Welcome to SMCCoder’s Blog! In this blog, you’ll find a collection of my projects, ideas, and subjects I feel passionate about. You can go on ahead and explore, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you a little about my backstory and why coding is such a passion of mine.

When I graduated middle school, I had no idea what I wanted to do in the future. I’d taken a few electives at my middle school, but there weren’t that many, and I didn’t do too much of them outside school. I hadn’t really… found my passion.

So when I first entered high school, I found quite a few electives I could sign up for. I wasn’t sure what to choose, so I decided to just try some different subjects out. I ended up taking a Design class, Intro to Writing class, and a Creative Coding class. I really had no idea what Creative Coding was, and I didn’t even know it was a computer class, but it sounded intriguing, so I gave it a try.

The teachers showed us a program called Processing 2, and explained how we could draw things on it like rectangles and ellipses, which was interesting. As we delved into it, it got a little bit more confusing and frustrating, like with for loops. The syntax of for loops was difficult to remember, and I wasn’t sure how to apply it to get the desired result sometimes, like a gradient circle. However, when I succeed in solving a problem, it felt liberating, and I thought, “Yes! It worked!”. However, I have found that not knowing to solve the problem at first can be even more interesting. You act like a detective when you comment out things, trying to figure out what’s causing the problem, and when you solve it, you learn something new. I believe was a large part of what led to my passion in programming. I really think more high schools should have computer science. It is not out of breath of a high school education. When starting from the basics, it can be very easy to get start with programming young. There are tons of good programs for young beginners, like P5, Processing 2, CodeCombat. And even if students don’t become interested in it as a career, it is a fantastic way to develop problem-solving skills.