Learn coding with toys

THERE’S MORE TO computer programming than figuring out what inscrutable words like “augop” and “del_stmt” mean. Sure, you’ll have to master the vocabulary, as you do with any foreign language. But the more fundamental challenge is grasping the underlying concepts of coding. How do you get a machine to report the current temperature? Or find you a particularly promising blind date? Or drive your car while you ride along reading “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters”?

The programs that make these seemingly complex tasks possible may indeed be highly complex, but they’re all created using the same basic building blocks. Ones, it turns out, that are sufficiently simple for a child to master.