Code.org, the website behind the now infamous Hour of Code initiative, have partnered up with Disney to bring a Star Wars oriented introductory Javascript course. In these lessons the coder has to guide BB-8 - the new droid in the upcoming Star Wars movie - around the map to collect scrap metal and imperial mouse droids amongst other things.
The course is aimed at children eleven or over (although, there is no upper limit) who want to get started with Javascript, the world's most popular programming language (or scripting language if you prefer). As this is aimed at beginners much of the code written just invokes a function - a block of code which performs a specific task - rather than getting the user to write it themselves, an example of this are the direction commands.
Code.org was launched in January 2013 with the endorsement of several famous (ex-) computer scientists including Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Jack Dorsey. That year during the second week of December, the first Hour of Code challenge was launched. The Hour of Code challenge was an initiative to entice school students to complete short programming tutorials. The Barack Obama-endorsed campaign saw 20 million people participate.
Code.org have previously teamed up with Disney to bring a programming course to its site based on the film Frozen, and at last year's Hour of Code challenge, a course based on Flappy Bird - the hit mobile game - was launched.
Source: Code.org Star Wars via Gizmodo | Image via SPHERO
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