What is this project about?
This was by far one of the most interesting, challenging, and inspiring projects I have worked on.
Basically, I was tutoring some friends for their university classes (although I was not a Computer Science major myself), and I realized that they were struggling to grasp the most fundamental concepts in programming.
After some thinking, I noticed that I see programming as just another language to express what it is that you want exactly, but the person you are talking to happens to be a computer, who is extremely logical and literal-minded.
My hypothesis therefore was that if these guys could break that mental barrier of seeing programming as some super complex cryptographic set of symbols, and if they were able to approach it as easy as learning Korean for example, they would be able to understand the concepts much more easily.
So I thought, what if I could teach programming concepts the same way that we teach children the fundamental concepts of software engineering, by altering simple stories that they are already familiar with?
Thus, I created a series of comic books that reimagined classic fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs, to incorporate programming concepts like computational thinking, sequences, variables, loops, conditionals, and so on.
Takeaway #1: 🥲 Always. Read. The contract. Before. You. Sign.
When I first proposed this idea to a few publishers, they were very interested and wanted to collaborate with me. However, as we started discussing the terms, I realized that they were trying to take advantage of my work by offering me very low royalties and demanding full rights to the content.
Long story short, I no longer have the rights to the content that I was working so hard on, all because I didn't read the contract carefully enough.
But to be completely honest with everyone who is reading this, I would be more than happy to revisit this project again in the future, as I truly believe in its mission and potential impact.
So if you are a publisher or an individual who is interested in collaborating with me on this project, please do not hesitate to reach out!