It was inevitable that once students got their hands on their MacBook Air laptops, some of them would discover the joys of programming: the excitement of creating something that never existed just by using words, the ability to make your ideas into reality by carefully crafting sentences. Okay, it’s not Hogwarts but it can feel just as magical.
Commencing 11 March, meetings of the Waverley Coders group will take place after school. The new group is open to any student who’s free at that time and who would like to develop their coding skills. The group will be meeting in E21 each Friday from 3:30 until around 5:00 pm with a short presentation followed by time to code and work collaboratively. There’ll also be time for a show-and-tell so students can show work and get feedback and tips.
The group will have access to a fairly wide range of languages and platforms, so won’t be just working on iPhone and iPads: there’ll be support for Android devices, Windows phones, websites and remote servers. Although there’ll be lots of support for Swift (Apple’s latest programming language) other options might include Objective-C, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, php, C#, HTML5, CSS3, AngularJS, Angular2.
If meeting with other Waverley students who share an interest in computer programming is something you would like to do on a Friday afternoon, come along to our meetings. Students will need to bring their school computer (or a laptop PC if you’re programming Windows), a charger, enthusiasm and curiosity. Those working on Macintosh or iOS software, will need the latest version of Xcode (7.2.1 at the moment), Android Studio or IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio on a PC.
Students who have questions or need help to get set up should see Mr Reidy in the Science Department at lunch or recess. Otherwise just turn up on Friday and get coding!
