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Coding is just about issuing a series of commands to a computer to achieve a task. Because most people start off from the position that computers are crazy/clever things, and they feel it's unlikely they'll ever understand them, coding can seem like a massive hill to climb.
However, the truth is that computers are very, very, dumb – they have about the same intelligence as an earthworm, and not a bright one at that. The only reason coding might be thought of as hard is because you have to learn to talk down to a computer in language it understands, and that needs you to be more clear and exact than you'd be talking to another person.
Because of this, learning coding doesn't just teach you how to program computers. By learning how to simplify and structure what you want doing, coding also teaches key skills like:
It can also be fun (once it clicks), and, for something so logic-based, a quite creative and rewarding enterprise.
Child-friendly text:
Coding is learning to tell computers what to do. You can use it for:
Computers aren't very smart: they can't understand the way people speak, so you have to talk like them.
They don't use many words, and you have to fix problems using their words. This is fun once you get used to it. Fixing things this way doesn't just help with computers. It helps you to think about how you fix other problems too.
When you code you write a "program" that tells the computer what to do. When you write code you are a "programmer" or "coder".
The thing with coding is it's best to jump straight into it with both feet, so let's write our first program.