Coding has always been a subject I wanted to learn but never actually got around to mastering. Video games and crating my own website from scratch has always been something I have been interested in so I was excited to dive in to this week’s sandbox.

I hate to admit that despite my own interest in the topic, I was disappointed with material on the site from a learning stand point. I went through about five different modules (some being locked behind a paywall) and I found myself having a similar issue with all of them. Every module I used was similarly formatted like this Flappy Bird game I made where all of the real coding was taken away and replaced with directions. I know this was done on purpose since in one of the tutorials, they state it is for shorthand for the actual code going into it. While I understood staring out with programs like this for younger children, even the ones labeled for older students followed this pattern.

The reason I do not like this approach is that I feel like I should be learning what is being shorthanded is what should be taught so that students will actually have a deeper understanding of code. It does no good to just have the directions spelled out without actually teaching what goes into making those directions work. The only module that actually did that was the Hello World module as it made the user type out the commands rather than drag and drop. I think these lessons are good for possibly sparking interest but they are far beyond teaching coding.