How to Learn to Code in Ten Easy Steps While Planning a Trip to Paris and Influencing People
Did I buy this comic purely based on the title? I mean, that and the fact that I knew that Alexandra was at SPX, keeping with the theme of my recent fundraiser. Did I also regret it after having to type that title three times already? Honestly, only a little bit, because this comic was a blast and I worry that people might skip it because of that title. Don’t! If you need more convincing, perhaps in the form of a review of some kind, are you ever in luck! This starts off with a simple premise: young Alexandra is in school and just starting a computer class, hoping to use it to learn to code. The teacher, sadly, is one of Those Teachers. You know the ones, not the ones that inspire kids but instead tell them what they think their limitations are. In this case, unbelievably, this teacher and his mustache (I feel like this detail is important) literally tells her “coding isn’t really something for girls to do anyway.” This might have broken the spirits of some kids, and probably did before Alexandra, but all it did was give her a fierce resolve to prove him wrong. She had a chance to do this early, as he instituted a contest to see who could type the fastest each week, and her previous experience working in a video store for her parents had left her with a 120 WPM score. So she won every week and used the gift cards to buy books on how to code, and all the while her teacher got more and more suspicious of her winning, to the extent that even the other students were standing up for her. Finally the conditions for the final exam were announced, which involved using what they had learned in class up until that point to plan a 10 day trip using any program. This was basically designed to for Alexandra to show off what she had learned all by herself, and the rest of the comic goes through how she learned it, how she completed the assignment, the redundancies she built in to prove her teacher wrong when he inevitably accused her of cheating, and his reaction to the finished product. It’s an immensely satisfying comic, as it’s always fun to see bullies get what’s coming to them. Check it out, this is bound to bring back some memories of your own personal worst teacher from back in the day. $10
Posted by Kevin