Flying Through Code

As I was mindlessly scrolling through my phone, I had decided (on a whim) to enrol in an evening Apple session. Being an iPhone and Apple user from a young age, I never really wanted to walk in and take a session with the instructors. Still, I had decided to give it a try, just one hour of going to the Apple Store, and not be tempted to play around with the latest Apple device. The session I had decided to enrol in was named: Coding Skills: Getting Started with Swift Playgrounds. The instructor introduced the Programming language Apple had developed called Swift in the session. Going into the class, I did not know what to expect as I knew some of the computational thinking jargon and big themes but was a tad nervous to code with Swift. To my surprise, by the end of the hour session, it was an excellent refresher to some of the parts I had learned in class. Some of the takeaways from the class with the instructor and other keen programming newbies were:

1. Anyone can code. I was in the session; to my left, there was a high school student who was just excited to code, and to my right, two children who were siblings (about 5 yrs old) who were absorbed by the sheer amount of progress they've made learning to code within the hour.
2. Coding is simple. As the user, when trying to communicate with the computer, you have to understand the computer can only run on the instructions you give it. Being mindful of this is what programmers do, as they are trying to translate the desired output with a few inputs and commands.
3. Coding takes patience. After explaining what commands and functions were, all of the students were off to the races trying to type in the appropriate code to get the character in Swift, "Byte," to accomplish its tasks of moving from one side map to the other. As all of us were communicating solutions to help Byte accomplish its task, we realized the time and effort required to accomplish said goals.

With all of these lessons gathered, I was motivated to continue to play around with Swift on my iPad to help my journey through learning how to code. Click Here to check out more information about Swift.

I also recommend that everyone check out the session; it will be very beneficial. If you do not have access to an iPad, the store provides a few iPads so anyone can join the session. My experience was incredible, and I felt I had to share the post on LinkedIn. Thank you to the instructor and programming newbies for making my experience with Swift Playgrounds coding more enjoyable. :)