Saturday, May 3, 2014

My Journey to Learn How to Code - Part 3

by Teri Charles

As I mentioned in my first post on this journey (part 1), coding has never come easy for me. All brains work in different ways and that’s okay! One of the things I came to realize is that I needed to get comfortable with some of the basic concepts of programming. Those things that are common in just about every programming language, such as Variables, If/Then/Else statements, and Loops.

What better way to really wrap my brain around these concepts once and for all, and that’s to teach them!

I, along with Jennifer Skiendzielewski, recently created a class for GDIBoulder (a local group I’m very involved in that helps people to learn how to code) titled “Introduction to Programming Concepts (for True Beginners!)".

We created this class for people such as myself, people that are just starting to learn how to code but need a little help on their journey. I’m excited to say that over 30 people signed up for this class, so we knew we were on to something! It was a great experience and the positive feedback we got after the class was fantastic. Our goal was to give people some of the basic tools they would need when they take programming classes, understand a bit more about what was going on, and hopefully not be intimidated.

This will now be an ongoing class for GDIBoulder, and Jennifer and I will be the teachers for this class going forward. Along with the class, we’ll also be conducting a follow up workshop after each class is taught to let people practice and solidify what they just learned from the class.

And for me, creating and teaching this class is not only part of my journey to continually learn things to be a better Tester (such as increasing my technical skills, as well as being able to dive in deeper to find even more bugs), but it also touches on my love of teaching others and passing along any knowledge that comes my way!

Here is the detailed slides we created for the class. I hope it helps you as well!

http://gdiboulder.github.io/gdi-boulder-intro-programming-concepts/#