People
Becoming A Coder
Owen and Dan are hunched over Owen’s lap top, looking at the video game that Owen has created. There’s a sense of accomplishment as they discuss the progress they’ve made over nearly two years of learning a new skill.
“I enjoy video games and always thought I’d like to learn how to create one,” Owen says.
Fortunately for Owen, Dan shares his love of story-telling and technology, so the two have spent some of their time together helping Owen achieve his goal of learning how to code.
The game that Owen has created is called a “platformer game”: a video game where a player moves a character through an environment by jumping, climbing, and performing other actions.
Dan and Owen watched several online videos to learn how the coding process works. It is similar to learning a new language; finding out what the vocabulary means and then how to implement it in a way that tells a story. The challenge came when problems arose that were not addressed by the learning videos.
“We would have to figure out the solution on our own,” Dan says. “When Owen would figure something out, he’d have to learn how to explain that to me, and vice versa.”
When writing in any language, punctuation is important and coding is no different. They’ve realized that often it’s a punctuation error that has created a problem, like forgetting to close a bracket or put in a semi-colon.
“Dan always says ‘check your punctuation,’” Owen says.
Creating a video game has been more difficult than Owen expected but he’s up for the challenge.
“I like it so much that I didn’t want to quit,” Owen says.
Dan has learned that Owen is remarkably patient and tenacious.
“Owen is very diligent. He doesn’t let challenges overwhelm him,” Dan says. “He also understands his own limits, like when it’s time to take a break or when to ask for help.”
The two have an easy relationship that comes from quality time spent together. They first got to know each other when Owen was a trainee at Little Sprout Café, a Communitas enterprise. At that time, Dan was working in the Café as a cook.
Today, Dan supports Owen through Communitas’ Community Living Program, helping Owen learn life skills needed to be more independent. Owen enjoys his time with Dan.
“Dan is a fun guy,” Owen says. “We laugh a lot.”
Owen hopes that learning this new skill can help him find work as a coder. In the meantime, he’s enjoying the process of learning how to build videogames.
“I really like doing this,” he says. “It’s hard but it’s fun.”
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