Obama is the first American president to write a computer program.

From 8 to 14 December 2014, Computer Science Education Week is held in different countries of the world. The event is aimed at teaching computer science and programming to the general public, especially children, and is being held with the active participation of the organization Code.org .

In our time, knowledge of computer science is an important skill that almost everyone needs. Even supermodel Karlie Kloss boasts that she wrote a small program and was able to manage the drone.
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Participated in the programming courses and President Obama himself. He wrote a very simple JavaScript code that draws a square on the screen. With this symbolic act, Obama became the first president in US history to create a computer program. In other countries, there are precedents: for example, the president of Estonia in his youth held programming courses .

Last year, Obama gave a speech on YouTube , promoting participation in Computer Education Week. He addressed his fellow citizens: “Mastering these skills is important not only for your future. It is important for the future of our country. ”

A whole industry has been formed around teaching children to computer science. Training games are now being released, and three-month summer camps (bootcamps) are being organized, where people are trained in an intensive manner, so that after such a powerful course they can even get a job in a new specialty.

Code.org promotes the idea that the very basics of programming can be learned by every person, even every child. In fact, modern tools allow you to do this without prior technical training.

Obama attended an event held by Code.org for schoolchildren from 20 high schools in New Jersey. Everyone was offered to undergo an introductory lesson before writing code. The president did not watch it, but went from computer to computer between schoolchildren. But then I did some exercises using the Google Blockly tool and wrote a line of JavaScript code.

By the way, Obama even knows about bubble sorting .

Other politicians have not lagged behind the American president. For example, the Irish Prime Minister wrote a little demo on Blockly.

PS Obama account on Github