Usually anyone who starts out in learning coding will have this be one of the first things shown. It simply put the text "hello, world" on the screen.
I think that is quite a fitting start to my first programming blog post.
Since Jan 7th after coming back from a family holiday in Cornwall, I've been learning coding through this channel called "The Coding Train". You can always tell the difference when there is a teacher who loves his subject and loves teaching it to others. Great teachers are so underrated and underappreciated these days, but yet they are the most influential people to shape kids' future career choices.
I started up with Processing, which is Java. Then moved onto Javascript. They are similar in many ways, but Java is local and Javascript is for the web. This allows programs to work within any browser, and therefore has a great potential for sharing and collaboration.
As a graduate in Interactive Design, one of my biggest annoyances during that period was the number of ideas I had that I couldn't implement. I really regret not learning coding earlier, as I see the potential for so many things now.
Potential paths I'm interested in is making desktop programs or apps, and now with what I have seen with Javascript, maybe some full blown games right within a browser! My niche is that I have a better understanding of good user interfaces, and that itself will improve a lot of programs tenfold. Too many times I have seen tons of apps and programs that are designed awfully, with no consideration for the interface, customisation or ease of use.
Right now there is so much to learn, its quite overwhelming actually, and starting out feels like you just copy the code and see it work. Understanding it fully will take time, but more importantly at the beginning it just gets you to embrace the code editor (Atom), and handling the errors you inevitably will get.
What got me started with finding The Coding Train was his Coding Challenges series, where he shows him making certain things through code. There isn't really that much stuff out there for people to see how things can actually be made so this is a great idea and basically got me hooked.
So in honour of that, I want to make my own Coding Challenges to test out what I've learned and see if I can do them. I'd like to record them to see how long it'll take but I might be embarrased at my complete noobishness about it. Here's the list I have so far;
1. Space Invaders
2. Pong
3. Uno
4. Blackjack
5. Poker
6. Snake
7. Hearthstone!?
8. Working with Poker Data, eg HEM
9. Snooker/Pool Game
10.Track and Field
11.Super Meat Boy
12.Pokemon
12.Heads Up AI
13.Live Infographic Related to Online Data
14.Bomberman
15.Lava Lamp
16.Chess/Chinese Chess
17.Tetris
18.DDR
19.Braid
20.Minesweeper
21.Tic Tac Toe
22.2D Overwatch
Its really important to have a portfolio of work to show for potential future employers. What I've learned in the creative industry, whether it be graphic design or coding or writing, is to keep and archive all work good or bad and record the process. Nothing advertises you better then showing your talent off through your work.
Of course, these are different in difficulty and I probably wont do them in this order but I'll keep things posted here.
Committing and playing poker has helped me learn to work in my own time. Try and do some learning and reviewing every day, watch a video, take notes. I've written down about 70 pages worth of this stuff, watched about 200 videos and some live streams, and enjoying the process.
There's nothing more frustrating then getting errors sometimes. This is especially annoying as I am copying down code a lot of the time, so more often then not its a missing semi colon or bracket. I wonder how many hours/days coders have spent in their careers looking for the tiniest mistype within their code.
Anyways til next time, I'll leave you with some circular beats! Need to figure a way of sharing this stuff but for now a link will have to do! :D
RockDaBeat
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