No assembler required

COMPUTING has always been a youngster’s game. The founders of Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft were in their teens or 20s when they started the businesses that made their fortunes. But even by the standards of Messrs Jobs, Zuckerberg, Brin, Page, Gates et al, the code jockeys of a programming language called KIBO are wet behind the ears.

KIBO is designed for those aged four to seven. Instead of arranging, as an older programmer might, a set of constants, variables, operations and expressions, all written in something resembling English, into a logical sequence, a KIBO programmer arranges wooden blocks that carry stickers bearing symbols. These symbols tell a plastic robot what to do next. A straight arrow means “move ahead by one foot”. A curved one means “turn in the direction in which the arrow is pointing”. Two semicircular arrows pointing towards each other’s tails means “perform the previous instruction again”—a command that is particularly important, because it introduces neophytes to the concept of recursion.