Looking at my interest my mother introduced me to Tynker and taught me block coding. Hot Wheels Race was my first program in Tynker where I had to program a car to win the race and I really enjoyed on how my instructions were followed by the car to win the race.

In a years’ time, I graduated to scratch programming which allowed me to set my own background, characters and sounds to create a game with animation. I could make my characters move and talk too, to make my story telling more effective and attractive for viewers. These features enhanced the story to make it more interesting for the viewers to appreciate. Enriched my scratch journey by building more games like Soccer, Dodge Ball, Shooter etc.

My serious programming started with self-learning courses on edX about HTML, CSS, Java Script, Django and SQL which come hand in hand. Some of the projects I built was a flight booking system which has a database which stores all the logins and lets you book and add flights with the number of passengers that can travel in it. This was my first interaction with database, and it was indeed remarkably interesting to learn about storing and retrieval of data.

During the lockdown, saw my father working on python, Swift, Xcode programming and other AI, machine learning and analytics tools & programming language.With complete lockdown, I had lots of time during school vacation. I upgraded my programming by learning python along with app development for iOS in Swift and Xcode. It took less time to learn due to handholding by my parents during this journey.

Some of the initial projects in python were simulating calculator, and validation for prime numbers, dice rolling, reversing a sentence etc. These helped me to understand the concept of algorithm and how those algorithms can be written in python. Learning python syntax was fun with these. This helped me to learn concepts like modular programming, abstraction, inheritance. Then graduated to writing some more complex programs like read your mind game. This was a magic game to read number in your mind by asking few questions. I also made a project called Drawing Machine with the library turtle. This can draw shapes based on user input. Currently I am conceptualizing a game “Bubble Blaster”, which allows player to blast bubbles with a submarine in a time limit and blasting twenty bubbles gives you extra time and at the end it displays how many bubbles you blasted. I really really enjoy coding in python.

I also learnt AppleScript which was much simpler than python. AppleScript can be used to exchange data between and control other applications to automate repetitive tasks. I did a simple application by adding survey link at end of my keynote presentation.

App Development is always fascinating, and iOS is the best place to start. In swift, I learnt how easily views can be created that interacts with the user and make interesting interactive apps. I made an App called Tourist attractions in Singapore in which the main view shows the “Attractions of Singapore” with its pictures and location. Location can also be viewed on Apple maps. This app also has zoom-in and zoom-out feature to let you see more details about the place. Continuing to build more features like ticket details, booking, comments and other facilities. 

In a week, I spend two to four hours on coding which can easily double up during the holidays.

Introspecting at my few years coding journey I could summarize the enriching benefits that would keep me going for many years to come.

1. Creativity –   Coding or building apps lets you expand your creativity and help you think  out of box and solve some real-life problems.
2. Problem Solving – While coding or making apps I was getting some unexplained bugs and I learnt how to fix these bugs to get my code running. This improved my skill of finding the root cause of issues and fixing it. This is an immensely powerful tool in real life too.
3. Presentation Skills – While coding or making apps I used to think about how to present it efficiently which can be used in other places as well.
4. Learning to learn – During this journey I did lot of self-learning without joining any coding classes. This skill can help me learn any new thing I wish to learn.

Let me finish by a famous quote from Steve Jobs that keeps inspiring me every day.

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”