MHave you ever wondered what it takes to be a hacker?

I totally haven’t (legal reasons), but now I know, all thanks to week 9 of the SBC (Student Blogging Challenge). This week, the challenges were to try some HTML on my blog (bold, italic, links), and to have some fun on Hour of Code. In this post, I’ll be walking through what I’ve learned, and my process.

Hour of Code

So I decided to do the flappy game one, as flappy games always intrigued me and I think there’s a lot of (metaphorical) creative room to with with. However, I soon realized it was not meant for my age group. Nonetheless, it was fun, and taught me basic coding skills.

The first few tasks are simple. There aren’t actually any obstacles, just you tapping frantically to react certain points and inputting code blocks.

They soon threw some curveballs at me, adding obstacles, sound effects, and most importantly, speed changes. This is what made it fun and challenging for me, as I set it to “very fast” and the rapid movement made it somewhat more enjoyable.

I was able to make the game even more challenging when I set the “flap” option to flap a random amount when I click, making for some fun times when combined with my very fast speed.

Here’s where it got creative. I was able to change the background and add sound effects to fit it, making the game much more customizable. I was then able to change my character, allowing for even more customization.

And if it wasn’t confusing enough, there was now an option to set the score to a specified number after an event. Needless to say, I made good use of this function.

And then, as quickly as it begun, it ended. The last level really let me use my knowledge to create a nice, wholesome, flappy game using everything I’d learned.

And then, it was over. I received a certificate to show that I had completed it, and I also got a link to my game. If you want to try it out go ahead. Link’s right here.

However, the second task was to use some HTML on my blog. I learned how to bolden words, italicize words, and also to hyperlink in a different way. Here’s a sample sentence that makes absolutely no sense.

The green cow jumped over the tall sunflower while drinking a tall glass of warm water.

Well that’s it. I hope y’all enjoyed my post. This whole coding thing got me interested in what code is capable of doing, and also showed me how simple it is. As some of you may know, I hope to pursue computer science as an adult, and this has helped spark my interest.

This is Jason Guan, signing off.