Getting Started with Coding, 2nd Edition
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions
.
Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, Dummies.com, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ.
For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport
.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com
. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com
.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019948336
ISBN 978-1-119-64162-9 (pbk); 978-1-119-64164-3 (epdf); 978-1-119-64163-6 (epub)
This book was produced using the Myriad Pro typeface for the body text and callouts, and Bangers for the chapter titles and subheads.
SO YOU WANT TO GET STARTED WITH CODING! Writing computer programs, or coding, is a skill that will take you from a user of technology to a maker of technology. Coding is a skill that is fun, creative, and productive. By discovering the language of the computer, you become capable of inventing toys, games, and apps that you can share with, well … everyone!
You can use many computer languages to get started with coding. What you find in this book is an introduction to the big ideas and practices of coding, using two coding languages: Scratch and JavaScript block format, via MakeCode. You can learn more about both languages in the next section, “What’s New in the Second Edition.” The skills you build by coding projects in this book can be used in every other programming language.
Getting Started with Coding, 2nd Edition is put together as a series of projects and related big ideas in coding. Each project is presented as steps for constructing both graphic design and code, start to finish. The big ideas connect a project with the skills you’ll perform over and over again when coding. Best of all, projects can be customized to bring to life the craziest ideas your imagination can concoct!
Here's what you need to do the projects in this book:
As you work through each project, keep in mind the following writing conventions:
monofont
. If you're reading this as an ebook, you can click web addresses, like www.dummies.com
, to visit that website.That’s all there is to it!
This second edition reflects recent trends in programming instruction. Specifically, this book uses programming languages that start you down the path of learning basic coding skills you can apply over and over as you learn more.
This edition of the book covers:
Best of all, the tools in this edition are free, available online, and easy-to-use.
Everyone has to start somewhere, right? I had to start writing this book by assuming that you can do this stuff:
Lastly, if you struggle with spelling and punctuation, you may need to spend extra time troubleshooting your code for misspellings. Block-based programming greatly reduces these types of errors, or bugs, and programming languages can give you clues about which commands they don’t understand. But you will need to pay extra attention to the details, making certain that commands are written exactly as you intend.
As you read through the projects in this book, you’ll see a few icons. The icons point out different things: