Teach Your Kids to Code: A Parent-Friendly Guide to Python Programming

Teach Your Kids to Code: A Parent-Friendly Guide to Python Programming — page 7
how 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 xxiv Introduction