Ramble: National Coding Week!

This week is National Coding Week.  Way back in the mists of time, I was lucky enough to have access to a BBC Micro at my primary school.  Since we didn't know enough at the time to fear it, or consider it 'too complicated', we learned how to program.  We played with Logo, and we learned BBC Basic.  Lots of PRINT "Hello, World" going on there, and similar.  Then, sadly, we moved on to secondary school and learnt little more than boring word processing and other things I could do anyway.  (And thus I lost interest in studying IT at school.)

Now, fantastically, Coding is part of the National Curriculum!  Key Stage 1 kids (that's years 1 and 2) are supposed to have learnt all about algorithms!  And creating and debugging programs!  And logic!  By the end of Key Stage 3 (years 7-9) they should be able to use two or more programming languages (one textual).  I really wish I had had this opportunity at school.

So, why is Coding important?  It can involve maths, art, science, design and technology, music... it teaches you logic, problem solving, and gives you a creative outlet.  It helps with literacy and numeracy.  And the great thing about Coding is that it involves computers, and kids love computers.  You're learning without knowing you're learning.  It's fun, but it's teaching you transferable skills - this isn't only useful if you're looking for a career at Microsoft.

The two main languages learnt in schools are Scratch and Python.  Scratch is a really fun, visual, easy to understand (yet challenging to completely master) programming language.  You can create some really complex stuff with it, but it's easy to get started.  There are loads of brilliant Video Tutorials available on the Scratch website.  Python is harder to get to grips with, though vaguely familiar to those of us who remember BBC Basic!  This is your textual language, then, and though it may be more daunting it's supposed to be fun (it's called Python because of Monty Python, apparently).  As well as school, there are lots of other opportunities for kids to learn Coding, such as Code Club - a free coding club for 9-13 years olds that meets across the country.

In Year 1 at school Seb used various things to learn Coding.  Logo (and the accompanying Turtle) seems to have been replaced by Bee-Bot and Blue-Bot.  These guys can be programmed to complete obstacle courses.  Plus they're kind of cute.  Also he's used apps like A.L.E.X. (PEGI-3), which is a puzzle game where you have to program a robot with a sequence of commands to get him through a level.  After a gentle introduction with things like these the kids move on to using Scratch to do "proper" programming.

I should probably mention Minecraft (PEGI-7) here, too.  With redstone you can build complex circuits to achieve all sorts of things.  With command blocks you can execute commands - any command that is run in your chat window.  You place the block, add a redstone device (like a pressure plate, or lever), and program the command block.  There are plenty of redstone and command block tutorials online.

If you're an adult and you'd like to learn Coding, it's certainly not too late. The tutorials aimed at kids are just as fun for grown ups, and if you want something that looks more impressive on your CV you could always try the courses at Future Learn (such as Game Design and Development: A Bit-by-Bit History of Video Game Music, or Begin Programming: Build Your First Mobile Game.  Or you could see what's available at your local college/adult education centre.

At the start of the home computing revolution, people were making games from their bedrooms.  For a while that stopped being possible.  Now things have come full circle, and people are programming from their bedrooms once more!  So, this Coding week, why not try Coding?  I can't wait for the next generation of Indie games developers.  :-)