A Tour of Programming on Khan Academy Video Lecture - IT & Software

Voiceover: Ok so now you see
how cool a short program can be
so hopefully you're really excited to keep
going with programming and Khan Academy
and we want to give you a little
tour of what you can expect.
When we want to teach new concepts
we use coding talk throughs
where we'll write code on
the left side over here
and we'll see the result on
the right side constantly
updating as we change the code.
We'll also be talking
about what we're writing
so make sure you have your
headphones or speakers on.
To get started with a
talkthrough, just click play.
And pause if you want to study
something that we've done.
You can even change the code yourself
then and see the result update.
Like maybe, I think that
Winston is actually an alien
from this crazy planet
with purple faces and
I just think that he should
have really, really big eyes.
Whoah! bug eyes!
Programming isn't just about going through
the tutorials that we've given you.
Our favorite part about
programming is the exploration and
the creativity of it.
That means that when you wake
up in the middle of the night
with an idea for a completely new program,
just log on and click new program.
Once you've done that,
you'll get a blank editor and
a blank canvas and the world will
be your programmatic playground.
So you might not remember
how to do things,
you can look down at the
documentation and remember
oh yeah, i want the ellipse
function and then I'm going to
use the draw function, OK,
alright so we go up here and we
use some variables there.
And then we hope it runs.
Oh! But we got a problem, uh-oh.
mouseZ is not defined. OK, that's fine.
It's actually supposed to be mouseY.
And now it works. So here's the point
It's totally OK to make mistakes.
You should make mistakes.
That's what we programmers
do, all the time.
We just break things and make
mistakes, and then we learn from them.
Now once I've made my
amazing new program and
I'm really satisfied with it, I can save
it, give it a really nice descriptive name
like "Circle Drawy ThingyBobby".
Maybe, "Mr Circle Drawy Thingerbobby",
I can save that and then
other people can actually find it.
But creativity isn't just about
creating completely new things,
it's just as much about building
on top of existing things and
taking them in new directions.
That's the power of the spin off.
So now that I've saved this program,
I can actually go and modify it.
And if I consider my new
program to be different, I
can just go "save as spin-off"
Alright so this one's like "Mr
Big Circle Drawer ThingyBobby"
But you don't just have to
spin off your own programs
you can spin off anyone's programs.
We've made it really easy for you
to find other people's programs.
You can browse the hot, the
spotlight, the top, the recent.
I mean, I spend my Friday nights just
browsing programs on Khan Academy
because I find so many cool things
that I would have never thought of.
So some people make games, right.
Like Doodle-Jump. If you've ever
played that on the mobile phone.
It's a really fun game.
And somebody made this version on
here and oh-man, almost got it, ahh!
Alright, I'll play that again later.
People make simulations, so if you want
to understand how a pendulum works,
like if you're in physics class,
you can do it in a much more fun
way by using this simulation here.
And then you can go and modify
things on the side to see
how different variables
affect the pendulum.
People make drawings, like of
their favorite cartoon characters.
This is my favorite,
the TARDIS from Dr. Who.
And if you're not watching Dr.
Who yet, you really should.
Because as you can see from all the
programs and spin-offs on Khan Acadamy
it's a really cool show.
People make charts or
even animated charts.
Some people make really trippy
animations like this one.
I could just watch this for
hours and get hypnotized by it.
You can see that lots of other
people liked it too because they made
all these spin-offs of it, right.
Because that's the thing,
if you find a program that you like,
you can just start tinkering with it
and seeing "oh well what
if I change this, and this?
"and maybe I change this
here, how's it change it?"
And you may not even
understand it entirely first,
but the more you tinker with it,
the more you play with the code,
you get a better feel for it and
maybe you come up with this variation
that you think is really cool,
and then you'll save it
as a spin-off and say like
"Alright this is my really
cool version of the Hypnozaic"
And then you can save it and
other people can find it.
But maybe you want to ask
a question about it. Right.
Maybe you don't understand
how something works.
We'll just go to the questions panel
and say like "why did you
start your variables with i?"
"Do you work for Apple?"
And you can ask your
question and hopefully
the person who created it will answer it.
If you find a question that
you know the answer to,
then answer them, and say
like "hey, yeah you can,
"here's where I did it"
And a lot of times you can answer with
actually a link to another scratchpad
where you actually
answered their questions.
Now if you just want to
say how awesome it is
or give a tip, you can goto
the tips and feedback panel.
And say like "Wow, this is the
coolest thing I've seen today"
And then the creator will feel really good
because they got this compliment from you.
And that's one of the awesome
things about programming
is that you can put out
these things in the world and
you never know who's going to find them
and who's day you're going to make better
because they found this really cool,
creative thing that you came up with.
So we want this to be a community
of people learning from each other,
and sharing their
creations with each other.
Because that's a big part of
what we love about programming.
It will definitely be hard at first.
And you're first programs
will start out small.
But as you keep going, you'll
be able to do more and more
until one day you realize that, wow, you
can do almost anything in programming.