If you’re a programmer, you probably remember your first program as the classic Hello World program that outputs “Hello World!” to your display. The Hello World program is a nice, simple little program- but it’s BORING! Likewise for the numerous code examples for beginners that involve the variables i and j.
That’s why I’m setting off on a mission to create a picture book written in C code! The book is called A Day in Code and it contains simple fun code examples that tell a story. Each code page contains a simple full C program that describes a situation in the story and demonstrates a new programming concept. The full page illustration next to the code page shows the situation. The code is also explained below each program. Here’s a sample code page:
This is the accompanying illustration page:
This book will be useful for kids (or anyone!) as a fun introduction to fundamental programming concepts and constructs like for loops, while loops, functions, etc. You can even use a C compiler to compile and run each program in the book!
Why did I choose C? It’s a foundational language known as the “mother of all programming languages” and it’s one of the most widely used languages today. Common applications of C programming include databases, desktop applications, operating systems, computer games/graphics, and embedded systems.
C is the most popular language in embedded systems! Microcontrollers are a common type of embedded system that control the operation of devices and appliances everywhere- they’re in phones, remotes, printers, cameras, washing machines, microwaves, thermostats, car control systems, etc. The Arduino is a popular open-source microcontroller platform that is programmed in C.
I recently launched the book on Kickstarter! Check out A Day in Code here: