Coding for Kids: Best Age for a Child to Start Coding
Having worked for companies such as Google and Amazon and having studied computer science at MIT and other top universities, I have a very research based view of why you should not formally start coding too early - 9 is a great age to start.
If you start at 11 years, that’s still amazing. It’s not too late.
Here’s the fun bit about starting age: within only a few hours of training, a novice 9 year old will catch up and level up against someone who’s already had 1 or 2 years of coding experience at a younger age. This is based on our research with over 200 younger kids who came to us with coding experience.
Just by playing and interacting with the world around them – by living life – children are constantly developing the logical thinking aspect of coding anyway. The specifics of how a coding language works can be picked up at any age.
On the other hand, starting early has its risks.
When a child starts too young, say at 7 or even 8, they start with something like Scratch - block based and fun. In a year or two, they are done with Scratch - it’s too easy and they are ready to move on, but they are not yet ready for a text-based programming language such as Python but they move to Python anyway.
Soon enough, it becomes too hard and the child says the dreaded words, “I don’t like coding”. The real reason, however, is that the child wasn’t ready.
Most kids who start too early, never go on to the harder stuff or start solving real-life problems. For instance, they will never dream of building X (formerly Twitter) themselves or build a live COVID dashboard that plots live covid deaths and hospitalizations by country - two of many projects that our students at Riva Learning regularly build.
Join us for outstanding coding camps and classes. ⭐If your child does not enjoy coding with us or does not learn enough - we will proactively refund the entire fee⭐. No fine print - you be the judge.
Gobind Bansal
Gobind is the founder and CEO of Riva Learning. Computer scientist by training, he has a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), a dual Masters degree in Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and National University of Singapore (NUS), and an MBA from London Business School. He has worked in various technical and business leadership roles with Amazon, Google, IBM and M&S.