Coding & what I know about it

A long(ish) description of my knowledge of code and what It’s used for

Contents

• What coding is used for

• My knowledge of it

• Glossary

What coding is used for

Coding is used for many reasons, games, apps, websites basically anything you see on a computer has code, and there are computers without screens for example take a “Raspberry Pi”.

A tiny computer coded to do something using different forms of code, most of these don’t come with a screen (though some may).

My dad has used this, paired with a program he has downloaded on his real computer, to measure, air purity, sound levels and temperatures on our driveway!

I have coded some simple games and programs using Scratch and Python. That is just for entertainment and impressing my parents, though.

Coding is used for loads of things other than this too!

Look at something around you.

I was looking at the wall and I thought that even that had some coding involved with it because the builders to make the building needed blueprints which would be designed on an app and then printed, which uses code!

My knowledge of code

I’ve been coding since I was around about 4 or 5 using Scratch as my dad codes and also teaches coding to pupils on a meeting on Zoom or Microsoft Meet. This means I have known about coding for a long time and have been taught it by my dad and by myself exploring on Scratch. I have also been teaching coding on my other issue series “Coding for Beginners”. I have loved coding ever since I was introduced to it and I still do, I use Scratch and I have – only recently – have started using Python Blocks (on Trinket) to code.

Furthermore, I have coded a lot of things, though the one which is most recent I would say I am the most proud of. I call it quiz maker. There are two versions, a full version that is on the school files and one that in my laptop’s files but isn’t finished. Next I’ll explain what it does.

So, my quiz maker can do three main things. It can create quizzes, load quizzes (off of .txt files) and play those quizzes created or loaded!

It does this using a List Variable. Variables are like little chests. You put information into one and take it out later, a list variable can store multiple amounts of information. I used a tactic where you add a question to a list called something like “questions” and add an answer to a list called “answers”. Then you find out the length of the list, put that into a variable, put that variable into a repeater around the code I’m going to explain in a second, like this “repeat until <current question> = <amount of questions>” then it would say something like this. “ask <{item <question number> of answers}>”, then an if block would say “if <answer> = <item <question number>  of <{answers>} then [say <Well done!>] else [say <Oh no!>]”. Then the last block of all would say “add <1> to <question number>”. I can show you this with a picture too!

That was very hard to explain!

Thank you for reading!
— Nathan

Glossary

• Coding — A form of “language” that computers use to do things.
• Computer — A machine that uses code to load a visual on a screen or do a function like record a sound.
• Program — A strip of code for a computer.
• Air Purity — How pure air is like in a place with lots of cars there would not be pure air as the exhaust pipe releases non-air type gases.
• Files — A form of code used for lots of things like mp3 (music) PNG or JPEG (image) and lots of others, some apps even have their own!