Programming at TGS uses the Python programming language. In spoken languages (e.g. English) there are keywords (e.g. nouns, verbs, prepositions, adverbs, etc) and symbols (e.g. punctuation). These need to be joined together in a specific order (e.g. rules such as a sentence should end with a punctuation item) to make an understandable sentence or to aid communciation. All spoken languages have these rules, keywords and symbols but depending on the language, the order may be different.
The same is true with programming languages. All programming languages are designed to tell the digital device what to do and all will have some rules, keywords and symbols that enable a programmer/user to make the digital device work.
Students are taught how to write the following statements or constructs:
Sequential - a series of commands/statements which are performed one after the other
Iterative - a group of commands that are repeated as many times as needed before moving to the next command
Conditional - a group of commands that are only performed if a certain criteria is met
Functions - a special type of iterative structure. The call to the function is a sequential line of code calling the function, possibly passing some data to the function to be processed, and accepting processed data back.
GUI or Graphical User Interface - introduced at Level 2 or Level 3
Students are also taught about the different data types, Python uses to store data. At Level 1 and Level 2, this data is only stored for the time the program is running, there is no permanent storage of data.