Thomas Suarez understood the benefits of learning to code when he was a child! Now 23 years old, Thomas, a highly successful developer and entrepreneur, taught himself to code when he was nine and began designing and developing apps for Apple’s app store.
In 2012, Thomas gave a TED talk when he was 12 years old about his experience coding as a child and his growing interest in game development. Thomas explained that children not only want to play games, they now want to learn how to design and develop one themselves as a way to express their creativity. Just look at popular modern child-friendly games such as Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite. All of them have one thing in common that keeps the young ones immersed for hours on end – they allow the player to be creative and build all manner of creations within the game world! With that being said, here are five benefits of learning to code as a child and why you should sign your young developer up for a coding or game development course.
1. Promising Job Prospects
According to a survey in the US, a software programmer will earn approximately $93,000 per year. On the higher end of the pay scale, coders can take home over $120,000, with the lowest salary package at around $62,000. In Malaysia, a fresh grad software developer with in-demand skill sets can easily fetch a higher salary against other professions.
Knowing this is an incentive to encourage your son or daughter to consider learning to code. Even if they do not pursue this career path in the future, knowing how to code will open up their job prospects and make them more attractive candidates for a diverse range of industries. From cybersecurity to digital marketing to data analysis, knowledge is power!
2. Support Logical Step By Step Thought
Learning to code as a child will also help your child to think logically or systematically and break down a process into smaller, step-by-step tasks to solve a problem. This process is also known as computational thinking, which basically means your problem-solving approach is formulated in sequence, though within a set of rules and procedures. While this thought process might seem rigid, it is highly effective to help your child to develop their critical thinking skills as they learn to analyse and evaluate different solutions to a problem.
3. Unlock Their Creative Side
Signing your child up for coding lessons is a great way to unlock their creativity and imagination. For example, game design requires a child to conjure up storylines, challenges, and various mechanics for their game. To develop a fun and successful game, your child will need to tap into their creative side and be able to experiment with different codes and features. They will be able to see their efforts in real-time and make changes accordingly, and this can be very empowering and rewarding for young learners. Your child can then apply their enhanced creativity to other areas of their life in their studies or future jobs and programs.
4. Accept Failure & Overcome It
The fear of failure, whether it’s getting an answer wrong or not winning a game, can be emotionally challenging for children. And not being able to cope with this situation can limit, restrict and hold back a child’s education and ability to advance their skills, as they are no longer willing to try for fear of failing.
Since game and software development is very much a trial and error process, learning to code as a child can help expose your child to failure at a young age. Not only will this aid them to build up resilience to failure, but it will also help them gain more confidence in overcoming adversity.
5. Real-Life Math Applications
Another reason to learn coding at a young age is to provide them with a real-life example of why excelling in mathematics is a useful superpower!
Coding lessons will help your child apply math concepts in a fun way while making things work like magic in their games. For example, coding involves geometry, arithmetic operations, and 2D/3D positioning of objects, all of which require some basic math knowledge to execute well.
Soon, your child will forget that they are even using their mathematics skills in their code as they would be so engrossed in bringing their ideas to life!
