ATNE is excited to announce a summer workshop!
This workshop is for beginners — people new to programming. This will be a true introduction to computer programming and how it can be used for inquiry and creativity, with no previous programming experience needed or expected.
The workshop, led by Nick Montfort, is based on Nick’s book Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities. The workshop will cover the initial, core concepts of the book. The book will allow participants, individually or in informal groups, to continue their explorations in different media and using more advanced methods. Participants get a copy of the book, provided at the event.
Nick will lead participants in exploring computer programs through modification (from the bottom up or inside out) and as they start learning the fundamentals of programming (from the top down).
What You Will Learn:
• Writing programs is not intimidating; materially, it’s just editing a text file.
• The difference between valid code (a program that runs) and code that does what you intend, along with how error messages are actually helpful to programmers.
• The true fundamentals of programming – looping and iteration, bundling code together in functions, and using data of different types.
• How to undertake small-scale projects and see that computer programming is not an abstract mathematical exercise, but part of our culture.
Although we will be working with JavaScript and Python, the fundamentals you will learn in this workshop will not be specific to a particular programming language. They will provide a basis for a great deal of further programming.
We will be approaching programming as a cultural activity that is accessible to everyone. Our work will focus on text, but the book, Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities, includes exercises and suggested projects that deal with images, statistics and visualization, animation, sound, and interactivity.
The cost of the workshop includes a copy of Nick’s book, Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities, which retails for $40.