How to Start Learning Code

BY Roger Huang

This open story on learning code was originally posted on Code.org’s blog.

It is about Gili Rusak, a girl who developed an Android app to help younger girls learn code. If that inspires you to learn, join our mailing list of coding and entrepreneurship resources.

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Earlier in her high school career, Gili developed an Android app called Codester which helps kids learn computer science. This year, the high school junior received NCWIT funding and partnered with Girls Inc. to host coding workshops for elementary- and middle-school girls!

Tell us about your app.

Codester is a level-based game app that aims to teach young students or novice programmers computational thinking and computer science concepts. I ran math outreach programs for several years and one day I thought, “why not computer science too?”

Why computer science?

The first time that I ran a prototype of my app on an actual smartphone was extremely rewarding! When you see the finished product it is sometimes easy to forget the hundreds of lines of code that go into making the app itself work. But when you develop the app yourself, you see the code and the outcome.

Programming is such a useful and empowering tool and I am so happy that I have gotten into it.

Programming is such a useful and empowering tool and I am so happy that I have gotten into it.

What is it like teaching younger girls computer science?

The younger students teach me at the same time as I teach them. I’m amazed when 7-year-olds are utilizing the app that I had made!

I found that at a young age, the gender and race barriers melt. This is a great age to engage girls and get their attention for the subject. They will grow up with the idea that computer science is for them. In my programs, the girls taught the boys, students interacted with one another, and the collaboration was excellent.

Learning with code(love)

Do you have any advice for students who don’t know how to start learning to code?

# 1 – Start simple: take an introductory course first, either through Code.org or other courses on the Internet. Computer science is a lot of fun. It’s very rewarding to get your first program working, even if all it does is read, “Hello World!”.

# 2 – Don’t hesitate to ask questions if you don’t fully understand.

# 3 – Know that computer science is very multidisciplinary. For example, when I first began developing Codester, I did not imagine how much art, creative thought and user consultation I would have to do. No matter what you’re into, understanding of computer science will help.

Defining the Future

The Future of Advice: Filtered, Real-Time, On-Demand.

BY Roger Huang

This is a short excerpt of Build, a book on several extraordinary entrepreneurs and technologists building the future, and what they’ve learned doing so.

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Sometimes, for a given problem, there are only a handful of people who have exactly the right advice. In a networked world where information can be spread effortlessly, the problem isn’t access to information: it is the filter to what solves your problem, and what doesn’t that really matters.

Dan Martell of Clarity.FM aims to be that filter. His platform allows you to instantly access the individual you need who has lived through your problems before you. Imagine a real-time Jeopardy call-your-friend function, if your friends were million-dollar entrepreneurs, and billion-dollar investors.

Welcome to the future of advice.

It looks a lot like a curated index of experts that are ready to answer your questions for a nominal fee, on-demand—and that’s because that’s what it has to be. Nowadays, to collect opinions is almost trivial. Posting a link anywhere is an open invitation for many on the web to openly question your sanity, and plenty more.

What most people need now is not information—there is too much of that around. What they need is qualified advice: communication that has more barriers than Yahoo Answers, in other words. People will spend immense amounts of time and effort to find those qualified answers, because quality matters more than quantity.

This can be seen in the success of Quora—which has managed to gather a community of very intelligent and connected contributors, who more often than not, know exactly what it is like to work with Elon Musk or Sergey Brin—because they are working with them right now.

The future of advice-giving to Dan isn’t about making it easier for advisor and advisee to connect with one another: it’s about creating a level of friction so that both sides know exactly what they’re getting into, and both sides know exactly how much they’d be willing to give up to meet one another.

The future of advice-giving isn’t about making it easier for advisor and advisee to connect with one another: it’s about creating a level of friction so that both sides know exactly what they’re getting into, and both sides know exactly how much they’d be willing to give up to meet one another.