One of the major reasons that made learning how to program difficult was the lack of resources available, particularly to those getting started.  Outside of academic settings, it used to be tough to get a basic grasp of necessary concepts that would allow any person to know where/what to look for in order to progress in our understanding of a particular programming language.

Nowadays, the wealth of resources available online make it possible to—by way of Googling—know at the very least where to turn for help if we're stuck during our climb up the programming learning curve.  Moreover, there are concerted efforts to develop tools so that the learning curve for learning how to program becomes as flat as possible.

One of such efforts comes from the wonderful MIT Media Lab, where the Lifelong Kindergarten Group has made great progress into developing a programming language where building blocks are dragged and dropped onto a canvas, and inter-connected in such a way that anyone can progra interactive stories, games, and animations.  The programming language is called Scratch and it's provided free of charge.

Not only is the program very user-friendly, but the creators have gone the extra mile and created a site where users can share their creations with others in the online community.  By doing so, everyone can learn how each creation was put together from the building blocks of the language, and how to improve their own creations.

As posted on their site, the creators believe that "Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century."  Our own Brandan Ticas, has prepared a short introduction that we hope you enjoy.  Given that we're still celebrating Chinese New Year, he wanted to showcase a quick program that allows us to check which Chinese Zodiac animal we correspond to based on our year of birth.

Interested in making your own Chinese New Year's program?  Checkout Brandan's video guide below in which he outlines step by step the process used to do so. It's easy and fun, so go on and make your own Scratch program today!

Click here for the PDF.