2014-06-26 16:48:13 +00:00
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---
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layout: post
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title: "Programming, as I see it"
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date: 2013-03-01 23:32:35+00:00
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permalink: /blog/2013/3/1/programming-as-i-see-it
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published: false
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author:
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name: Gergely Polonkai
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email: gergely@polonkai.eu
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---
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2015-04-27 09:14:03 +00:00
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Since my age of around 11, I write code. I began with BASIC, which is,
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well, the most basic language I have ever seen. Simply writing
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<code>10 PRINT "Hello World!"</code> does the job (with Assembly it
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would be tens of lines as I recall). Then I moved to Pascal, then
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Delphi (which is basically the same thing). The next step was a bit
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longer, as I started learning more languages after this, like Perl
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(for dynamic web pages), C (for desktop applications), TCL (for
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eggdrop programming. Yes, I might have been a weird kid), PHP (again,
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for dynamic web pages. It was becoming mainstream back then).
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2014-06-26 16:48:13 +00:00
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Many of my classmates looked down on me, as they thought I was a geek (hell I
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was, but I wouldn’t have confessed it then), and called me a nerd. For a few
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months maybe I was depressed, but after that I realised that this is the thing
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I want to do in my life, this is the thing I’m good at.
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Most people I ask why don’t they code say “it’s too hard”. I’ve attended some
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courses (both online and offline, and I was like “Whoa! Coding is extremely
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hard! What the hell! I will never learn it!”, but right after the course I
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realised that everything is just fine, I can still write programs, and it’s
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eeeeasy. So then, what’s the problem?
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After looking through many course papers, I found that most teachers do it
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totally wrong. A programming language is just that: a language. You don’t start
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learning Spanish by going into a classic literature conference in Madrid and
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doing a speech, but learn the basic vocabulary and grammar. The same goes for
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coding. You learn the vocabulary (the basic commands or keywords) and grammar
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(syntax). I had several ideas how this could be taught, just didn’t have the
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background to do it.
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The idea of teaching programming lingers in my head for years now, and a few
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days ago, I’ve bumped into [this
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video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU1xS07N-FA). So it seems that
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technology superstars like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg wants to do the same.
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Maybe they don’t have enough high quality coders at hand. Well of course,
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if teachers make it awfully hard to learn it! So a bunch of guys sat together
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and created [code.org](http://www.code.org/) to achieve my old dream. I like
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the idea. And although I have almost no visitor on this blog of mine, allow me
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to give you a few points on how I see programming.
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#### Great learning process
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When you write programs, especially during the first years, you adapt a new way
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of thinking and learning. If you learn it as an adult, it can be a bit of a
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pain, but as a child, it’s easy as learning how the wheels of those little cars
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spin).
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#### A job
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#### Art
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#### Magic
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