Captain Whiskers ~ Learn How to Code

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Inspiration

Learning how to code can feel very overwhelming for beginners. There’s confusing syntax, many unfamiliar concepts, and a majority of the available resources have adopted a “read and watch” model, which can be unengaging for new learners. Understanding this, we were inspired to create a platform that makes coding feel less intimidating and more engaging. This becomes continuously important as knowing how to code becomes less of just an interesting skill and more of a necessity in a modern, tech-driven society.

Along with this, we wanted to help make a change in the modern perspective on pursuing education within computer science degrees. Due to the daunting work of AI, it seems as if we will all be replaced. It is important to understand that this is not true. In fact, AI is merely a building tool in our kit to extend our vision for future projects. Hence, with Captain Whisker, we provide students with opportunities they explore using their skill set, whether that be an individual coding contest or a hackathon. These small projects make these applicants stand out from the rest of the crowd, helping with their applications for job searches in the future!

What it does

Our website makes learning how to code more fun and accessible by gamifying the process and giving users a hands-on approach. Users can select from a variety of different programming languages to learn through answering questions. These questions begin with teaching the user basic syntax and progressively get more difficult. According to the user’s skill level, the website will recommend opportunities and resources, such as hackathons, careers, etc.

How we built it

We built this project using JavaScript and the React library for a dynamic interface for users. As beginners, we ran into many unknown concepts, and due to the time constraint, we consulted our fellow mentors for their knowledge. Additionally, we used Gemini’s API.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a few challenges while working on this project. Namely, our goals didn’t align with our previous team and we had to start fresh with only 15 hours out of the 36 to work on it. While facing our extenuating circumstances, there were many times we thought of giving up. However, we persevered and through teamwork and hard efforts we adapted and came out with a product we’re proud of.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud of the game we were able to create and being able to offer a solution to the problems that we presented. It is important to us that we are able to help new learners begin their coding journey, just as we had started ours not too long ago. As well as this, we were very proud of how we were able to integrate the hand-drawn graphic design into the website. It was interesting to see what we could accomplish with this combination. During the process, we continued to be proud of our teamwork and adaptability.

What we learned

While working on this project and participating at SheHacks+, we learned quite a few new things. Namely, we learned how to work well as a team. We were able to efficiently divide the work between our teammates and were able to communicate well with each other. This skill that we developed over our time here will be invaluable. As Computer Science students, and coders in general, the ability to work as a team and have strong communication throughout is incredibly important as this is a very team-driven field.

We also learned a lot of new ways to code! During this project, we used a few different coding languages that we had not worked with before such as Javascript and HTML. It was really interesting being able to work with new things and learning how to actually apply the knowledge that we have learned so far in our computer science classes. None of us have ever actually coded a full project before (beyond assignments), so it was really interesting getting to use these skills and learn how to apply them. In general, we ended up learning a lot during this experience.

What's next for Captain Whiskers ~ Learn How to Code

We have a lot of things planned for Captain Whiskers in the future! Currently, we are planning on implementing a daily achievements system and adding even more coding languages. Along with this, in the future, we are thinking of creating a new “Classroom Mode” that will be available for teachers. This new mode will help introduce children to coding in a learning environment along with their peers. With this mode, we had the idea to implement a feature where friends can have daily “streaks” (where they complete at least one lesson a day to maintain the streaks). These can be used to create healthy competition among peers and to motivate users into delving deeper into their learning. With this, we had the idea of introducing users to Prompt Engineering AI. This feature will teach users how to use generative AI in a way that doesn’t compromise their learning. Instead, this feature will encourage the user to complete a piece of code on their own and only use the AI to refine ideas that they already had, instead of generating unoriginal thoughts. Overall, we have a lot of plans for the future of Captain Whiskers!

Built With

• css
• geminiapi
• html
• javascript
• procreate
• react