A Tour of Programming on Khan Academy

We'll take you on a tour of what it's like to learn programming on Khan Academy - taking the tutorials, creating new programs, making spin-offs of other people's sweet programs, and helping each other out along the way. Join us at http://khanacademy.org/cs

Okay! So now you have seen how cool just a short program can be.

So hopefully you really excited keep going with programming in Khan Academy!

We want to give you a little tour of what you can expect.

When we do want to teach new concepts,

we use coding talk, we will write code on the left side over here

and will see the result over the right side constantly updating as you change the code

also we are talking what we are writing

so make sure you have your headphone and your speaker on

to get started with the walkthrough

just click "Play"

and pause if you want to study something we have done

you can even change the code yourself and see the result updated

I think that winstone is actually a alien thing

it is a crazy planning with purple faces

and I just think that...

he should has really really BIG EYES!! WOW!!! Poor guys!

Programming isn't just about going to the tutorials that we have given you

Our thinking about programming is the exploration and the creativity of it

that mean when you wake up in the middle of night with a idea of a completely new program

just log on and click "New Program"

Once you have done that, you get a plain editor and a plain canvas

and the world will be your programmatic playground

so you may not remember how to do thing

you can look down at the adaptation

and remember... oh yeah.. ok... I want these clips...functions....

and I am going to use the "draw" function

okay alright... so we go up here

and we set variables there

and then we hope it runs...

Oh! but we've got a problem!

"mouseZ" is not defined!

ok! that's fine.

that "mouseZ" should be "mouseY" [ellipse(x, y, width, height) ]

now it works!

Here is the point: It is totally ok to make mistakes!!

you should make mistakes!

that's what programming is to do all the time

we just break things and make mistakes and then we learn from that

Now once I made my amazingly new program and I am really satisfied with it

I can save it

give it a really nice descriptive name...

like "Circle Drawy ThingyBobbler" = =""

"Mister Circle Drawy ThingyBobbler" = =""""

I can save that

and then other people can actually find it

but creativity isn't just about purely building new thing

it is just as much about building on top of existing things

and taking them a new direction

that's the power of the "Spin Off"!

so now I gonna save this program

I can actually go and modify it

and if I tune my new parameter different

I can just go... save the spin off

this one like "Mister BIG Circle Drawy ThingyBobbler" = =""""

but you don't need just have to spin off your own program

you can spin off anyone's programs

so we made a really easy field to find other people's program

you can browse the "Hot" / "Spotlight" / "Top" / "Recent"

I mean I spent my Friday night just browsing programs in Khan Academy

because I find so many cool thing that I would have never thought of

So some people made games, right?

like "doodle jump" you can played that on the mobile phone is a really fun game

and somebody made this version on here...

OH... Almost got it!

HAA~~~~~OK I will play that again later

People make simulation...

so if you want to understand how pendulum works,

like you have in the Physics class,

you can do 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 affects the pendulum

People make drawing like the famous cartoon character (Despicable ME)

This is my favorite --- the Tardis of Doctor Who

and if you not watching Dr. Who yet, you really should (Advertising= =)

because as you can see, from all the programs it has been our song Khan Academy

It's a really cool show

People make charts or even animated charts

Some people make really creepy animation like this one

I think if you watches for hours will get hypnotized by it

you see lots of other people like it too and they made all these spin-offs

Last thing, if you find the program you like

you can just start tinkering it and see like

what if I change this... and I change this...

maybe I change here...

how is it changes...

you may not even understand entirely at first

but the more you tinker with it

the more you play with the code

you get a better feel for it

and then maybe when you come up with these variations that you think is really cool

and then you can save it as spinoff and

say like... alright....it is my...

really cool Pameia's Hypnosaic here

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 quite understand how something works

we are going to the question panel

and say like okay...

why did you start your variables with i? Did you work for Apple? ^_^

you can ask any question and hopefully the person created it will answer it

and if you find the question you know the answer too

then I answer it like... Hey! Yeah! You can!

here's where I did it.

you can answer with that to link to another scratchpad

rewriting to answer their question

now if you just want to say how awesome it is

or give a tip

you can go to the tips and feedback panel

say like "WoW! This is the coolest thing I have seen today!"

and then the creator will feel really good

because they got these compliment from you

and that's one of the awesome thing about programming is that

you can put all these thing in the world

and you never know who is gonna to find it

and who's day you are gonna to make better

because they found these really cool creative thing that you come up with

so we want this to be a community of people learning from each other

and sharing their creation with each other

because this is a big part of what we love about programming

it will definitely harder first

and your first program so start off small

but as you keep going

you will be able to do more and more

until one day you realized that

Wow! you can do almost anything in programming!