First Exposure to Computer Programming at Age 13
Gregory Desrosiers
Software Developer (Backend, DevOps, QA) ???? | Java, Python, or C++, Agile ?? | ex-UWaterloo, NielsenIQ, The Weather Network ? | Coding and Reliability </>
I've seen videos where children as young as 10 years old have been able to do some software programming. A few years ago, I watched once this YouTube video of a 14-year-old named Santiago Gonzalez who became a college student in computer science. It showed him having a talk with one of the professors with some code written in Objective C.
I also saw over a year ago that the high school I went to, Heritage Regional High School in Saint-Hubert, Quebec, decided to incorporate a small program for their students to learn a lot more software programming. Nevertheless, let me share a moment on how my interest in software engineering sprang to life.
In Winter 2007, after completing my first high school semester with religion as my minor course, I was enrolled in a computer science course. Even though I did had a grasp with computers at the time, I never had a thought about taking in a high school course about learning some new skills involving a computer. For once, I would be writing in lots of code and understand the mechanics of the machinery. But it was quite easier than that.
We were in a lab not far from where my locker was, as does the office of one of the four vice principals. There weren't any windows, and the computers we used weren't ahead of their time. They were Macintosh eMacs produced by Apple in 2002. Occasionally they were a bit slow, but nevertheless they did had the right tools for the kind of curriculum the school was offering to the students.
I think it was by March or April when we were introduced to something I was not aware of nor learned before at all. I learned the basics of the HyperText Markup Language, or HTML. As it would be quite difficult to understand how it works and given the true nature of software programming in general, the assignments we were given were usually small and very flexible. All we had to do was to be creative and design a web page of our own, but making sure that we would use the required elements.
If I remember correctly, the required elements we had to use were:
- <html>
- <head>
- <title>
- <body>
- <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6>
- <p>
- <div>
- <span>
- <a>
- <img>
At the time, I was leaning towards creating a website with a Star Fox 64-esque style, because I was reminding myself of the past when I played Star Fox 64 for a long time with my brother. So one big element I decided to add was the opening prologue text as shown in the game itself once the player selects "Main Game" from the Main Menu. The prologue cutscene is simply a spin-off of the opening crawl in Star Wars, with the exception that the text isn't perspective; it's right on the screen. It hovers over a rotating Arwing with an orange-brown sepia added to it.
I think there was no styling involved right on the pages themselves. It's most likely that introducing the tools needed to change the style of the pages would be too much for us, since not everyone is really comfortable with the computer. As the programs and pages run on the computer using a certain kind of code that's quite alien and full of complicated words, characters, and so on, it would be absolutely overwhelming. So for the time being, the software aspect was limited to only the websites.
Technically, when I was finishing Grade 5 at Boucherville Elementary School (I was 11 years old), there was a service online where you can create your own website using an account. At the time, I didn't really understand what it was at a technical level, but now, I think it was a SaaS package of some sort. (Software as a service)
Considering that the teacher was well-aware of my attachment to the computer and the practical use of programs for the things I want to do, I was actually one of the few students that stood out. When my dad had a checkup with him on my performance assessment and so on, I remember them saying to one another that considering I had a big attachment to the computer, computer science would probably be a passion for me. I don't think they did say anything about future education, though. Instead, it was more to say it was quite pleasing here as compared to some other courses I was taking, which some were good, some were bad.
The other things I did in the computer science course was mostly learning ergonomics and how I am supposed to type up on the computer properly for efficiency and comfort. As I wasn't quite used to the paradigm of trying to type things up quickly and accurately, one of my habits at the time was looking on the keyboard instead of the screen. Although it did save me from the grief of having so many inaccurate results, it was a suggestion pointed out to me by my professor so that I spend more time looking at the screen and correcting when I need to without getting too side-tracked or spending too long. We also learned Microsoft PowerPoint (so useful for projects later on in my high school education) and a program for designing comic strips with template pages.
As soon as the course was completed, it was quite a miss from there, because it wasn't until September 2011 that I finally got back to programming from an education standpoint and get into the core and logistics of it.
With that, this was my first exposure to computer programming.
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