xxiv Introduction
h ow to use this Book
This book isn’t just for kids—it’s for parents, teachers, students,
and adults who want to understand the basics of computer pro-
gramming, both to have fun and to gain access to new jobs in the
high-tech economy. No matter what your age, you can have a
great time learning the basics of programming. The best way to do
this is to experiment and work together.Explore!
Learning to program is exciting if you’re willing to try new things.
As you and your kids follow along with the programs in this book,
try changing numbers and text in the code to see what happens to
the program. Even if you break it, you’ll learn something new by
fixing it. In the worst case, all you have to do is retype the example
from the book or open the last saved version that worked. The point
of learning to code is to try something new, learn a new skill, and
solve problems in a new way. Make sure your kids are playing
around—testing their code by changing something, saving the pro-
gram, running it, seeing what happens, and fixing any errors.
The point of learning to code is to try something new, learn
a new skill, and solve problems in a new way. Test your code by
changing something, saving the program, running it, seeing what
happens, and fixing errors if needed.
For example, I wrote some code to make a colorful drawing
(Figure 2) and then went back, changed some numbers here and
there, and tried running the program again. This gave me another
drawing that was completely different but just as amazing. I went
back again, changed some other numbers, and got yet another beau-
tiful, unique drawing. See what you can do just by playing around?Figure 2: Three colorful spiral drawings I created by trying different values in a line of code in
one program