Significance Of Coding

Logical thinking is a form of empowerment in the current world. Be it any organization or individual business, logical thinking plays a vital role in achieving success. Coding/programming, along with becoming the backbone of any website or product in the 21st century, is also closely related to logical thinking. This is well evident from the fact that most parents want their kids to think logically and learn Text-Based Coding right from their primary school days.

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Children all around the world are doing miracles by standing out as prodigies. Giants like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and many more recognize young talents and book their offers through several talent recognition programs, even before they hold their degree in hand. Hence, for the kids who wish to learn to code, it is always good to start from a young age. Next comes the question of the best and most efficient art of coding.

Which Is Better For Kids – Text-Based Coding Or Graphical Coding?

The most common choices are between graphical and text-based coding. As the name suggests, graphical programming corresponds to the visual representation of images and blocks, which perform “magic” when you drag and drop them. Text-based coding language, on the other hand, involves manual line-by-line typing of the code.

Parents usually prefer graphical programming for kids as the children are easily attracted to this mode of learning, considering its visual effects and simplicity. It is definitely a good method to start with as it enhances the intention to explore much more and think of different ways to achieve a solution. It even has the power to develop an interest in children, who may have never wished to code in the first place.

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The main advantage of graphical programming is that there is no prerequisite to knowing syntaxes and statements. This is a boon for the current generation of children as they can get a good head start and switch to Text-Based Coding with a good understanding in the long run. The learning process is simple and there are several graphics-based programming languages out there online. You are just a google search away from finding your favorite one.

Text-based coding requires extensive typing that paves way for typos and errors. For example, if you miss a semi-colon, your program stops with a build error. So it is really important to understand the coding syntaxes before starting with the Text-Based Coding model. Many programming languages like C, C++, Java are dependent on syntax. The very fact that these programming languages fuel most of the world’s best organizations makes their learning inevitable.

A Collaboration That Counts

In recent times, the stakeholders of Text-Based Coding programming languages have come up with a user-friendly graphical programming platform to save a lot of time and effort. Microsoft has built a machine learning platform in Azure that does the same job of predictive algorithms simply with the help of drag and drop features. Several stalwarts like Azure and AWS pipelines support graphical programming structure in addition to text-based programming, to facilitate the users.

Importance Of Graphical Coding In Early Childhood

Graphical coding helps in envisioning the different ways of connecting blocks and it helps the children in thinking logically in their initial stages. This is something that most of the parents were oblivious about during their school life. However, with the increase in the complexity of the problem, the graphical mode of coding might seem to be a bit intensive considering the number of loops and blocks behind it. Visual-based vs text-based coding is a common debate these days and as discussed earlier, each mode has its own use cases.

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With many surveys in place, block-based coding for kids was mostly preferred at the start of their journey. As and when the children bring up a solution with the help of graphical programming, they will have an option to view the corresponding code in a Text-Based Coding format. Many software possesses this feature, and it helps kids understand what’s happening in the back-end when they drag and drop a block. Text-based coding for kids is equally important but it need not be their first experience of coding.

From The Business Perspective

Several online platforms currently support free programming for kids and parents can make the best out of these for their children. It is the outcome of any problem that really matters and serves as a catalyst for the children to pick up and move forward. If a platform isn’t user-friendly and seems monotonous, the children will get bored eventually and end up losing interest. Hence, several organizations have come up with interactive and user-friendly platforms for kids to get real hands-on experience in programming. Platforms like LearningBix are the ideal places to teach coding for kids.

Considering the enormous growth of technology, the expectation from the business is that the current generation of children will be more creative and think even more logically to bring effective solutions. Well, what matters is the ability of the children to break-down any given problem and think logically. The mode of learning has very little connection with the final product, however, it serves as a kick-starter to understand and comprehend things in a better fashion.