variables
Today we’ll also get set up to tackle a huge new subject: variables.
This means moving on to a new playground from Apple (Learn to Code 2), an app from The Code Hub (Learning Variables).
It’s a big new topic, so we’ll dip in slowly to start.
Both the Google Classroom and discussions board are just a way to make the students feel a little more connected to the material and to each other. It helps to have support, especially when you’re learning something new!
Today we’ll touch on what we did last week, briefly, and then we’ll get into the meat of for loops!
Links
Bill Chapman, of the University of Illinois dropped a nice note with links to his own video resources. So if you want to check them out while you’re going through the Learn to Code Swift Playgrounds you might find them helpful. They’re well worth checking out, because the more time you spend with these playgrounds, the more practice you get, and the better programmer you become!
Day two we continued with the Commands chapter of the Everyone Can Code book and reviewed some of the puzzles we’d solved the previous day.
On day three we jumped into Functions, the next chapter in the book, and talked through the coding concept of functions.
And today, Friday, day four, we started with some advice about how to follow along with the live sessions or the videos and code on your iPad. We then jumped back into the Functions chapter.
Homework
“What? Homework? We’re all stuck at home all the time already?” you might be saying.
Well, consider it weekend work, then. Programming requires practice, just like playing a musical instrument or a sport; you don’t get better if you don’t try out the skills you’ve learned.
At the end of today’s video, we set you a challenge: solve the Treasure Hunt puzzle in the Learn to Code 1 playground.
Use functions, do it all out longhand, see how you get on. You can capture a PDF of your code from the ...‘s menu in Swift Playgrounds or you can copy and paste it into a thread on our new forum.
I won’t say there are no wrong answers, but even if your answers don’t 100% solve the puzzle, at the very least you’ve made an effort. Even the best of us programmers have bugs in our code!
Coming Up Next Week
Next week we’ll have more content and walk throughs of the Learn to Code 1 playground. We’ll also review the homework and show off one potential solution, at least.
I’m hoping to re-record some of the intro videos, for those of you coming to the sessions late, or who just want a refresher.
For today’s session we’re going to show you a good setup for following along with our live stream or videos and coding at the same time. We’ll also recap a little bit about functions.
The beginning of the video will help you get set up, so long as you have an iPad and an internet connection.
If you prefer to read your instructions, yesterday’s post will show you where to go to get Swift Playgrounds and Everyone Can Code Puzzles, the ebook we’re using.
Today’s Session @ 1pm Irish time
For today’s session we’re going to walk through some more lessons about commands: how to use them, how to figure out when they’re not doing what we expected, or debugging. We’ll look at strategies for solving puzzles, which is a lot of what programming is.
So tune in, grab your iPad, and spend a little time with me, coding!
In Part One of this special Coding at Home series we looked at our new app: Learning Variables.
In Part Two we looked at the Swift Playgrounds we’ve developed at The Code Hub and how to get them on your Mac or iPad.
For Part Three we checked out one of my favorite playgrounds, Text Adventure.
Code with Me
Now we’re going to try a slightly different tack.
Starting this week we’re going to hold live coding sessions to teach you about coding.
Since I use iPads in my class, I’ll be taking advantage of those devices for the course. They don’t necessarily have to be spring chickens, either, so long as you can install Swift Playgrounds.
Swift Playgrounds is available on the App Store for free. Just have a search for “swift playgrounds” and tap on the GET button.
And that’s it, that’s all you’ll need for the first few lessons.
If you’re following along at home, and all of you should be (at home, that is), we’re going to start with material from Apple’s excellent Everyone Can Code curriculum.
We’ll be working from the student guide, but if you’re a parent (or a kid teaching another kid, your parent, or your pets), the teacher guide gives some great suggestions about how to teach coding, with varying levels of difficulty.
So hopefully I’ll see you at 1pm, Irish time, today.
In Part One of this special Coding at Home series we looked at our new app: Learning Variables.
In Part Two we looked at the Swift Playgrounds we’ve developed at The Code Hub and how to get them on your Mac or iPad.
Text Adventure!
For part three, we’re going to look at the Text Adventure playground we’ve developed, in particular. This is one of my personal favorites, because it reminds me of my own start in programming; BASIC, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy interactive fiction, and MOOs.
The playground is designed to take advantage of a little library I wrote that models a story with a number of rooms, through which your protagonist navigates. The goal is to use coding to be a little bit creative and get the kids (and adults) telling stories and using code as a means to and end, rather than the end, itself.
Getting the Playground
To start, go grab the playground from the Code Hub’s Playgrounds feed (explained in Part Two). You’ll see the Text Adventure playground front and center now:
Telling Stories
Once you have that in Playgrounds, you can open it and you’ll see the introduction to the whole shebang.
Pretty self-explanatory so far, right?
We don’t have to write any code at all, just hit the “Run My Code” button and off we go!
I won’t post any spoilers here, but the stories are gripping, edge-of-your-seat kind of stuff.
Once you’ve exhausted all the possibilities in the first story (and that might happen pretty quick), you can hit the Next button to move on.
The playground is designed to dip you into coding your own story gently and follows a progression that looks like this:
You can skip around if you like, of course, but I try to introduce concepts that will introduce you to code and the features of the Story library as we go. So try it out. If you come up with a particularly cool twist or story of your own, use the built-in tools to record your story.
From the three dots in the menu, select Record Movie to start capturing your story.
Full Screen
One last tip, the stories work best in fullscreen mode. You can enter fullscreen by tapping on the divider between your code and the story view.
Drag to the left, and the story view will take up the full screen. To get out of full screen you’ll just tap on the left side of the screen (you might see the faint arrow on that edge).