In this chapter, we will explore the story of Noah and the Ark, which teaches us about obedience, faith, and God's promises. We will also learn about programming concepts called loops, which allow us to repeat tasks and make our programs more efficient.

Read the Bible

Genesis 6:9-22, 7, 8:1-19

Reflection

1. How do you think Noah felt when God asked him to build the ark? Would you have been able to trust God and follow His instructions like Noah did?
2. In the story of Noah, he faced challenges and had to carry out repetitive tasks while building the ark. Can you think of efficient ways to tackle challenges and repeated tasks in programming?

Learn about programming

For loops

In the story of Noah's Ark, there were repetitive tasks like gathering materials for the ark and bringing pairs of animals into the ark. In programming, when we need to perform a task repeatedly for a specific number of times, we use for loops.

A for loop is used to repeat a block of code a certain number of times. The structure of a for loop is as follows:

for variable in range(number_of_iterations):
    # Code to be repeated

For example, imagine we want to print a message for each pair of animals entering the ark. Since there are 40 pairs, we can use a for loop to do this efficiently.

# This for loop will print the number of animals entering the ark
for i in range(40):
    print(f'{i + 1}-pair of animals are on board.')

While Loops

Another aspect of Noah's story is the anticipation of the flood. Noah and his family had to wait for a certain number of days before the flood arrived. In programming, when we need to perform a task repeatedly while a certain condition holds true, we use while loops.

A while loop is used to repeat a block of code as long as a certain condition is true. The structure of a while loop is as follows:

while condition:
    # Code to be repeated

For example, if we want to count down the days until the flood comes. We can use a while loop to do this.

# This while loop will print the days until the flood comes
days_until_flood = 7
while days_until_flood > 0:
    print(f'{days_until_flood} days until the flood comes.')
    days_until_flood -= 1