When’s the Right Time to Learn How to Code?
- 1:26 pm |
At the beginning of 2012, then Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg initiated a furious debate amongst techies when he tweeted, “My New Year’s resolution is to learn to code…” Responses ranged from praise, to having the statement’s sincerity questioned to debate over whether someone in his position should even try to learn to code. What all the reactions did show was that coding was cool again.
While the mayor showed it’s never too late to start learning to code, is there a point at which it’s too early? When and who should learn about writing code? At Menlo App Academy, not only are the students between 9-18, the instructors are only 13 years old. In 2011, a lack of available school based instruction in computer programming led to father-son bonding over code and an academy of teens teaching teens was born. They believe it’s never too early to learn.
The term coding is a way of describing programming software, but codes for ciphers and coding them have been around much longer than software. Some of the earliest codes date as far back as 1500 BC. The principles behind these early creations still match the core concepts of programing today. Instructions and language combine together to direct a series of actions — whether they be as simple as translating a message, to as complex as powering a search of the entire Internet, or you favorite mobile application.
The logic of teaching logic to even the youngest children is a tradition preceding even the famous stories of the ancient Greek thinkers. Today, this instruction has even more relevance in a world where precise directions, sequencing, decision trees etc. is how to get so much of the world to do what you want it to do. The importance and relevance of teaching kids, from the earliest ages, these core coding skills holds great benefit in creating and consuming technology and how it interfaces with our lives.
But what about learning to actually write code to create a mobile or web app? Several studies show learning a second language in one’s youth is not only easier, but improves performance on even seemingly unrelated topics such as mathematics. Like spoken languages, software languages have similar rules governing core behaviors.Subjects, verbs, grammar etc. hold across spoken languages just as sequencing, looping, branching etc. are part of all software languages.
Yet it is almost certain that any specific software language one learns as a child is sure to be obsolete by adulthood — most prosper for less than a decade. In fact, some futurists predict that eventually computers will be able to code like and better than their human counterparts. Others add that no matter how cool coding is, it’s a skill left best to specialists in that field, or those that are planning a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) career.
So is coding something we are pushing because technology is exploding and we currently lack programmers in the world? Or is it something so fundamental — like history, music, or art — that we need to revamp education to expose every child to at least a little bit of it? Famed educator Maria Montessori once said, “We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.” Our view of an answer on where to incorporate code may well lie in our perspective of coding as the new math or the new poetry.
Is coding fundamental to the future of education, or just one more approach to educating kids on STEM?
Narinder Singh is the co-founder of Appirio and president of TopCoder, a crowdsourcing development community.