Starting to Program from Childhood

Rogelio Valdés

Nov 13, 2020

See the Video Game Programming Course at robinacademy.com/vg

Today my work depends completely on building technology, and I love that. But when I was a child, I hated programming and honestly thought I would never be able to learn it. I want to share the learning path I went through, including the mistakes and frustrations along the way, so that more children can start earlier and with better guidance.

I always had strong logical thinking skills, and math was never a big problem for me. As a child I spent a lot of time reading blogs and online news about companies like Apple, Nintendo, Sony, Google, and other tech giants. I loved the topic, and my dad wanted to support me in learning how to code.

LOGO / A language for children?

Back then there were not as many tools as there are today, but there were still plenty of options. I remember my dad finding a website so I could start coding in LOGO, a very simple language meant for beginners. Looking it up now, I see that the site is still popular. It is called turtleacademy.com. The page teaches you very simple commands to control a turtle. But I remember not liking it at all.

I found it boring. Moving the turtle from one side to another felt meaningless to me. I could not see the purpose or the challenge in it. I also thought that learning to program meant memorizing every command in every language, and I hated memorizing things. Later I would understand why memorization in school had always bothered me. After a couple of weeks, I lost interest and decided programming was not for me.

HTML and CSS / Web development

Years passed, and around 2008, when I was thirteen, I became obsessed with Pokémon. I spent a lot of time reading Pokémon news websites in English, and I wanted to make my own Spanish-language site. I researched how websites were built and discovered that I needed to learn HTML and CSS, at least to make a basic site. My dad lent me an HTML book and I completed some of the exercises, but I did not enjoy it much. It was written for adults and explained everything in a very technical way.

Then I found tutorials on W3Schools.com, which still has excellent content to this day. I completed all the HTML and CSS exercises, but I still struggled to go from those exercises to building my own website. And the worst part was that it still felt boring. There was no real logic to it. It just felt like memorizing syntax. Once again, I ended up hating programming. A few years later I would realize that HTML and CSS are not really programming languages in the way I had imagined.

Objective-C / iPhone apps

A couple more years passed, and apps were starting to become popular. I really wanted to learn and was determined to make my own app. I researched online, read books, and watched tutorials to learn Objective-C and start building for the iPhone. I spent several months trying, but it was very hard for me. That was the moment when I truly felt I did not have the ability to program, and I gave up again.

Game Maker / My first video game

Two more years passed, and when I got to high school we had a basic programming class. The moment the teacher told us we were going to learn how to make video games, I completely lit up. It became my favorite class. She taught us to use a block-based programming tool that is still very popular today: GameMaker.

In the very first class, we built a simple game, and I had so much fun. It felt like a real logic challenge, and I realized that I did not need to memorize commands because I could always look them up in the documentation. That is when I decided to team up with my best friend, who also loved the class, and build a game on our own. After the class ended, we spent two years programming our own games. We built two of them and even won a local contest.

Those game projects made me realize that I actually could program. I was capable. Maybe I had simply chosen the wrong starting points before. I still did not see myself as a programmer yet, but that experience gave me the confidence and motivation to keep exploring the field.

C++ / Programming fundamentals

When I got to college, I took a programming fundamentals class, and that is where I can honestly say I learned the base I needed to take on larger projects by myself. We used C++, which is a much more complex language compared with what I had seen before.

With more confidence, I started programming with Arduino using Processing and built robotics and electronics projects. I learned C# so I could keep building more advanced games and even augmented reality apps with Unity.

Later I learned Swift so I could finally build my own iPhone app, which was actually one of the first versions of Robin. Today we build Robin’s platform with JavaScript, and I know I can learn any other language I decide to take on, because I keep learning every day.

> The turning point for me was building my first video game, when I finally saw something I had imagined actually working. But I hit many obstacles on the way that could easily have pushed me away from this field for good. That is why I love teaching programming while students build their own games. Seeing their creation come alive gives them confidence and motivation. My goal is for more children to build that same confidence early on, so they can explore this field and discover their passion long before choosing a career.

See the Video Game Programming Course at robinacademy.com/vg