Programming Merit Badge

Requirement 5 keeps its specification in the preamble

The three parts say almost nothing:

(a) In the first language and environment, write or modify a program, debug and demonstrate, and explain as above.

"As above" is the whole requirement. Above it, applying to all three:

A program that prints a message, draws a shape, or plays a sound without reading anything meets none of that. The decision-making is the part being assessed.

Three languages and three environments

With your counselor's guidance, select three different programming languages and development environments.

Those are two lists, not one. Three languages, three environments.

For most Scouts the writing is not the hard part. Getting three separate toolchains installed and working (on a school machine, a family laptop, or whatever is available) is. Some of that needs an administrator's password and some of it needs a download that the network blocks. Find out which three you are using, and try to install all three, in the first week rather than the sixth.

"Write or modify"

Both words appear in all three parts. Modifying an existing program is explicitly allowed: take something that works, change what it does, understand why the change works, and be able to explain it.

That is a much smaller job than three programs from a blank file, and it is easy to read past.

Requirement 3(a) is the research that should choose your three

Requirement 3(a) asks for five popular programming languages and the industries they are used in and why. Requirement 5 then asks you to pick three languages.

Doing 3(a) first, properly, means arriving at the counselor conversation with an informed opinion rather than picking whatever you have heard of. The badge does not connect them and they are two requirements apart.

The same video as Digital Technology

Requirement 1(a) is the Personal Safety Awareness "Digital Safety" video, with a parent or guardian's permission. The Digital Technology merit badge asks for the same video at its own requirement 1.

If you are working on both, raise it with your counselor rather than assuming it counts twice or assuming it does not. That is their call, not this page's.

What this page is

The Programming merit badge, drawn so requirement 5's real conditions and its three toolchains are visible before anybody chooses a language. It is not a copy of the requirements and it teaches no programming: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.