Okay, so let's ask the question:
Why should you learn to program the computer?
and really, but, you know, we would first have to admit that
the answer to that question might be. "Hello, no,
I don't need to do this I'm interested in lots of stuff
and this does not interest me", and that's pretty reasonable, I mean first of all
you should make sure you go outside, run around,
physical exercise is very important,
food is delicious, talking to people is wonderful
I don't know, hobbies, I like playing cards, I like musical theatre, I don't necessarily need
programming for those things
so you, you can go and have a very full life
and just stop these videos and really be a happy person. At the same time,
let's just make, let's just, let's just admit something: you probably use the
computer a lot.
you probably, it's probably a tool for work, family,
social, you use it, right, and how do you use it,
let's say you've never written a line of code
before in your life. You probably do things like you use
Chrome, or you use Photoshop,
or you use Word, we could keep
making a long list of stuff there. What are all these things?
Software! Who made these things?
Not you, right? So, you know, they're great!
Photoshop is really good and an amazing piece of software
made by very large company and lots of people and you need Photoshop,
you have an image, you wanna get rid of the red eye
you wanna make it brighter you wanna do some kind of, I don't know, filter on it to make
it look like it was
taken thirty years ago, I don't know if Photoshop does that,
you use Photoshop, but there are limits to what Photoshop can do
it is a tool with a set of features that are provided
to you via an interface and you
can't make it do more that it does and in fact
if you want to be creative if you wanna develop your own
ideas whether they're art or
a commercial product or some just weird strange exploration
you don't wanna, you don't wanna be limited by the tools that are provided
for you
you want to start with a blank slate, you know, if you want to create a new image
processing filter that doesn't exist
you could do that. In this video series
you will learn to do that, and it's not very hard!
I mean, there are aspects of programming that are incredibly hard this won't be easy
don't get me wrong
but this is really what we're talking about here everything that you do
whether it's working with images, working with animation,
writing, checking your email,
interfacing with hardware, robotics,
everything that you do digitally starts from somewhere, somebody wrote the
software to make this stuff
work why couldn't that person be you? what types of things could you invent?
what types of ideas could you come up with if you weren't limited
to the list of tools that you can download, purchase,
and get from, you know, other individuals might have released as open source
or big companies,
let's break all those bonds, let's write your own software,
and that sounds very grand
and ridiculous and then we're gonna be like and now what you're gonna learn is
there's a red circle on the screen and it moves back and forth so don't me wrong,
this is going to be a slow process this is really just the beginning
I'm gonna show you some basic stuff you're gonna have to take it much farther
but this will get you started in that direction if you
and hopefully will be great. now there's also the question, if this is maybe
why you should learn, how you should learn
that's a more complicated one
I'm not prepared to answer it, I'm just gonna try as best I can
to communicate to you and provide resources but again this just brings up the
question there are so many resources online
that are terrific there are online courses you could take there's Code Academy,
there's the Khan Academy, there's Udacity
there's schools you can go to, there's a new
experimental school called the School for Poetic Computation that's opening
there's lots of stuff out there so this is just a little resource
through video, I'll try to supplement it with code examples online
with links below the video I might hopefully create a site with some other
tools at some point but right now
me talking, examples you can download, diagrams,
but there is something I think is important to mention here which is
a lot of the tools that you might - first of all,
you know what's a nice way to learn? Find a friend,
find someone you don't even know, sit in a room with other people
try to program with them, ask them questions, look at what they're doing, try
to explain your program to a friend,
be with people, right, we can all try to design the most fancy, best whatever
online
tool that will like show you the steps and give you immediate feedback and step
you through give you this exercise and
give you all this, right, but being with people
and talking to people talking through your ideas, that is probably the best way
to learn, now that's not what's happening here
I'm by myself which is a little bit weird but I'm getting used to it
a lot more used to it than I was before
but one thing I will say also that's a little bit different here is a lot of
the tools
and courses, you know, that you might take whether it's a high school class a
college class an online class
firstof all they might have the word "Computer Science" in them -
Computer Science is a really great
field of research and study of the science of computing,
this is not that, we're just learning about computation
how to write programming, how to write code, how to program and applying it
to whatever you might be interested in. are you interested in biology and could
the tools of computation help you there? Are you interested in music
and could the tools of computation be something you could use
with music and
this is the other thing, that I don't have a test for you to take
don't have something to say like
"and you will make this" when you're finished with these videos the point
of these videos
is for you to have a creative idea and you don't have to have that now
you might get inspired or try experiment s and it doesn't have to have any
practical value, now
you might want to get a job which I think is important in a lot of ways,
but you might also just
feel like "I like sorbet,
and I like bugs,
particularly spiders, and I'm going to create a simulation of spiders eating sorbet,"
which actually makes no sense whatsoever but that's the point
you might have some idea that apparently doesn't have any practical value that
makes any sense but you just want to explore it could be a visual idea
a it could be a musical idea could be a website, an app,
you know, this isn't really going to be about making products and apps
and stuff for the web, as you're gonna see, as much
but the point is you will develop your own ideas and make
them and
hopefully share them with others in some way, so
I will try to give little exercises and little
questions
and push in particular directions but how you will learn in this particular
context
will be about coming up with your own creative project ideas and using the
tools of computation
to realize those ideas and hopefully that will be a nice thing.
If anybody has success with that and finds it
useful I'd be thrilled to know. Okay, so that's the end of
this particular introductory video and I think the
next one is, I'm going to talk about
actually "What is programming, what does it mean to write, what is programming,
what is an algorithm, what does it mean to program the computer?"