It all began one afternoon that was spending with my older brother.

It was a nice spring day and he had come home from Purdue for the day. I was around seven years old at the time. I tend to become super interested in one thing or another and put all of my free time into that before moving on to try something new. At this time what I was interested in was final fantasy IX, which is still probably my favorite game in the series. Whatever lead up to it is unimportant, but my brother ended up helping me to ma e a !inal !antasy web page. When say that he helped me, what I really mean is that he as ed me what I wanted the page to loo li e and then he did it for me. While I do remember learning some things that day I could not have recalled most of it later. "here was tal of div tags, decimal to he#adecimal conversions, and some of the other basics of $"%&. 'o matter what I as ed my brother to do he was able to find a way to get it to wor . (an I get a picture of )din, my favorite monster, there or $ow would you get the (hocobo*s theme music in the bac ground+ Were ,ust a the few -uestions that I as ed. "o which my brothers response was simply a smile and say the words well see. which was -uic ly followed by some rapid typing. I felt li e a id at a magic show when the magician pulls the rabbit out of the hat. I new there was some way that the tric had been done, but it was still enthralling to watch it happen none the less. All these years later I still remember the page -uite vividly. It had a really cool banner at the top featuring all of the main characters from the game and a deep navy blue bac ground. .ven though I ,ust learned a few basics that day, It more importantly mar ed the beginning of my interest in computer code. "hat inspiration gave me a push in the right direction and over the ne#t few years I became more and more interested in computers until eventually in high school I got around to studying programming outright. It was then that I first came face to face with the beast that is /0'"AX. If programming languages were normal written languages then synta# would be the grammar. $owever instead of having and nice .nglish teacher you have a sadist that gives you a 1 for the slightest mista e, a misplaced period or capital letter and the code is dead. 'ot surprisingly getting used to using proper synta# is one of the most difficult parts of learning to code. "his is only worsened by the fact that the only feedbac you receive are error messages, which sometimes are very helpful and other times are about as ambiguous as a fortune coo ie. $owever, ,ust li e with normal languages, at first learning to code is filled with useless bits and pieces and unusual conventions, but after some time it really isn*t all that bad.

$aving a particular s ill or literacy is all well and good, however it is the end to which you use it that really matters. 2ecently my 34 year old brother has become enthralled with the game %inecraft. %inecraft is well nown for the ease at which it can be modded, which is the common name for user created e#tensions to a game. )ne of the most interesting mods is called computercraft and it allows the player to code in game computers using the language &5A 6spelled &5A7. 8ecause he became interested in it I decided to brush up on &5A so that I could help him figure out how to do things or debug if he needed it. I believe that computercraft is a great way to teach coding as it provides tons of positive feedbac to the programmer. With (omputercraft password programs can unloc a secret door hidden in your minecraft castle. As opposed to ,ust posting the te#t good ,ob to the screen, or a personal favorite of mine great scot. I find programming a little comedy into my code goes a long way. (oding usually leaves me constantly morphing between anger, elation, and weariness. %ost of the time I ,ust end up sitting in my monitor*s warm glow muttering obscenities with both volume and flow that ran s among the li es of the father or ,oe pesci. .ven given all of that, everything is worth it when you see the code wor . At least in my case I en,oy the ,ourney almost as much as the destination even though it doesn*t always seem that way at the time "his is a little glimpse at what that ,ourney can be li e.What started as me helping my brother became my own obsession with computerrcraft. I programmed a rather complicated set of computer controlled doors. )nce I had finished writing the code I sat down to run it and it /"A2".9 W)2:I';. I" WA/ A%A<I';, well it was ama=ing until it stopped wor ing une#pectedly. After about an hour of poring over lines of code I reali=ed that I had misspelled the word received a few times. "hat*s one of those words that tends to slip under my radar. Immediately I started having flashbac s of grammar ,ingles from grade school and I remembered that I comes before e e#cept after c. "hat is an e#ample of what it is li e to try and wor with synta#. A small oversight is all it ta es to throw a wrench into the whole machine. (oding is something that has meant a lot to me through my ,ourney in life and it is something that I am very than ful that I have had the chance to both learn and teach. It has also been very useful in many unrelated fields as it builds strong problem solving s ills, which are applicable almost anywhere. )r one of my personal favorite phrases to post upon sucesss