Hour of Code: Apple stores to host coding workshops

Anyone can do it - promise

Tim Cook chats with some young coders

Anyone can code, No, really. That’s something that companies like Apple, Microsoft and others believe and they are encouraging people to get involved. Some countries, UK included, have coding in the educational curriculum.

And there’s the Hour of Code, a global movement from code.org which, the site says, “started as a one-hour intro to computer science, designed to demystify code and to show that anyone can learn the basics - to encourage more people into the field of computer science”.

The Hour of Code takes place each year in early December, this year 5-11 December. It’s being described as the largest learning event in history.

If you’re tempted to join, one way to do it is in the Apple Store. The company is holding workshops in all of its stores around the world (there are 487 of them).

There's a big push to familiarise children with code

In the UK, where the Swift Playgrounds app is available, these workshops will include an introduction to the app. If you haven’t come across it, Swift is a coding language created by Apple but as an open-source language to encourage people to code on different platforms.

Swift Playgrounds is a free app designed to get children, and adults, frankly, to think like developers and start coding from a very elementary level. It’s a visual and painstaking way to learn how to code and quickly becomes quite addictive to use. So far there are two sets of lessons in the app, but more content is being released including a third set of lessons and an accompanying teacher guide.

A new Hour of Code challenge is also being added which is designed to encourage anyone to set up their own one-hour coding event.

Once you’ve used Swift Playgrounds, and when you feel confident enough, it encourages you to create your own app. So, now you just need that irresistible idea.