Coding can be life changing. Just ask Hadi Partovi, the CEO of Code.org. He discusses the impact of coding on his life in a recent article for Entrepreneur titled “Code.org CEO: Coding Provided ‘Order Amidst Chaos’ as Bombs Fell Near My Home.”
Kim Lachance Shandrow of Entrepreneur writes, “Hadi Partovi, 43, remembers when he got hooked on coding. He was 10 and bombs were falling outside. The co-founder and CEO of Code.org, a Seattle-based nonprofit dedicated to expanding global student access to computer science, first learned to program video games while growing up in war-torn Iran in the 1980s. His family’s home was in the capital of Tehran near the local TV station, a prime bombing target. One day, Hadi’s father brought home a computer — a Commodore 64 — for him and his identical twin brother, Ali. ‘He said, ‘This doesn’t have any games on it, but here’s a book to teach yourself BASIC programs. You can write your own games,’’ Hadi recalls. And, together, they did. For the Partovi twins, the PC’s monochrome glow was a beam of light in the darkest of times. When Saddam Hussein’s air raids raged at night, they huddled in the basement with their parents, covered their ears and hoped their apartment wouldn’t get hit. Then, in the morning, when the electricity was back on, downstairs to the keyboard they returned, coding ‘order amidst chaos.’ In 1984, the Partovi family emigrated to America. By that time, Hadi and Ali were expert programmers. Their parents worked three jobs each to make ends meet. Later, in high school, when their friends punched in at gas stations and restaurants, the twins worked professional coding gigs for 10 times the pay. They paid their way through Harvard University teaching computer science to their fellow classmates. Three decades, two remarkably successful careers in tech, two multimillion-dollar acquisitions of their individual companies by Microsoft and several lucrative ‘unicorn club’ investments later, the Partovi twins are giving back. Launched in 2013, Code.org is their way of sharing the hope and freedom that coding afforded them with children everywhere.”
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