Grasshopper – A coding app for beginners
I'm torn about all of these types of apps. On one hand, I think it's great to invite people into the world of coding and doing so in a user friendly matter. No doubt Grasshopper and a handful of similar apps are well designed, but is it really the right way to go about things?<p>I remember vividly learning to code at age 11. I had an old computer, windows would constantly crash and the only thing I could access really was QBASIC.<p>Alongside a book with code snippets, I would simply write a line of code, hit run and see what happens. Then, go back to the code and 'go rogue' (meaning: change the numbers a bit and make the line 5pixels instead of 2 for example). This is where the magic happened, because I actually coded something. It wasn't part of an educational application, it was the real deal inside the real editor with a real output.<p>The learning always came from trial and error and in a way is very similar to how I still code things (when I'm not designing SaaS products for awesome B2B companies)<p>The book might be replaced with Google & Stackoverflow, but the principles are the same.<p>The magic of coding, I believe is in writing something that is real.