At the end of the day, creating code is an art form. It is equally as creative as painting, drawing, making music, or any other creative skill. How do I know? Because I do all of these things! With code, you can literally build anything you could ever imagine on a computer. The beautiful part about this hobby is that you can easily mix coding with any other hobby or pastime you enjoy doing. Do you enjoy visual arts? Start learning about creative coding and building breathtaking works of art meant to awe and inspire. Do you like music? You can create your own program to function as its own instrument. What about video games? Well, obviously you make videos game with code too! This course looks absolutely “unreal” and a great place to start if you want to learn game development. It will be challenging, but if you can get a handle on C++ all other programming languages are going to seem like a breeze! Hackathons Coding can get lonely from time to time. Luckily there are tons of ways for you to take this amazing hobby and make it social. The easiest way to meet new people who also love to code is at Hackathons. Hackathons involve a group of coders who gather, code, and often compete with each other for a specific duration of time. During the event, there is a specific goal that is attempted to be met via a piece of software or hardware. The projects that are built are typically called “hacks”. Hackathons are a great way to meet new friends, become a better developer, and even get noticed by recruiters and land a job! Online Games In addition to creating personal coding projects and hackathons, coding can also be a hobby through playing special programming games. There are a ton of programming games online that range from kids games, beginner coding games, and even advanced coding games. In addition to these, there are also a ton of great algorithm challenge sites like Codewars and HackerRank that are often used recreationally to improve your skills.