Learn Programming - Blog Posts

NASA National Community College Aerospace Scholars Fellow interns did an amazing job mentoring NASA's National Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS). They held a panel sharing their NASA stories as NCAS alumni sharing wisdom about treating rejection like an opportunity, achieving excellence over perfection, fundraising no matter what, and following your passion. The NCAS students built autonomous Lego robots that retrieved pieces of rovers from a mock Mars surface. You too can be a part of NCAS Due Early December 2015: https://nas.okstate.edu/ncas/

Get Hooked on Programming Quick

Highly sought for and praised- the ability to program. Admit it, being comfortable with technology makes you an admirable candidate for your dream job and allows you to navigate the modern world more fluidly. Unfortunately the idea of becoming tech savvy was soiled by the thought of dry lingo and geeky stereotype. For the tech enthused or not, young or wise I have seven ways you can get started with programming in a few hours or much less. (In order of what I thought of first)

1) Codecademy

Best for: Middle School - Adulthood and beyond

Project Time: 30min - As long as you wish

Languages: Web development, Ruby, Python, PHP

Where: http://www.codecademy.com/learn

Friends from internships used codecademy to get exposed to a number of languages relatively quickly and from there decided what to dive into.

2) Code.org

Best for: Elementary - High School

Project Time: 30min - As long as you wish

Languages: Java Script, HTML, basic logic, Lego Robotics, and more

Where: http://code.org/

A really fun way to learn programming by playing games or making your own! President Obama was visited by some aspiring programmers and completed a Disney Frozen themed project.

3) Alice

Best for: Elementary - High School

Project Time: 30min - As long as you wish

Languages: Java

Where: http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=downloads/download_alice3.1

(Younger programmers may need help downloading and getting started)

Alice allows you to program in pseudo Java code and control characters. You can make movies or perform skits with your characters by moving blocks of code around and assigning values. This was my first exposure to programming in high school. As I continued with my computer studies in college found that what I learned from Alice to be extremely useful.

4) Java Seal

Best for: Middle School - Adulthood and beyond

Project Time: 30min - As long as you wish

Languages: Java

Where: https://www.youtube.com/user/JavaSeal

This is my shameless plug; I started this You Tube channel this past summer and recorded some videos about how to get started with Java programming, a basic 10 minute starter program, and a 30min more complex program. Although I haven't downloaded videos recently these are a good start and I expect to make more this summer.

5) Made With Code

Best for: Elementary - Middle School

Project Time: 5min - As long as you wish

Languages: Basic Logic

Where: https://www.madewithcode.com/projects

My Mom's kindergarten class loved to make a Yeti dance and lights shimmer using the Made With Code project. I visited her classroom and had students drag and drop blocks of code on a Smart Board. These projects teach about basic programming logic and assigning values to variables.

6) Khan Academy

Best for: Middle School - Adulthood and beyond

Project Time: 30min - As long as you wish

Languages: Game, Animation, Web Development

Where: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming

Khan Academy has great videos for every subject imaginable in school and now for programming. There are many projects where you can make video games, a website, or animation. There is even a gallery of what other programmers have made while following along with the video.

7) Major League Hacking

Best for: High School - College

Project Time: Few hours to 3 day event

Languages: Any language! Common ones include C++ and Java

Where: Select Colleges https://mlh.io/seasons/f2014/events

This isn't a website to visit but a Hackathon event to go to! Hackathons are events where students are challenged to create a solution to a problem such as an app that can send you texts to keep you on task, a light that can let you know when you need to wear warm clothes, or the next big social media hot spot. Hackathons can run for a few hours to three days. Most of the Hackathons don't require programming experience and are a great place to learn.

(These age groups are just suggestions, feel free to check out any of them you like. I didn't make any of the logos except my Java Seal one so kudos to you other logo makers.)