Build a toolbox

of skills to shape the future

What's Different About Hatch?

• How to Translate English Into Code

• You learn how to take a plain language idea, said in English, French, or any language you prefer, and to create code that delivers that idea through a computer.

  This is the core of computer programming. This is how you make software that is useful.

  Maybe it was your idea, maybe it was your boss’s, or maybe a customer’s, or maybe it came from “the team”. But when you get skilled at translating verbal ideas into a computer language, options and choices open up for you.

• How to Research Solutions

• Learning to do good research is part of receiving a good education, and it’s an important skill that requires development in every discipline. Good research has a positive impact on thinking and writing; it’s the same when working with code. 

  Good developers are skilled at researching and finding answers to coding problems on the web:

  - in reference manuals,
  - through online documentation, and
  - using search engines and sites like Stack Overflow.

  We teach programmatic research explicitly for the same reasons that research skills are taught explicitly in other disciplines.

• How to Collaborate and Work in a Group

• Group Project Mode in Hatch Studio Software lets up to 4 people collaborate on a single project. 

  Because almost all software today is built by teams, we wanted to build a function to explicitly teach collaboration and cooperation. Group Project Mode simulates a team code writing environment so that you learn important development skills:

  - how to write clean code with good variable names,
  - how to follow style guidelines so that your code is readable, and
  - how to take on a specific role within a larger project.

   

• The Value of Building a Ton of Projects

• Learning to read and write is an applied art, as is playing the piano—and writing computer programs. 

  The best path to expertise and skillfulness in reading and writing code, is to write creative programs: accumulating a portfolio of projects that are simultaneously uniquely yours and authentic practice of an applied art. 

  Hatch Studio Software helps you develop authentic skills and core competencies while building your portfolio. It is what makes us truly special.

• 600+ Projects and 1,800+ Challenges

• Hatch has 600+ small and medium sized projects, each with 3 Challenges (extensions to the base project). Projects and Challenges catalyze creative and critical thinking, from Day 1. 

  The user experience is geared toward rapid iteration and completion, which means that you experience a tight progress and feedback loop that keeps you moving forward and learning more. 

• Every Project is Creative

• Every project you build in Hatch Studio is a “You” project, not a Hatch project. 

  An important measure of excellence in communication is originality. That’s why our Studio software encourages end results that are unique to individual students. 

  Because we believe that programming is a language, we believe that end results should reflect individuality. 

• Personal Feedback When You Get Stuck (Even From Home)

• Whether it is at home, during a camp or inside a class, if you get stuck on a project, we have a human being there to help you get unstuck.

  If you are at home, click the Hatch “I’m stuck” button. Press it and a human will provide help. While you’re waiting for feedback to help you solve your problem, start another project (we have over 600 of them).

  You’ll never be in a place where you can’t progress in your learning.

• Personal Feedback on Project Completion

• When you learn to write an essay you learn to interpret a question, a prompt, or a requirement; there is no right or wrong answer per se: but there is excellence in thinking and logic. To develop writing skills, you need to receive qualitative feedback that is relevant to your work. 

  Hatch Studio Software provides qualitative assessment of your work so that your writing improves along with your thinking and logic.

• 5 Core Competencies of the Well-Rounded Programmer

• With Hatch, you develop 12 levels of expertise in the 5 core competencies of the well-rounded programmer. We want you to write clean code and feel comfortable reading it too. Getting there means explicitly practicing skills in all 5 core competencies, and doing so in an authentic way. 

   

  1. Requirements-based Programming: Translating English into code
  2. Programmatic Research: Doing research to solve coding problems
  3. Communication and Collaboration: Knowing how to work on a team or as part of a group, how to use syntax and vocabulary, and how to create vocabulary too
  4. Computational Thinking: Knowing how to structure the code so that it works—abstraction, algorithms, decomposition, etc.
  5. Computational Logic: Knowing how to use the building blocks of code—loops, conditionals, arrays, etc.

  To become a well-rounded and literate programmer, you need to develop all five of these competencies. 

  While some coding schools and “learn to code” software focus on computational logic, and sometimes introduce computational thinking, our software is called “Studio” because within its environment, you learn all the applied skills that you need to really read and write code.

  This complete approach is what gives you the ability to participate more fully in the economy of the next 20 years.