An interactive music video by Doja Cat can introduce you to programming
Girls Who Code, the non-profit organization that aims to engage more women and girls in computing, has released what it calls the âfirstâ codable music video. The organization teamed up with Doja Cat, transforming her new music video to Women in an interactive experience.
You can try the experience for yourself at Dojacode.com, where you’ll be greeted by a futuristic image of Doja Cat that turns pixelated when you drag your mouse across the screen. On the next page, you’ll see three stars, each representing a different programming language – yellow for CSS; blue for JavaScript; and pink for Python.
Once you click on the music video, the experience begins. It plays exactly like the original Doja Cat music video, only you will be able to make decisions throughout, much like choosing your own adventure game, but with code. The timeline at the bottom of the screen contains four color-coded stars, indicating when the video will stop and which programming language will be presented.
When the video stops, you will be able to fill in the blanks in addition to the lines of code. For example, the first pause lets you change the color of Doja Cat’s nails using CSS; the color you type changes the color of Doja Cat’s nails in real time. In another scenario, entering the name of a city changes the time of day in the video, and it even stays true to the current time of that location – after typing “Tokyo” at around 10:00 a.m. ET, the sky in the video darkness turned and the constellations became visible, all in keeping with Tokyo local time at midnight.
At the end of the experience, you’ll get snapshots of how each area looks once you’ve finished âcodingâ it, which the site then allows you to upload or share on social media. While the DojaCode video doesn’t involve intense programming, I still found it fun to experiment by typing in different options and seeing my changes take effect instantly.