On
one side of the room, children are building worlds and on the other,
websites. A boy taps away at his keyboard, typing commands and tying up
loose ends. He appears in his element, even if the name of the language
he is using – Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) – would be enough to put
most people off.
“I have to insert a picture and then write something about him, and then his interests, jobs and where he’s lived,” says Eissa.
The ninja, according to the webpage, is 23. “He likes backflips, teriyaki steak and lurking in the darkness. His jobs are protecting the city, defending against enemies and chopping fruit with his sword. He’s lived in Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo,” reads Eissa.
The page is basic – a white background, one image and text of varying sizes and formatting – but Eissa has built it entirely using code.
“It’s quite simple; it’s not that hard really. I’m just using indents to make it more organised.”
Eissa is on just his second day at the Coding Circle, an educational start-up based at Impact Hub Dubai. The web development course, which teaches HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript, is taught mainly by Sajjad Kamal, 26.
“I’ve been working in technology for a very long time. I started developing when I was 11 years old,” he says. Mr Kamal, who used to work for Apple and BlackBerry, now runs his own tech company but says he had little support when learning coding as a child.
“Teaching yourself really requires a lot of discipline – hours of work. But when somebody gets stuck, we’ll be there to help them out, and just that extra push really allows you to learn coding in a faster way.
“What we’re teaching them today is not a slimmed-down or trimmed-down version – it really is stuff that’s being used to build cool websites. And we actually make them go through the real process.”
From a technological point of view, he says, the way the world has changed in the past decade has “radically changed the way we live”.
“Today, if you show a kid a floppy disk, they’re going to go: ‘What is this thing?’” he says.
“And this is only going to accelerate. I don’t know what the timeline is going to be for self-driving cars, but 10 years from now, kids are probably going to be like, ‘You used to drive? That’s so old school’.”
The language of this change, he says, is technology. “And if you don’t know the language, you’re not going to be a part of the growth.”
Mr Kamal says the Coding Circle is filling that gap, with courses developed by programmers who have run companies and built products themselves.
On the other side of the class, children with more advanced skills are learning how to modify the popular game Minecraft using JavaScript.
Hamaad Mashkoor, 12, is struggling because his JavaScript keeps crashing. But he fixes it.
“We’re using CanaryMod and ScriptCraft to place JavaScript into a Minecraft theme. So, we’re basically making a world and modifying it through that,” says Hamaad.
His avatar gets stuck in a pile of blocks, but breaks his way out.
His instructor, Farris Massoudi, a programmer and entrepreneur, explains that his students are expected to learn JavaScript, also at the Coding Circle, before they start this course.
“They have more of a complete understanding of what they’re working with, and the understanding that you can take JavaScript, apply it to a website, and then take that same coding and language and actually apply it to other applications, in this case Minecraft,” he says.
“I’m making a ninja profile page,” says Eissa Al Mulla, a nine-year-old Emirati, pointing to a screenful of text commands. He switches over to a preview of the web page and, like magic, it all makes sense.
“I have to insert a picture and then write something about him, and then his interests, jobs and where he’s lived,” says Eissa.
The ninja, according to the webpage, is 23. “He likes backflips, teriyaki steak and lurking in the darkness. His jobs are protecting the city, defending against enemies and chopping fruit with his sword. He’s lived in Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo,” reads Eissa.
The page is basic – a white background, one image and text of varying sizes and formatting – but Eissa has built it entirely using code.
“It’s quite simple; it’s not that hard really. I’m just using indents to make it more organised.”
Eissa is on just his second day at the Coding Circle, an educational start-up based at Impact Hub Dubai. The web development course, which teaches HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript, is taught mainly by Sajjad Kamal, 26.
“I’ve been working in technology for a very long time. I started developing when I was 11 years old,” he says. Mr Kamal, who used to work for Apple and BlackBerry, now runs his own tech company but says he had little support when learning coding as a child.
“Teaching yourself really requires a lot of discipline – hours of work. But when somebody gets stuck, we’ll be there to help them out, and just that extra push really allows you to learn coding in a faster way.
“What we’re teaching them today is not a slimmed-down or trimmed-down version – it really is stuff that’s being used to build cool websites. And we actually make them go through the real process.”
From a technological point of view, he says, the way the world has changed in the past decade has “radically changed the way we live”.
“Today, if you show a kid a floppy disk, they’re going to go: ‘What is this thing?’” he says.
“And this is only going to accelerate. I don’t know what the timeline is going to be for self-driving cars, but 10 years from now, kids are probably going to be like, ‘You used to drive? That’s so old school’.”
The language of this change, he says, is technology. “And if you don’t know the language, you’re not going to be a part of the growth.”
Mr Kamal says the Coding Circle is filling that gap, with courses developed by programmers who have run companies and built products themselves.
On the other side of the class, children with more advanced skills are learning how to modify the popular game Minecraft using JavaScript.
Hamaad Mashkoor, 12, is struggling because his JavaScript keeps crashing. But he fixes it.
“We’re using CanaryMod and ScriptCraft to place JavaScript into a Minecraft theme. So, we’re basically making a world and modifying it through that,” says Hamaad.
His avatar gets stuck in a pile of blocks, but breaks his way out.
His instructor, Farris Massoudi, a programmer and entrepreneur, explains that his students are expected to learn JavaScript, also at the Coding Circle, before they start this course.
“They have more of a complete understanding of what they’re working with, and the understanding that you can take JavaScript, apply it to a website, and then take that same coding and language and actually apply it to other applications, in this case Minecraft,” he says.
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