Want to learn coding? Google can teach you on your mobile by Grasshopper app

Grasshopper

Google image

Google employees want to teach you to code for free with their  new app Grasshopper

A bunch of Google employees participating in the company’s Area 120  have launched Grasshopper, a free mobile app for Android and iOS that teaches you the basics of programming.
It’s beautifully designed and is suitable for just about anyone who can be trusted to use a phone on their own. By solving simple challenges and answering quiz questions, you’ll soon get the hang of basic JavaScript



The gamified app, named after programming pioneer Grace Hopper, currently includes three sets of lessons, which cover the fundamentals of coding  such as

• Calling functions
• Using variable
• Objects
•  Animations

The idea is to spend a few minutes a day with it, so you can have the app remind you to hop in daily and take on a few challenges.

The content in Grasshopper, you can move on to recommended Coursera classes to learn  for a fee,

• JavaScript
• HTML
•  CSS
• lgorithms
• Web design

Simply muck around in Grashopper’s online playground and make your own JS animations. .

Google image

How to use

You log in with your Google account, are walked through basic coding definitions, and then you start the exercises.

 The actual utility of the app – coding – it covers the basics of JavaScript and some of the building blocks of programming. The app covers ‘The Fundamentals’, which includes information on how codes work, calling functions, variables, strings, for loops, arrays, conditionals, operators, objects, and how all these things work together.

Once the fundamentals are complete, the app takes you to ‘Animations I’, which helps you learn drawing shapes using the popular D3 library, defining functions, callback functions, and animations.

The Animation I is followed by Animations II, which helps you create more complex functions using D3 and the topics from The Fundamentals course.

Every section has an introduction followed by some instructions and an example. There is a ‘your code’ box at the end of every puzzle that is where you put your code, based on learnings. Once you put the code and run it through the app, the app analyses the code and confirms if it is right or wrong, both with supported reasons.

 The app is fun and easy enough to get through a few challenges when you’re on a commute, and feels like a good alternative to scrolling through social media feeds mindlessly. Grasshopper is the latest product to emerge from Area 120, which gives Google employees a chance to work full-time on their side projects and bring them to life.


Try Grasshopper by grabbing it from Google Play or the App Store.

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