SPREADING THE WORD – An initiative to teach kids to code

--Originally published at Coding The Future

Hey everyone! I know it's been a while since I last posted, but guess what? I'm in the middle of first-term partials.

Partials in almost any university mean long hours of reviewing content and doing exercises over and over until mastering every possible math problem.

However, in the mist of exam-time chaos, ideas seem to come to me more often than usual, but obviously I cannot currently work on these genius ideas due to obvious reasons. So today, I decided to take a brief break from stuDYING and from Python to talk to you about something that really interests me: teaching kids how to code.

Coding is basically an essential ability now a days, and according to CODE.org only 1 in every 4 schools teach computer science, in the US alone! So, if we are speaking about the whole world, we are obviously talking about less than 1 in every 4, especially in developing countries. Why are kids learning biology, geography, or even math, and not programming, if they are all equally relevant?

Source: CODE.org

For this reason (and because my professor @Ken_Bauer was also talking about it in class) I have pledged to help kids in my community learn how to code.

Sometime right after exam time is over, I will be contacting my sister's elementary school to propose them a free coding course in the first week of December. I have chosen my sister's elementary for a particular reason: it's an girls-only school. It is no lie there is a lack of women in the tech industry, and that begins from a very early phase, because schools usually encourage girls to pursue other types of careers, especially in conservative countries like mine.

The awesomest part about it, is that I've got mayor companies backing me up Continue reading "SPREADING THE WORD – An initiative to teach kids to code" →

Peace, no matter the cost.

--Originally published at M E R I N O

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea — let’s do more of those!

This are the principles of Python. Also is an Easter egg you can find in Python, just open a terminal, run Python and type “import this”.

I’m not really a professional in the topic so if you want to learn more about what each line you can click here.

Este código era para… Uhh…

--Originally published at M E R I N O

Usa comentarios en tu código. Son muy sencillos de hacer y son muy útiles cuando estás programando con otras personas o si quieres utilizar tu código en el futuro, puedes saber para qué sirve cada cosa.

Comentarios en Python son muy sencillos en realidad. Hay 2 tipos de comentarios: los de una sola línea y los de líneas múltiples.

Comentarios de una sola línea:

Los comentarios de una sola línea son útiles cuando queremos hacer notas rápidas o no vamos a escribir mucho texto. Podemos señalar los tipos de variables si aún somos nuevos y se nos olvidan los nombres.

Comentarios de líneas múltiples:

Este tipo de comentarios son útiles para dar una descripción amplia de un código. Se puede poner en la parte superior para explicar lo que hace un bloque o al inicio.