Programming Made Easy

Sometimes I wonder how many tech people (aka geeks) have college degrees and how many are self-taught. I’m not putting down a college degree; I wish I had one. With technology, though, it seems there’s a lot to be said for hands-on education. I taught myself enough to be hired by an ISP in 1999. The owners at the ISP were very generous with their knowledge and I found myself learning even more than I ever thought possible.

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that I learn best by just rolling up my sleeves and jumping in to whatever project interests me. From xhtml and css to taking a screwdriver to my tower, I learn by doing. While I’m sure I would do well in college classes, I’d much rather find online tutorials or the cool programming lesson at HacketyHack.

Hackety Hack is a free download that walks you through lessons (currently) on Ruby. Kids are using Hackety Hack but there’s no reason why adults wanting to pick up new skills can’t use it as well. It’s a quick download and is written in easy to understand language.

Part of the “bylaws” of Hackety Hack state:

• Beginners should be greeted to Hackety Hack by a cartoon character. (For the sake of argument, let’s call this character: Hacky Mouse.)
• Also, helpful sentences. Preferably short and with a period.
• Hackety Hack is fundamentally a browser and a programming language. For now, Gecko and Ruby.
• I’m only using Ruby because I know it. Hopefully, more languages can be added!
• Again, this isn’t about Ruby, it’s about simply offering a place for plainspeople to tinker with code.

My kids love video games but I’m hopeful that installing Hackety Hack on their computers and bookmarking the site for them will encourage at least one of my kids to give programming a shot. Surely, I can’t be the only geek in this family.

I’m still going to pick up a few books on programming since I like having a hard copy of whatever I’m learning. (And because I’d rather hold a book while I’m soaking in the jacuzzi than a laptop.) Hackety Hack is perfect, though, for hands on experience and for capturing a kids’ interest.