How Can You Start Your Coding Journey as a Kid?

5 Excellent Ways for Beginners to Get Started With Programming!

Coding has been an important aspect of learning in this modern age. Guess why? Because where everything about everyone runs on technology, it has become extremely imperative to learn how it functions. Coding is an imaginative activity, and children learn to code more easily than adults because they have a strong imagination, which is a valuable skill when it comes to coming up with creative solutions to real-world issues.

Yeah exactly coming to our point — Rome was not built in a day! Since you’re budding to become the scientist or engineer similar to that you have had visualized in your dreams; we would like to congratulate you on getting on-board to reach the destination of your fantasy world.

So, the following are the top 5 ways on how you can start this beautiful journey. Let’s go!

1. Start with a simple language

• C language has always been known as a stepping stone to the coding journey
• Just imagine; a person that had learned driving on a manual car, he could have easily driven the automatic car as well. Similarly, learning C programming first can assist a person in learning every modern programming language. Learning C will help you appreciate a lot of the operating system’s underlying architecture. For example, dealing with pointers, memory allocations, and so on.
• Not only this,but it is super easy and fun to learn since it allows you to play with bits and bytes; gives direct access to the memory of your CPY through pointers. Also, it is block structured language. And hence the name Block programming so each code snippet exists in separate blocks and is not known to code in other blocks providing easy means of programming and minimizing the possibilities of undesirable side effects.
• Buckle up and start implementing the very easy-peasy, lemon squeezy logics (like addition, subtraction, factorial and so on) on your PC by installing Notepad++) or any code-editor that you like.

Note: If you face difficulty anywhere, we are there for you, always!

2. Interact with fun-filled programming tools/platforms

· We know, no one likes to see the black screen of the code-editor for a long time! So, what we suggest is an alternative to learn coding in a fun way.

· There are a few of free educational programming languages which are readily available on the internet like

i. Scratch — Imagine, Program, Share

• You will use Scratch to create your own immersive stories, games, and animations, and then share them with the rest of the Scratch group online.
• Scratch teaches you how to think critically, reason logically, and collaborate — both of which are critical qualities for success in the twenty-first century.

ii. Blockly

• Blockly is a library for online and smartphone applications that adds a visual code editor. Variables, logical expressions, loops, and other code definitions are represented in the Blockly editor by interactive graphical tiles.
• It enables you to introduce programming principles without worrying about syntax or being intimidated by a flickering cursor on the command line.

iii. Roblox (Roblox)

• Roblox is a mix of Minecraft and Lego allowing people to play games designed by others, as well as being able to create games too.
• Roblox is a free platform and you can play it on PC, smartphones, and game consoles.

iv. Swift Playgrounds — Only for iOS Users

• Swift Playgrounds — Apple is an educational tool and development environment for the Swift programming language developed by Apple Inc, initially announced at the WWDC 2016 conference.
• A revolutionary new app for iPad that helps you learn and explore coding in Swift, the same powerful language used to create world-class apps for the App Store.

v. MIT App Inventor

• MIT App Inventor is an intuitive, visual programming environment that allows you to build fully functional apps for smartphones and tablets.
• Those new to MIT App Inventor can have a simple first app up and running in less than 30 minutes.

3. Fun programming projects that you can try your hands at

• Being a newbie at these things, we do believe that you should Think Big and Start Small and that is the reason we would like to highlight a few projects that you might be interested to try in your free time provided with the step-by-step guide, they are as follows:
• Pong
• Space Race
• Jet-Fighter
• Space-invaders
• Number Guessing
• Text-based Adventure
• Hangman
• Rock, Paper, Scissors
• Tic-Tac-Toe
• Snake Game

4. Follow the interest, plans will come along

· You might deviate from your pre-planned schedule at times due to witnessing the errors or unable to understand the logic, but it’s okay! Relax!

· This is an interest-based learning, and that might only come to you if you like to learn and create something which you find engaging for yourselves.

· Interested in creating a video game or an interactive story? Start following it as your main interest and rest assured you will be good to go for a long mile of this exciting journey.

5. Practice adaptive learning

· There might be times when your mentor might be blabbering for an hour or two — because he is chained for following a strategic teaching plan — but for you everything just went over your head!

· So, don’t sit silent at your place, ask him to show some video lessons, play with logical games and hands-on practice with the source code.

· These will help you to emulate how the programs and coding actually works — which is a GREAT SUCCESS!

Every child is unique, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to teaching children to code.

The simple ways we have evaluated here are all excellent, and you might consider starting with your Level 1 to this enthralling journey comprising another 100 levels!

Do you think we missed something? Did you have any questions, comments, or suggestions? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Please leave them in the comments below!