Why Learn Coding at an Early Age?

Overview

Look into the year 2030, or why go so far, look at the year 2025, and you will find yourself surrounded with IoT-powered devices, machines loaded with capabilities such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Perhaps, we will have a lot more invented in the next five years or so. However, at least with the current expert projections, we are bound to have AI, BI, ML, automation, Robotics, and technologies alike influencing our lives.

If technology is going to be the only- yes, the only way forward, we must prepare ourselves, and especially the upcoming generation, for the future. We must ensure that we empower the new generation with futuristic competencies to help it thrive amidst a technology-based world, one of which is coding.

Lately, you must have seen ads appealing to people to enroll their children in coding. One reason to promote coding is its inclusion as an essential subject in NEP 2020, and the other one is coding’s significance as modern digital literacy. So, if we want to be phenomenally successful in the future tech-space, coding will come in as a critical and imperative skill to possess. In this view, let us explore the reasons that make coding a significant skill.

What is Coding?

In simple words, coding is one way of communicating with a particular tech-based device or a computer. It involves using language that the computer comprehends and delivering instructions to enable the computer to perform a specific set of desired functions. Coding constitutes the fundamental element of every software program, mobile application, web application, video game, website, etc.

Why should Students Learn Coding at an Early Age?

Coding is not just a technological competency, but the modern-world looks at coding from an entirely new perspective. The world attributes the development of a lot of professional and personal soft skills to coding. So, let us now explore the various reasons to learn coding.

Coding Develops the Ability to Think

In an age where students are fed with videos, audio files, podcasts, and readily available answers on Google, many fear that students may slowly lose their ability to think, contemplate, and explore solutions. Of course, we do not want to have a generation that can only see things but cannot think about them, do we?

Coding steps in as a thought-stimulator in this regard. The challenges involved in it encourage students to think logically. How? To create a useful code, the programmer needs to apply logical thinking, break a large problem into smaller pieces, look at each one individually, and blend each one to form the answer. The process is known as decomposition and which constitutes one of the essential features of computational thinking.

Besides, the complexities involved in coding have students try multiple solutions. So, if the first does not work, students look at other options to ensure that the code creates the desired outcome. In the long run, it encourages children to strive for perfection and keep trying until they engineer solutions that solve problems.

Coding Develops Resilience

Coding is not straightforward. Hence, achieving success in the first attempt isn’t practically possible. Students have to try multiple times to create a useful code. While creating codes, these failures do not work as deterrents but form the base to develop a highly in-demand capability, and that is resilience! It is the approach and the urge to bounce back after failure and emerge successfully, which will help students in their life.

Coding allows students to learn from their mistakes. It develops an invention-oriented thought process and constitutes an immersive learning experience that inspires students to learn from their failures and work relentlessly towards success. With competition continuing to grow rapidly, demanding companies to stick around to succeed, resilience, as a natural ability, will prove an asset.

Coding Develops Problem-Solving Abilities

The world needs people that talk about solutions and not those who dwell on problems. So, if the world needs people with problem-solving capabilities, why not develop them right from an early age? Coding poses a set of challenges and complexities that require students to solve problems and develop solutions. Hence, including it in the regular curriculum, and encouraging students to take it up, is critical from the viewpoint of sustenance.

Problem-solving skills do not restrict themselves to proving beneficial on the professional front but result in many advantages for students in their personal life. It enables them to look at problems as opportunities to develop solutions that are practically useful and worth implementing with the outcomes they deliver.

Coding Develops Creativity

Many complex codes demand students to think unconventionally and design creative solutions aimed at developing functionalities that simplify a particular task. Gradually, these new-age problems and concerns develop a creative thought process. They encourage students to look at problems differently and develop creative yet logical answers, implementing which is practically feasible.

The earlier students begin thinking creatively, the better engineers, programmers, and problem-solvers they become. Creative thinking is one of the requisites for every job, no matter how simple or complex it is. Again, it isn’t just for jobs that students must develop a creative thought process. The entire process of devising innovative solutions is pleasantly hectic, and which is something students start enjoying and loving over a while.

The Earlier, the Better!

The IT revolution gained momentum somewhere during the beginning of the last decade. Back then, systems and technologies weren’t as developed. Students aspiring to enter the IT industry either used to take up computer engineering or enroll for a bachelor's in computer science. Most of them back then were never exposed to coding during school. As a result, many of them flunked, and therefore either lost interest or couldn’t learn as much.

But now that we’ve had our lessons from the past, we must include coding in the regular curriculum to not repeat history but create a new one. It can help children wanting to pursue a career in the technology industry learn coding at an early age, and by the time they reach college, be in a much better position to know the advanced aspects of coding with ease.

How to Start Learning Coding?

By the name, and at least initially, coding may appear a bit boring to children. An element of reluctance during the initial days can be considered normal. Hence, instead of directly enrolling them for hardcore coding classes, you must have them attend a couple of introductory sessions that emphasize exploring the fun part involved in learning and developing various codes. Besides, to optimize engagement, the sessions must also speak about the benefits of coding on the professional and personal front in a way students understand.

CITIS Helps Students Learn Coding from an Early Age

The NEP 2020 has been announced recently, and hence it will take schools some time to align themselves with the new education policy and introduce coding on a full-fledged basis. Nevertheless, futuristic organizations CITIS that work towards strengthening EdTech can guide you and your child to learn coding.

CITIS runs a range of coding certifications to develop coding skills and the attributes that follow it. Connect with CITIS at +91 20 2567 70 60 or write an email at support@citis.in for more details on CITIS’s coding classes.