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Google celebrates 50 years of kids coding on today’s Doodle

Google celebrates 50 years of kids coding on today’s Doodle

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I had no idea kids have been coding that long

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It’s Computer Science Education Week, and Google Doodle today celebrates 50 years since kids first began to code. Did you know kids have been coding that long? I didn’t — if they have been coding for that long, then what have I been doing with my life?

The doodle today is a mini-game that, like most other coding for kids toys and tools, makes coding more fun than your bog-standard lines of text code. The game features a cute blocky bunny, and your goal as the player is to get the bunny to collect carrots. To do so you move different command tiles into the tray and the bunny will follow what you’re essentially programming it to do. (It’s straightforward enough that even I, a non-coder, could do it.)

The game is based on the Scratch programming language for kids, and the Doodle was developed by three teams including the Google Doodle team, Google Blockly, and MIT Scratch. The little block characters are super cute, and it’s a pleasant way to waste five minutes later after the afternoon slump hits. If you get caught slacking, at least you can say you’re learning how to program, right?