TOWAMENCIN- NPHS has always been a diverse school, offering a variety of classes, clubs, and activities. Regardless of the student’s hobbies or interests, NPHS is able to accommodate every one of them. Everything ranging from creative writing to table top role playing games is represented with a club, and computer programing is no different.

The Computer Programing Club meets every Tuesday in the IMC to discuss the inner workings of the latest software. Since this past week was Computer Science Education Week, the Computer Programing Club has reached out to the rest of school in an attempt to get more people involved with coding.

“This is the second year we’ve done Hour of Code,” said club advisor Joseph Ramsay. “Last year, we didn’t do as good a job publicizing, but we’ve certainly done better this time around. Hopefully, next year we’ll have even more people.”

On Tuesday, December 6th, and Thursday, December 8th, students from both the Computer Programing Club as well as students completely new to coding gathered in the IMC to participate in activities part of the Hour of Code, which is part of the website code.org.

“I really share code.org’s opinion,” Ramsay said. “They just want everyone to at least somewhat literate in terms of programing. After all, computers do really permeate our society nowadays.”

Hour of Code is a series of games created by code.org meant to teach people more about programming through simple and easy to understand methods. Also, it should be said that these games are not available only during Computer Science Education Week. At any time throughout the year anyone can visit the site to get their feet wet with the basics of programming and get a head start on whatever they may do in the future.

“Even if you don’t end up programing in your career, it’s important to know that kind of structured algorithmic process,” Ramsay said.

Ramsay’s history with coding goes back to his own days in high school, using completely different languages of code on computers many people haven’t even heard of. Today, he focuses on getting more of the student body involved with computer coding.

The games themselves are simple level based operations. There is an objective that you must solve through coding the game. To attain the goal, you can add characters, change settings, increase speeds, and add points. Since you are the programmer, you decide how difficult the game is. If you wanted, you could pass every level in seconds. And while this may seem too easy to some, the games do in fact do a fantastic job of introducing would be programmers to the basics of coding.

“They were definitely very helpful,” said Hour of Code participant, Justin Pollack. “It can introduce people who never thought they could program into this whole field. I’d absolutely recommend this to someone interested in programing. I’d even recommend it to people who weren’t interested in the field.”

The North Penn Computer Programming Club is not new, in fact it has been around for a few years now. With so little activities to involve them with the rest of the school, many of North Penn’s student body is largely unaware of their existence.

“I’d have to say we kind of go a little unnoticed,” said Computer Programing Club member, Cassey Slayton. “Hour of Code is probably the only thing we do all year that gets out to the people.”

Slayton has been part of the Computer Programming Club for a little over a year now, though he has been coding for nearly three years prior.

“Things like Hour of Code can be very important to students who are unfamiliar with programing,” Slayton said. “It actually helps them learn how things fit together nicely.”

While it certainly can’t be said that two days are enough to learn the ins and outs of computer programming, the Hour of Code is definitely a good way for people to get introduced to the concept.

“Computer programing can lead to hundreds of different jobs in the future,” Slayton said. “I think that everyone should have at least some idea of how to do it.”