Attention, children in the 21st century! Programming has become a must-have skill

If children hope to find jobs in the 21st century, they must learn a sense of process.

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Driving a burrito truck, you must fight against genetically mutated animals from nuclear war and turn them into delicious burritos. Your ultimate mission is to reach Winnipeg, Canada.

That's the plot of Gunner Tucker Truck, a game developed by 10-year-old Donovan Romero-Brathwaite. His mother, Brenda Romero, is also a game developer with more than 30 years of experience. Romero said of the game, "This is a game that only a child could have developed."

This game has been released for PC, MAC, iOS and Android, and will soon be released for game consoles. The developer's father, John, is also a game developer. He teaches his children how to program every Saturday, and this game may be a result of the programming class.

Donovan's case may be a bit unique, as he has a programmer father and mother. But around the world, more and more children are developing a skill that their parents do not have: writing programs and developing software.

In the eyes of some teachers, coding is just the first step. If children hope to find jobs in the 21st century, they must learn a kind of "programming awareness."

Professor Mitchell Resnick of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is developing Scratch, a programming language for children, said: "When you learn to program, you start to think about all the processes in the world."

It is reported that Scratch language already has 6.2 million registered users, and children as young as five years old can learn this language.

Resnick said that whether it is understanding extremely complex systems, such as how an economy works, or solving problems in a step-by-step manner, learning to program is very helpful. It not only trains children's problem-solving skills, but also helps them express themselves.

Hadi Partovi, co-founder of the nonprofit Code.org (which promotes programming education), said that the charm of computer science is that it requires analytical skills, problem-solving ability and creativity. Programming is not only a basic skill, but also a professional skill. No other subject area combines all these characteristics.

The above industry professionals all said that not all people who learn to write will become writers, and not all students who learn algebra will necessarily become mathematicians. These courses are regarded as basic skills that children need to learn. The same is true for programming.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that by 2020, there will be 1 million unfilled programmer or developer jobs in the U.S. Partovi says that number is conservative.

He said that as the technology industry creates more software and hardware, there will be more and more programmer jobs. In fact, today's smartphones, drones, etc. are all nurturing their own application software ecosystems.

In the future society, there will be no profession that will not involve software and computers, so programming will be a core skill that every child must master.

Partovi said that the teachers who integrate programming into their courses include not only math and technology teachers, but also English teachers. Resnick said that programming is actually another kind of writing, but it is a special "story" that is more interactive and dynamic.

Public schools lag behind in teaching programming skills. The vast majority of public schools in the United States, including game developer Donovan's school, do not offer programming classes. Partovi said this is the biggest obstacle to promoting programming education among children.

But for parents who are aware, there are more ways to teach children programming.

Bryson Payne, author of Teach Your Kids to Code, taught his two sons programming when one was only two and the other was four. Payne used the Suzuki Piano Learning Method, which emphasizes that parents and children learn together.

For children who can't read yet, tablets offer an ideal tool for learning to code. They don't require children to first learn to use a more complicated mouse and keyboard.

Gretchen LeGrande, director of the nonprofit Code in the Schools, said children can learn quickly through coding games such as "Lightbot."

Many people interviewed said that the best way to let children learn programming is to encourage them to develop games and treat the learning process as a kind of play.

Grad used many cards to explain the concept of binary to the children. In addition, the children who participated in the Scratch programming language learning will exchange and share animations, codes and stories with each other on an online platform. Among them, many children will develop games based on children's storybooks.

Partovi said that the online programming education program "Codestudio" launched by his organization has covered 10% of elementary school students in the United States. Among them, 43% are female students and 47% are black or Latino.

Partovi said that if 1% of the high school students who participated in the Codestudio program applied for computer science in college, it would mean that the number of women working in the computer industry in the United States would triple.

The 10-year-old Donovan obviously doesn't know that he has become a representative figure in the transformation of elementary education in the United States. Today, he is busy learning game level design, art direction, and even sales - it is reported that "Gunner Tucker Truck" has developed a T-shirt.