Code Storytelling: Learn Programming as a Storytelling Exercise

To complete each badge (1-2 hours):

watch the video while taking notes
complete the programming notebook for this badge
write down in your mini-diary 3 things you learned and 1 you wish you understood better

Badge 01: Writing Code, Running Code

In this badge you will learn about writing and running code.

What is a programming code? What is it for, and why are there so many programming languages? Our job is to write code that computer understands, so we need empathy and deep comprehension of how will computer ‘read’ our code, eg. in what order will your lines of code ‘happen’?

Badge 02: Decisions, Conditions and Logic

In this badge you will learn about computers making decisions.

Computer does what you tell it to do, but can you teach it to take some simple decisions by itself? How can computer ‘decide’ to run some part of your code, and not run another part of it? How complex can this process of decision making be and how specific we need to be when we describe it? (spoiler alert: very very specific)

Badge 03: Debugging on paper and in code

In this badge you will learn about communication and empathy with the computer and about understanding what it is trying to tell you.

Badge 04: Functions, your D.I.Y. Superpowers

In this badge you will learn about reusing parts of your code in different contexts, and identifying things that change and things that stay the same.

Badge 05: Functions 2: Above and Beyond

In this badge you will learn about using the functions ‘in the wild’, passing variables into functions and we’ll peak into what’s going on inside of computer’s ‘brain’ when it encounters a function.

Badge 06: Test Driven Development

In this badge you will learn about agreeing with computer what is the ‘correct answer’ and about writing ‘assertions’ that make sure our code does what we think it does.

Badge 07: Collections Store Many Things

In this badge you will learn about how computer stores many variables in one bundle (collection). You will see why items in a List are referred to by their order (eg first, second, third, …, last – this is called index) while in a Dictionary they are referred to by their name (eg. firstname, surname, height – this is called key).

Badge 08: List Comprehensions can Filter and Map (represent) Lists

In this badge you will learn about two most common things we can do with a List (ordered collection of values). We often want to filter the List and only keep some of its values, or we want to Map it to represent it as something simpler, or different. List Comprehension is a special syntax in Python enabling us to do both of these things very quickly, in a very few lines of code.

Badge 09: Manipulating Strings, Numbers and Dates

In this badge you will learn how to work with most common types of data. eg. Words are called a String (because they are a string of characters in order, like beads on a necklace). Numbers can be stored in many ways depending on their level of detail (eg. do they store decimal places) and Date is a complex item holding calendar and clock information. You will learn how to change between these data types and perform common operations on them.

Badge 10: Repeating things with Loops

In this badge you will learn about how we can combine two previous badges: collections (storing many things) and of functions (doing the same action, but for slightly different data). When you put them together you can perform an action for every element of the collection – that type of repetition in called a Loop.

Badge 11: Doing Useful Things with Loops

In this badge you will learn about the types of problems that you can solve with loops and collections. How to do something with each item in a collection; how to find an item in a collection; how to simplify (reduce) collection to one item; how to filter items and only keep some of them; how to map (represent) each item into some other form; and many others.

Badge 12: Drawing Simple Graphs

In this badge you will learn how to visualise information using python. You will learn about types of graphs and how to prepare data so that they would work with a given graph. You will also learn how to customise graphs, so that they tell the story that you want to tell, most efficiently.