I’ve made it through (most of) Lesson1 of my “Getting Started with Programming” Course on Codeacademy and I’m already running into trouble! Nooo!

Mind you, the first few exercises within the lesson felt like a breeze. Really, I figured I’d be making apps and creating programs in no time! I suppose when you have exercises like “type your name”…

…And “Copy these instructions so that you can create one of those awesome pop-up boxes!”

… you’re bound to feel like a programming champ.

Yet this were just the “feel good” exercises before tackling the real deal.

Before I get into the details, here are some new terms I learned:

string:  a unit of alphabetic characters that need to be identified as one. As a programmer, you need to identify “strings” in your programs in order for words to show up. If you don’t identify “strings,” the program won’t recognize those particular word units as important. You have to treat your program a little bit like your great aunt Ethel; assume that it will remember nothing. However, it’s easy enough to store strings so that the program will remember what you mean when you type in certain words.

variable:  a number that you store for the program to use as information later.

array: an index (typically of numbers) created so that the program can store multiple numbers at once in the same order/pattern each time.

I’m still not sure I completely understand the distinction between a “string” and a “variable” (aren’t they all simply units of different types to be stored?), but the above definitions are a simplification of how I’ve parsed this out in my mind.

In any case, as I moved along through the lessons, I discovered that programming language involves a lot of syntactical precision. After all, a program can only run if the writer is incredibly explicit in his/her directions. Let me try to provide an example:

The exercise wanted me to command the program to parse out two letters from the string “hello” (in this case, the letters in the first and second positions of the string). Alas, do you see what mistake I made the first time around?

That’s right: I put a period at the end of the command while I should have left it open. That one little dot messed up the entire operation! Isn’t that bananas?

Of course, syntactical accuracy is not the only thing I learned to be wary of. Logic is a hugely central to programming, something I had never realized before I began Code Year.

This makes complete sense, of course. How would a program know how to function if it did not account for all possible contingencies?

One concept I especially struggled with was that an “equal” sign does not always mean “equal.”

I mean, what? Equal is not equal? What are you trying to do to me, Javascript? Are you going to tell me next that people aren’t people?

So, as it turns out, one equals sign simply identifies a variable. It does not necessarily mean that the variable at the end of the “equal” sign is going to be the “answer” to the program (especially if it’s a mathematical program). Three equal signs together (===) is used to check if one variable’s value is equal to another variable’s value in the program.

Oof, yeah, I had to read that a few times over, too. My brain is not used to considering all of these different mathematical contingencies!

The primary circumstance in which a programmer may use the “=” and “===” signs is for “if” statements. Here’s an example:

Do you see what’s going on here? Basically, this is a program that will spit out one of the console logs (i.e. “Your name is Sam” or “Your name isn’t Sam”) depending on whether the user of the program answered the prompt (“what’s your name?”) with – well – Sam or not Sam. The “if” statement (with the three equals signs determines) what the response for the user will be if “Sam” is entered or not entered.

See, it really makes perfect sense. It’s just a matter of completely rethinking syntax.

In any case, I felt pretty confident in my understanding of how the “if” and “else” statements work in a program. What’s (still) tripping me up are the “while” statements.

A “while” statement should – in theory – set up a continual loop within the program. However, I seem unable to nail the syntax to create these while statements successfully and I don’t quite know what to do. Any thoughts, cyberspace? Here’s the problem I’m running into:

Perhaps it’s difficult to read the instructions (they are in tiny-ish script), but I’m supposed to create a program that prints the word “hello” twice using the “while” loop. However, I’m not sure where the variable “i” fits into that and how I help the program to understand that I’m not using any numbers here. I’m afraid I’m a bit stuck! Perhaps some future Googling will help me to solve this program.

In any case, I’m really trying not to let myself get frustrated. Even in this first lesson, I found myself reading and re-reading instructions for even the most basic of “activities.”

Perhaps I’m simply not acclimating to thinking from “the back end” like this. Indeed, I fancy myself somewhat creative, yet from what I can gather, successful programs are not merely creative: they are able to envision whole words and define the terms that creates those worlds.

That’s mind-blowing to me.

I suppose for now I’ll have to be content with the mere shrubs and brushes I’m starting to program before I can think about the tall buildings and – goodness knows – the people to populate this digital world.