In the midst of a Metro Vancouver heat wave, some young people are steering away from the sunny outdoors and getting cozy behind computer monitors.
Summer camp is out — coding camp is in.
Programming languages like HTML, CSS and Ruby will be all the rage at a free camp hosted by The Next Big Thing non-profit at Hootsuite’s Vancouver headquarters July 26-27.
CodeCamp 2014 is targeting high school students in Grades 10-12 who are looking to understand more about front- and back-end development. Even though all the registration spots have filled up, people can still sit back behind their monitors and stream the camp live.
“It’s just like literacy, it’s going to be pervasive across any industry to have basic coding skills,” said Sandra Wear, CEO of Canadian Women In Technology.
Wear is co-organizing a coding camp geared toward teens July 19 at Rocky Mountaineer Station, near the Main Street SkyTrain station.
The Be Like Ada camp — named in honour of mathematician Ada Lovelace, often considered the world’s first computer programmer — is aimed specifically at young females trying to learn more about an industry typically dominated by males.
“We’re trying to create an environment where they’re comfortable, where they build confidence and can find peers,” Wear said.
“Because we’re seeing in society even when they go into (computer science) or engineering, then they leave because there’s not enough other girls and the environment’s not friendly.”
Instead of narrowing it to one or two coding languages, Wear said Be Like Ada will teach the fundamentals of computer programming so students can later jump into whatever code is most relevant to them.
More info about the camps can be found at codecamp.codecore.ca and belikeada.com.
