I was pretty excited when I got the registration note for a workshop from my class teacher. You might think what was so special about a workshop, but this one involved coding, and I really love coding a lot!! I want to start a career in programming, so I signed up right away. N-Hack awaited me, and as you could tell by the name, it sounded pretty cool! So basically, N-Hack is a coding workshop for girls only, to spread enthusiasm for this particular subject within the minds of young girls such as me.
The workshop was conducted during school hours on the 11th and 12th of April. I had to miss some classes, but I wasn’t worried about that. Accompanied by some of my friends, we headed to the computer lab where we would do all our practicals.
The workshop was extremely interesting. There were many girls, which sort of exceeded my expectations. The teacher was also really great, and I learned a lot of new things, some of which I didn’t even pay attention to before. On the first day, we did theory, and learned the basics of Python, my favourite programming language. It was incredibly fun to learn about functions like loops and Boolean expressions.
The second day, we started our practicals. We actually wrote some code, and made a calculator on our devices!! It was beyond amazing that I could finally create something like this with just a few simple commands. Our teacher also gave us a problem to solve hands-on. He asked us to take any issue in the world, and try to solve it by creating an idea to make something out of coding. My group thought of something called Ocean Sweep, where a robot would be launched from a boat to clean the ocean, with a silicone net. But the other groups also had amazing ideas. I loved one where someone gave the idea about a giant pen which ran on electricity and not ink.
According to me, this was one of the best workshops I have ever attended at school. I really really have gotten inspired here, and I loved the experience of putting my brain to work, and trying to create something which I never thought was possible before.