This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Joel Gratcyk, a 41-year-old freelancer and stay-at-home dad in Illinois. It's been edited for length and clarity.
My 10-year-old son Wesley is currently coding in Python, PHP, and Swift. He loves solving puzzles and creating things, so I got him into coding when he was 7 years old. He's been taking weekly lessons ever since.
He's constantly coming up with new ideas on how to do things on computers and in real life. It isn't unusual for me to come into a room and find he's disassembled something in an effort to find out how it works.
I've been coding professionally for more than 20 years. I'm a digital consultant at Fried Egg Burger, a small DBA company I use to do my freelance work in WordPress (coding and design), marketing, crowdfunding, and content creation.
Thirty percent of the work I do is specific to coding in HTML, CSS, PHP, Python, and JavaScript. I'm a stay-at-home dad, and I work when my kids are in school or at extracurriculars like swimming lessons or band.
I was like Wesley as a kid: curious, mindful, and tenacious.
As a father, I want to encourage Wesley to explore those qualities
Our world has become so much more dependent on coding than it was in the 1980s when I was learning. No matter what he ends up doing as he grows up and enters adulthood, knowledge gained from coding will make him a better employee, boss, or founder.
Trying to explain something to a colleague about how computers work — or why coding a specific thing is more complicated than they would expect — is an infuriating experience that leads to wasted time.
I want my son to be one of those rare people in charge who can understand what the coders are doing and help get projects finished without getting bogged down in misunderstandings.
I've had both types of managers in my career, and I much preferred the ones who understood — even at a low level — what I did.
Right now, he's doing a lot of free, self-paced courses online
We're working together on some small-business ideas he has for the near future. One of his goals is to make enough to upgrade to a new MacBook Pro. The one he uses now is my old one, and it has a broken screen from a previous fall that requires an external monitor for him to work on it.
One of the free online courses he's done is the computer programming course at Khan Academy, which is a great introduction to the world of computer code. It covers everything from basic coding logic to advanced JavaScript examples.
He's also learning about Swift Playgrounds from Apple, which works on iPads and Macs. It's a free app that teaches students to write Swift code — the language developers use to make apps — in a fun, interactive way.
Another one he's done is freeCodeCamp, which offers over 3,000 hours of tutorials for all levels of computer programming for free. It's a donor-supported nonprofit organization that helps improve people's lives by offering free access to computer-coding materials.
We use our local library as well
Our library has a great selection of coding books and is very responsive to book-purchase requests. "Professional WordPress Plugin Development, 2nd Edition," "Python Crash Course, 3rd Edition: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming," and "Coding with Minecraft: Build Taller, Farm Faster, Mine Deeper, and Automate the Boring Stuff" have been great resources for us so far.
There are also local franchise coding schools for kids — with online options, too — that we've looked into, like Code Ninjas or Juni Learning. They cost about $150 to $250 a month for one or two classes a week.
I plan on enrolling him in a few paid courses and classes as he gets more advanced, but I can guide him for now.
The amount of time Wesley spends on coding changes from week to week
Wesley enjoys coding most days. He told me, "I like being able to figure out how things work and watching YouTube videos with my dad when we're both stuck on how to get something to work right."
His coding schedule depends on his band, theater, and soccer schedules. On average, he spends three to five hours a week coding.
Typically, he codes after school. Commitments like extracurriculars and homework all come before programming, but we make sure to find time for him to work on his self-paced computer-programming projects.
I know the advantages of learning to code young will give him a boost over the competition when seeking employment or starting a company later in life.
