Question: why did you chose to spend the money for a work shop for people who enjoy computer games?

Simone Sturniolo answered on 17 Jun 2013:

I think there’s a small misunderstanding here. If I win and I get to organize the workshop, stay assured – you can come and enjoy it even if you totally hate computer games! What I want to teach about is, in general, programming. Programming is the technique – some might say “the art” – of teaching computers how to do stuff. When you navigate the internet, you are using a program. When you write on Microsoft Word, you are using a program. And of course, when you play a computer game, you are using a program. All programs start only as a series of instructions. A programmer or a group of programmers writes down something called ‘code’ – it’s like a series of orders that the computer will follow. By making these orders more and more complex we can make the computer create windows, run calculations, or shoot at us with spaceships while we try to save the day and get the biggest score ever. Learning to program is a very useful skill. To begin with, there are lots of jobs that involve programming. And even in jobs that do not involve it, you may get to do the same things much much faster if you know how to write a computer program to do them for you!
I used the example of computer games because I like games, and I think they are one of the most impressive things that we achieve on computers – perhaps some of the most imaginative and complex programs existing. They require lots of different skills, and programming a good game is really hard, so hard that for most games many programmers have to work for months or years to get the job done. But programming a simple game (something like Space Invaders, or Pacman) can be both a quick programming exercise, and very fun! So that’s why I mentioned them. But you could learn to program without ever programming a single game, and it would still be an extremely useful thing. If you are curious about it, and in the unfortunate circumstance that I was not to win and hold my workshop, you might want to Google a website called “Code Academy”. It teaches the basics of programming and lets you do some simple exercises online. You’ll get going in no time!