Coding Apps for Beginners – Coding is a great way for kids to learn to think creatively and it can even be a hobby by itself. You can also learn from an obline academy. One thing this article should do is give you an idea of what is available and should be used as a starting point to find the right app.
To help you out, I’ve rounded up the best coding apps available for your little ones that advocate a hands-on approach!
CSSEdit (Mac OS X)
Design beautiful, innovative and fast-loading web sites… with a beautiful, innovative and fast app. CSSEdit’s intuitive approach to style sheets and powerful previewing features will make you deliver awesome standards-based sites in no time!
Features of CSSEdit:
With CSSEdit, you see changes to your style sheet applied in real-time. Without saving. Without uploading. Without hassle. For any Web App or HTML file. You can edit style sheets for absolutely any site, on- or offline.
Thanks to our innovative Override technology, you can even apply your open style sheets to any site and see it change instantly! Styling a Web App used to be a cycle of type — upload — refresh. CSSEdit destroys this waste of time. Making your Web 2.0 App beautiful is now easy and productive.
Taco HTML Edit (Mac OS X)
Taco HTML Edit is the premier HTML editor and PHP editor for the Mac. As an HTML editor, Taco HTML Edit empowers its users to rapidly create their own web sites. It is designed exclusively for Mac OS X and has many advanced features including spell checking, live browser previewing, PHP previewing, syntax checking, and much more.
Features of Taco HTML Edit:
- Component Library
- Code Coloring
- Preview
- Code Completion
- Syntax Checking
- Live Preview
- Code Clips
skEdit (Mac OS X)
skEdit is a text editor for Mac OS X, aimed at web designers and programmers.
Features of skEdit:
- Tabbed interface
- Project based site management
- Code hinting and completion
- Code folding
- Code snippets
- Syntax highlighting
- File uploading and remote editing (using FTP, SFTP or WebDAV)
- HTML Tidy integration
- Search and replace with support for regular expressions
Which software for coding is your favorite? Do you use any of these code editors? If you haven’t got one, now you certainly have some promising programs to choose from!
BEGINNERS
jEdit (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) (FREE)
jEdit is a mature programmer’s text editor with hundreds (counting the time developing plugins) of person-years of development behind it.
Features of jEdit:
- Built-in macro language
- Plugins can be downloaded and installed from within jEdit using the “plugin manager” feature.
- Auto indent and syntax highlighting for more than 130 languages.
- Supports a large number of character encodings including UTF8 and Unicode.
- Folding for selectively hiding regions of text.
- Word wrap.
- Highly configurable and customizable.
IntelliJ IDEA (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)
IntelliJ IDEA is a code-centric IDE focused on developer productivity. IntelliJ IDEA deeply understands your code and gives you a set of powerful tools without imposing any particular workflow or project structure.
IntelliJ IDEA is your dream pair-programmer who knows its way around the codebase, makes great suggestions right when you need them, and is always ready to help you shape your code.
Features of IntelliJ IDEA:
- Advanced Code Editing
- Supported Languages
- Technologies & Frameworks
- Teamwork Facilitation
- Code Quality Features
- Integrated Environment
- Customization & Extensibility
Mimo
You may have come across those language learning apps that get you to practice for five or 15 minutes every day, and Mimo takes the same approach to coding. Create a free account, decide how much time you want to devote to your new project daily, and then follow the exercises as instructed.
Mimo is certainly intuitive and straightforward to follow (even for beginners) and it starts with the very basics of coding. You can choose between several coding languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Java, Swift, C++, SQL, and PHP), and the platform immediately shows how the code runs as you write it. This is very practical if there’s something more specific you want to pick up. As well as typing out code, you get exercises where you have to spot mistakes, or drag script elements into the right order, so it keeps the learning experience varied.
There’s no web version of Mimo, so it’s perfect if you just want to learn in short bursts on your phone or tablet. You can also opt for a Pro subscription ($9 a month) which gets you access to more advanced lessons and tutorials.
Mimo (freemium) is available for Android and iOS.
Codecademy
Codecademy combines step-by-step lessons on your browser with optional exercises you can do on mobile, so it allows you to keep up with your coding practice wherever you are. While it’s not the most in-depth or thorough virtual coding school out there, Codecademy is a very useful introduction to the basics, with an intuitive and friendly interface, and explanations of terms and syntax as you go.
A wide variety of app and web programming languages are covered as well: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Python, Ruby, C++, PHP, Go, Swift, SQL and more. The portal can guide you through specific ‘career paths’ with a clear progression from one lesson to the next, but it’s also possible to just browse around and pick and choose what you want to do—there’s a wealth of material at your disposal.
You can get started with Codecademy and work through 25 courses for free. Sign up for a Pro account—$20 a month, billed annually—and you can access 65 courses, tackle real world projects, and unlock hundreds of extra exercises. You can give the free package a try and then opt for the paid-for version if you decide you actually want to make a career out of coding.
Codecademy (freemium) is available for Android and iOS, and on the web.
Programming Hero
If you’re an absolute beginner and want to move at your own pace, then Programming Hero could be just what you’re looking for. It’s very friendly, with jargon-free language and coding challenges that are turned into mini-games, so you never feel like you’re slogging through difficult concepts.
As you work your way up through the different challenges, the platform will help you make your own game. You’ll still be a long way from being able to code your own from scratch, though, but you will at least understand the fundamentals behind coding, and some of the syntax and commands you can use.
Programming Hero is a nice blend of coding exercises and quizzes designed to test your knowledge, and it covers coding languages including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and SQL. All the basic material is free and extends quite far, but for intermediate and advanced lessons you’ll need to pay $10 per month for a premium account.
Programming Hero (freemium) available for Android and iOS.
Grasshopper
Grasshopper is developed by Google, and is one of the more accessible ways for beginners to start coding in this list—you can dive in and be typing and arranging commands in minutes. While it focuses exclusively on JavaScript, the concepts that the platform covers (including loops and functions) apply to any programming language.
Coding exercises are set up like puzzles to solve, with a well-judged balance of instructions, actual coding, and end results on the screen. To begin with, you just have to move elements around on a screen before you actually get to type anything, and the progression speed is nice and steady.
The exercises are short, so you can jump in and do one whenever you have a spare five minutes on whatever device you use—Grasshopper will sync your progress automatically.
The app won’t take you as far as some other code teaching platforms can—you won’t get a job off the back of using Grasshopper—but it’s a really friendly introduction if you’re totally new to this, and it’s completely free to use.
Grasshopper (free) available for Android and iOS, and on the web.
Code Avengers
There’s a wide range of paths available on Code Avengers—from exercises suitable for kids to courses that can help you get an actual job in coding.
The coding languages covered are HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python, with some extra web development and design tutorials thrown in (covering more general topics). The layout is easy to get to grips with, and includes teaching instructions, code samples, and the end result of your coding all together on the same screen.
Code Avengers is one of the most in-depth and most informative sites we’ve come across, teaching you not just how to do something, but also why you’re doing it. This makes the platform really comprehensive, but it’s not free—pricing starts at $20 a month if you pay for a whole year at once, though you can sign up for a 7-day free trial to make sure Code Avengers suits you. If you don’t want to make a career out of coding or you’re only learning for fun, you’re probably better off going for another platform.
Code Avengers (from $20 a month) is available on the web.
Conclusion
Coding Apps for Beginners – If you are trying to decide which app is best for teaching programming skills, take a look at what you want your app to accomplish.