AI and programming classes in Harrogate

From an OpenStreetMap API download covering the middle of Harrogate, the learner extracts every shop, café, restaurant and other amenity that has an opening_hours tag: 60 places, written in 55 different ways. The first regular expression matches the obvious pattern, a day range and one time range such as "Mo-Sa 10:00-17:30". It reads just 12 of the 60. Most places are more complicated: different hours on different days, lunchtime breaks, Sundays shown separately.

The second version splits the text at semicolons into separate rules, understands day lists like "Sa,Su" and ranges like "Mo-Fr", allows more than one time range in a day, and treats "off" as closed. It also follows a rule from the official specification on the OpenStreetMap Wiki: when two rules cover the same day, the later one wins, or in the specification's words, "the earlier rule is overridden". This parser reads 54 of the 60 places.

The six left over are not mistakes in the data. Checking the specification shows that public holidays, the word "closed" and extra rules joined by a comma are all part of the official format; the parser simply does not handle them yet. That is a lesson every programmer meets: a format is always bigger than the examples you first looked at, and the specification is the place to find out how much bigger.

Getting it wrong has a real cost. Of the 54 places the parser can read, 42 list more than one rule. A lazy program that reads only the first rule gives the wrong open-or-closed answer for 755 of the 9,072 hours in a week across those places, 8.3%. With the full parser, 17 of the 54 are open at half past four on a Sunday afternoon and 10 at eight on a Monday evening.

A Harrogate teenager who can test code against messy real data will use AI tools with real confidence, and that is a strong reason to learn to code in 2026. The longer argument is in why teenagers should still learn to code in 2026.