One of the projects Google sponsors to support its employees lead to an app that will be teaching the users how to code using the most common software. Display of one page in the app from an android phone. (Image via Google)
Many tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft and Apple launched programs and applications to help every day people learn coding. From the look of it, Google does not want to miss out on the opportunity that such endeavor present. Hence the new app developed by a Google employee through the company’s Area 120.
Area 120 is a program Google started to allow its employees to work on personal projects during their breaks. The challenge a lot of employees in the tech world face is that they spend so much time trying to be productive inside the company they work for that they feel drained and don’t have time to develop their own ideas. As a result, many end up leaving their company to work on their own venture. Area 120 is also Google’s solution for employee retention. A few Google employees participating in Area 120 program are responsible for Grasshopper, the new app the company launched recently.
Grasshopper is a coding app designed to teach coding to those who have no programming background. Available on Android and iOS platforms, the app focuses on teaching the foundational courses on Javascript, the most used programming software among professionals, through a series of short lessons the users can easily take from their phones. From completing those courses, users can either continue their education in the software with a boot camp or practice their new skills through animation exercises on the app’s website.
The developer's team that built Grasshopper had been working on the idea for a while now; but since Google has never shared any information about the projects being explored through Area 120, nobody had heard of Grasshopper or any other completed project till now. Beside Grasshopper, Area 120 served as a womb for Advr which allows advertising on Augmented Reality platforms; Tailor, a customized styling tool or Appointments, an appointment scheduling tool. He developers explained that Grasshopper was named after one of the pioneers of programming Grace Hopper who served in the U.S Navy as a Rear Admiral and was instrumental in the development of the computer language that became COBOL.
In a world of entrepreneurship where the skill of Do-It-Yourself is an asset, knowing how to code is becoming a necessity. But not all coding learning tools are novice-friendly. A problem that Grasshopper hoped to fix by presenting the lessons in the forms of games and quizzes whose level of difficulty increases as the user moves from one level to another. At the end of each lesson or game, the user receives a new challenge which requires that he writes an actual Javascript code to complete the challenge. Thus, the users practice and revise the newly learned concepts at each “level” before moving to the next. A person using Grasshopper will learn everything from coding terminology, underlining principles, the basic functions in coding to creating complex functions. Just like in any games, Grasshopper users will get tips on how to improve their results and achievements, as well as rewards when they do well. The early testers of the app revealed that the tips they received felt like having a person tutoring them in coding because the tips are customized to fit each user.
In the future, Grasshopper will offer a longer curriculum without deviating from Javascript. But as of today, five thousand people have already completed successfully the entire curriculum offered now on Grasshopper. In the end, sixty-eight people out of one hundred felt that the app increased their interest in coding. Android version here, iOS there.
Have a story tip? Message me at: cabe(at)element14(dot)com
Top Comments