Bopa Reference

Welcome to the Bopa reference.

Bopa is a Setswana programming language for making things with code. You write a sketch in your own words, and it runs in the browser, drawing on a canvas. This reference documents every keyword in the language, with a live runnable example for each one.

The sidebar starts with The Language — the words every program is built from — and then the drawing categories: shapes, colour, text, events and the rest. Or jump straight to a few common starting points:

• setaLoeto — runs once when your sketch starts
• tshwantsha — runs every frame
• thalaKanefase — creates the drawing canvas
• thalaSediko — draws a circle
• pebaX — current mouse x position

Each example on this site is a real Bopa program. The Setswana code shown is what you can paste into the Bopa editor to run it yourself.