National Future Day 2022: Shugufa and Laura come to visit

On 10 November 2022, xappido ag took part in National Future Day for the second time. Through the special project “Mädchen-Informatik-Los!” we were able to welcome Shugufa and Laura to our office in Oberkirch for half a day, as in the previous year.

Why “Mädchen-Informatik-Los!”

The special project run by National Future Day introduces girls to professions in which they are still rarely represented. That is exactly why we take part: once you have seen for yourself how a command turns into something visible, you know that this door is open.

First commands in XLogo

The work was done with XLogo, the learning environment from ETH Zurich. You type in short commands — forward, left, repeat — and see immediately what comes of them: first a line, then a shape, and in the end a drawn dragonfly.

Now and then the screen also read “Der Befehl lf existiert nicht” — the command lf does not exist. That is part of it, and not only on Future Day: a typo is the first experience everyone has when programming.

The robots were glad of the visit too

We were not the only ones with guests; our learning robots were put to work as well. They are the shortest route to the realisation that something really does happen behind every command: type it in, run it, watch.

We thank Shugufa and Laura for their visit and the organisers of National Future Day for the programme. See you next year — when there would be six of them.