I realize I’m arriving this news rather late since it’s some weeks old, but good news never turns old. Since I hold a M.Sc. degree in software development, I found this news very compelling: President Barack Obama is being declared the first ever “Coder-in-Chief” after writing his first (and maybe only) line of computer code – with a little help from Hour of Code organized by Code.org.

Media covered this event and ReadWrite wrote:

Using Code.org’s Hour Of Code program and alongside 20 middle school students from Newark’s South Seventeenth Street School, the President successfully completed one line of JavaScript. This event kicks off Computer Science Education Week 2014.

According to Wired, Obama was echoing the sentiment of the growing code literacy movement, which seeks to expand computer science and programming education throughout the world. Code literacy advocates argue that with information technology embedding itself ever deeper into our lives, everyone should learn a bit more about how computers operate. I totally agree on that.

You can also read about this event at The White House Blog. Here’s an excerpt: 

President Obama spoke about the importance of strengthening STEM education, especially for girls and students underrepresented in STEM fields: “Part of what we’re realizing is that we’re starting too late when it comes to making sure that our young people are familiar with not just how to play a video game, but how to create a video game.”

According to The White House, he wrote this line of code:

moveForward(100);

It’s only one small line of JavaScript code, but maybe he could educate himself as a software developer after his presidency in 2018. You’ll never know, I guess he’s a smart guy. 

I recommend that you look at Hour of Code and Code.org. It’s very interesting and important initiatives. In short: The Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics. Code.org is a non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science by making it available in more schools, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color. Maybe you would like to check out the tutorial at Hour of Code yourself. It’s here.

At last, below is a video with President Obama kicking off the Hour of Code 2014.

(Featured image by Wired)