Kids learning code make a connection with future

Teaching kids to code is about opening their minds to a means to an end, not necessarily the end in itself. Photo / Getty Images

Among Malcolm Turnbull's first words as the newly elected leader of Australia's Liberal Party, and hence heading for the Prime Minister's job, were: "The Australia of the future has to be a nation that is agile, that is innovative, that is creative." And near the heart of the matter is the code literacy movement. This is a movement to introduce all schoolchildren to the concepts of coding computers, starting in primary school.

One full year after the computing curriculum was introduced by the British Government, a survey there found that six out of 10 parents wanted their kids to learn a computer language instead of French.

The language comparison is interesting because computer languages are, first and foremost, languages. They are analogous to the written versions of human languages but simpler, requiring expressions without ambiguity.

They have a defining grammar. They come with equivalent dictionaries of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs; with prepositions and phrase patterns, conjunctions, conditionals and clauses. Of course the dictionaries are less extensive than those of human languages, but the pattern-rendering nature of the grammars has much the same purpose.

Kids who code gain a good appreciation of computational thinking and logical thought that helps them develop good critical thinking skills. I've sometimes heard the term "language lawyer" used as a euphemism for a pedantic programmer. Code literacy is good for their life skills kit, never mind their career prospects.

Scratch is one of a new generation of block programming languages aimed at teaching novices and kids as young as 8 or 9 to write code.

The Scratch language uses coloured blocks to represent the set of language constructs in its grammar. A novice programmer can build up a new program by dragging-and-dropping from a palette of these blocks on to a blank canvas or workspace.

Malcolm Turnbull announces his cabinet during the swearing-in ceremony of his government. Photo / AP

The individual shapes of the blocks are puzzle-like, such that only certain pieces can interlock. This visually enforces the grammar, allowing the coder to concentrate on the creativeness of their whole program.

Unlike prose in a human language, computer programs are most often interactive. Scratch has graphics from the popular Plants vs Zombies game, one that most kids have already played. They get to program some basic mechanics of what looks a little like the game.

But coding website code.org has a "Show Code" button that reveals the JavaScript code generated behind the coloured blocks. This shows novices what they created in tiles, translated into the formal syntax of a programming language widely used in industry.

Teaching kids to code is not all about careers in computer programming, science and software engineering. Introducing young minds to the process of instructing a computer allows them to go from "I swiped this" to "I made this". From watching YouTube stars to showing schoolyard peers how they made their pet cat photo meow.

Teaching kids to code is about opening their minds to a means to an end, not necessarily the end in itself.

Steve Goschnick is an adjunct professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.