Interesting Facts About Coding (Part 3)
Loshberry Code Studio presents our 3-part ‘Interesting Facts About Coding’ series. Previously in part 1 and 2, we explored different misconceptions about coding and the role of coding in the past and future. Now for some fun facts!
The first digital computer game never made any money
In 1962, a computer programmer from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Steve Russell, and his team took 200 man-hours to create the first version of Spacewar. The game allowed two players to take control of two tiny spaceships and go into battle. Although the game was a big hit around the MIT campus, Russell and his team never profited from the game. They never copyrighted it. Instead, they shared the code with anyone who asked for it as they were hackers who wanted to do it to show their friends. The spirit of sharing projects and code exists till today, with an active open-source community of developers worldwide. In fact, the very popular kids coding platform, Scratch, which is developed by MIT, fosters a community of young creators by encouraging students to share their projects online and remix other people’s works as well, thereby creating infinite possibilities!
If coding were a country, it would have the third most diverse languages spoken in the world.
Papua New Guinea has approximately 836 indigenous languages spoken, making it the first country when it comes to linguistic diversity. Second on that list is Indonesia (>700 languages), followed by Nigeria (>500 languages). All notable programming languages known to man amount to 698 languages. If coding were a country, it would claim the bronze medal. We don’t recommend trying to learn them all. In fact, mastering the art of computational thinking is far more important and useful than mastering a particular programming language! At Loshberry Code Studio, we recognise the need for students to master the computational thinking process over the learning of languages, so the core of our lessons follow a progressive learning roadmap designed to instill their logical thinking, while programming languages and tools are introduced carefully to suit various stages of learning.
The first computer “bug” was named after a real bug
While the term ‘bug’ in the meaning of technical error was first coined by Thomas Edison in 1878, it took another 60 years for someone else to popularize the term. In 1947, Grace Hopper, an admiral in the US Navy, recorded the first computer ‘bug’ in her log book as she was working on a Mark II computer. A moth was discovered stuck in a relay and thereby hindering the operation. On her note, she wrote, “First actual case of bug being found.”
We hope you’ve enjoyed our 3-part series!
This is the third and last of our 3-part ‘Interesting Facts About Coding’ series.
Part 1: Misconceptions
Part 2: Role of Coding
Join Loshberry Code Studio in our signature Coding Discovery Camps and explore our unique classroom experience!
For more information, please email us at hello@loshberrycodestudio.com or call us at +65 9107 0962.
Written for Loshberry Code Studio by Vivian
