Our third software-development edition brings new and returning students into one cohort. Rather than splitting the room, we run a shared core with extension tracks: beginners follow the spreadsheets → C# → HTML/CSS → Blazor path, while advanced students take on data structures, Big-O and an individual project. The sessions below reflect the cohort so far; this page will grow as the course continues.
Laid out the dual curriculum and ways of working for the mixed group, explained software, hardware and instruction set architectures, then beginners built a first C# console app while advanced students scoped individual projects (e.g. a virtual science lab, a languages conjugation tool, a maths tutor).
Beginners learned variables, types and a C# syntax cheat sheet, applying them to shape calculations; advanced students went deeper into types vs classes — bundling data and behaviour — with a Dog class exercise.
Beginners added user input with Console.ReadLine and int.Parse, building a four-operation calculator; advanced students extended the Dog class with interactions and loops over collections.
Introduced HTML as a markup language with tags and structure, inline CSS styling, and the browser Dev Tools — students built a page from scratch, with flexbox-layout and Roman-numeral-calculator challenges.
Covered file paths and extensions, motivated dynamic interactive pages, and had students create their first Blazor WebAssembly app, meet Razor syntax and run the Counter page.
Reviewed core concepts and built a "peek-a-boo" button that shows an image full-screen and toggles back — with the Blazor calculator and an advanced AdvancedConsole class as challenges.
Introduced functions, interactive input components, events and handlers (OnClick, OnKeyDown), and one-way vs two-way data binding — building a page that shows an inspirational message, with random-message and random-colour challenges.
Reinforced events and binding with debugging exercises and @if/else with @bind; advanced students drew labelled boxes linked by arrows in inline SVG, building toward classifying organisms as plant or animal.
Introduced if/else and Boolean expressions, building an "are you on holidays?" page with nested conditions; an advanced challenge generalised it with a DateRange class and a list, so behaviour is data-driven rather than hard-coded.
Consolidated if/else in both plain C# and Razor forms alongside a review of events and binding, continuing the calculator, holidays page and the advanced SVG and organism-classification challenges.
