Learn to code for fun and profit with Swift and Scratch

Want to learn how to code? We offer some tips below.

Add your own advice to the comments below.

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While I agree in principal to learning code at schools (learning code is like learning a language and expands the thought processes within the brain). The only problem is will the code you learn at school still be relevant when one is leaving school. Most of the code I learnā€™t in the late 1980 and 1990 is ancient historyā€¦code evolution cycles appear to be getting shorter and shorter.

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I donā€™t see it as an issue. A large proportion of what you learn in your first language is useful, even essential, to the others that you learn later. As you say the way new languages proliferate you had better be flexible if you are going to make a crust out of it.

Old COBOL programmers (almost) never die as most can be trained not to smoke while their oxygen is on.

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The code used is horses for courses, but many of the principals are the same, like flow, looping, variables, logic, comparisons, output etc.

I set out cold with a Raspberry Pi to create a security monitor. I found Python was the software to run it, Apache web server and MySQL to provide the interface from PCā€™s, Phones, Tablets etc. Since doing that have set up another 2 RPiā€™s, one monitoring temperatures with 1 wire temp senses and another to run VPN so I can access home network remotely. The net is great for finding solutions and crystallizing ideas into reality.

Anyway my point is that some exposure to coding will give some people the inspiration and confidence to go further and make use of the ā€œtoolsā€ available.

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Assembler never goes out of style. OK, maybe c could be the modern assembler, or c++ the modern c, or algol, pascal, BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, Ada, ā€¦, and now what was once called scripting is called coding. Oh my!

The interpretive ā€˜languagesā€™ (now scripts) add to the democratisation of programming but also help sell more powerful processors. Donā€™t get this dinosaur started, oops, too late!

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Whoa. Steady on. I consider myself an old COBOL programmer. :wink: If memory serves me correctly, it was the 5th language I learntā€¦ FORTRAN, PASCAL, BASIC, TPL 700, COBOL. Quite a few others followed.
Whilst tricks and techniques you learn with one language may not be directly relatable to another, exposure to different languages teaches you to think outside the square more often.

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