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Practice Lesson: Coding

Learning Objective: To understand the basics of coding

Digital Skills Objective: To read information on this website and use it to answer the assignment questions

You can go back and edit your assignment to fix any wrong answers after you submit (Max score: 7/8)

Computers Need Coding

Every single program, app, and game a computer runs needs coding to work

Coding is writing a list of specific commands (instructions) to tell a computer how to solve a problem

Watch the video and think about how this relates to coding a computer

Design Process

In the video above, the father gave his kids a coding challenge by first defining a problem: he needs to create a peanut butter & jelly sandwich without knowing how

He had them brainstorm about the design process of creating a PB&J sandwich

The purpose of the design process in computers is to plan and structure the code (commands)

Sequence

Then they created a sequence (ordered list) of commands for him to follow. He followed the sequence exactly as they were written, without 'figuring out' what the kids meant

Computers are not smart and need specific commands!

But, they can do millions of commands in a second

Debugging

When the kids tested their sequence with the dad, they noticed the errors (bugs) in their code

The kids then fixed their commands and tested their sequence again. This process is called debugging

(The first computer was the size of a classroom, and the first computer error was a moth stuck in the machine - hence the term bug)

Loops

A loop is a repeated sequence of code

Loops are useful in coding by saving space when you have to repeat commands

The fewer lines of code you use in a program, the more efficient it is

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