In Slow Code, students write homegrown code and share it with their local classmates. Like the Slow Food Movement, the class advocates the benefits of using locally grown produce (code) and skillfully judging the origins of globally produced food (code-libraries/snippets). Students are given time to learn the craft, exploring how it relates to their unique skillsets and interests. At minimum, they learn how to code as well as use other people’s code efficiently. At best, the craft will grow its roots into their perception of systems, processes, and ultimately enrich their creative processes.
This class was inherited from Amit Pitaru, where I continued along in his footsteps, building off these foundational principles to give students a baseline of conceptual thinking for how computational media can be useful to them in their design practices.