Cook and Code: everybody learns to code

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The idea

Where does this idea come from?

I always wanted to teach people how to program but I didn´t find the right way, and it was complicated; when someone asked me to program something I used to think, „you could do it by yourself“ so I realized that the only thing that was missing, was a nice and funny way to make the classes.

Maybe people used to think that programming is too difficult, or I don´t know, so we kept on looking for this funny way to make the courses and this is how we thought about „Cook & Code“, we make a nice atmosphere where people take food to share with others so we can have nice small talk and learn at the same time how to program.

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So in the courses, the participant learns how to program in a friendly and relaxed environment.

Yes, that’s right, you can come with a lunch to share and you don’t have to pay the course fee, the lunch has to be vegetarian and selfmade, this is how we get this environment to learn in a leisurely way. There are three such tickets in each course, the others are with the normal fee.

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So If I make a small lunch to share with the rest of the participants, I don’t have to pay the fee course?‍

that´s right.

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That’s cool! To whom is this project directed?

To people that are interested in learning about programming software and that work in online marketing, for instance, 80% of our participants are women who work in the area of online marketing and they need to know how to explain something about ad words.

Another example, are designers who know already how to do the print design but now want to make the online version. We have had also IT students from 6th semester who needed some practical knowledge and I would say in general, people who are interested in learning how the technology that we use every day works actually.‍

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Does the participant have to speak really well German in order to understand?

Well, most of our courses are held in German, but there are also a few in English.‍

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Super! Do you have other events on  your schedule?

Oh well, we have other events like Hackathons, the next one is in December, it´s named „Love Hackathon“ and the goal is to develop technical tools to help people to find love or tools to improve relationships.

The “Love Hackathon” is open to everybody, with or without programming knowledge, hipsters work on ideas and hackers work on developing those ideas.

We are going to stay tuned on it. We were talking before about „&Code“, what is it?

„&Code“ is like  the principal brand, „Cook&Code“ are the programming courses; „Innovate&Code“ are the events like the Hackathon, there is also „Kids&Code“ that are programming courses for kids, actually we had a summer course where 20 kids learned how to make a homepage, we visited some companies to see how the developers work and all the kids enjoyed the course very much, by the way, the course was for free.

And finally we have „Business&Code“, there we make tailor-made courses for companies.

Oh! That´s interesting, how old were the kids?‍

From 9 to 16 years old, it was a nice mix.

Thank you so much Alex, for this great interview!

If you want to know more about „&Code“ here is the link to their website: https://andcode.de/

Photo: Alicia Enciso