“If we think that we are just trying to solve puzzles, coding won’t feel that difficult and you may start enjoying it.” Wise words said by a 6-year old who recently became the World’s youngest Python programmer.
Kautilya Katariya from Northampton UK began studying IBM course materials online during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to utilize time and learn something useful. By November 2020, he had completed five different courses in Python and IBM which included “Foundations of AI”, “Python for Data Science” and a course from IBM cognitive class. And just like that he was granted the programming Guinness World Record for the youngest programmer in the world.
When asked about what piqued his interest in programming in the first place, Katariya explained, “everything pointed… that cool things are either run by a computer programmer or made using programming.” He also gave credit to his parents who helped him along the way by providing him books and educational resources on programming and artificial intelligence. His parents then gave him a laptop and an internet connection to further pursue his studies.
Katariya’s parents also had some sound advice for all the parents. They said that parents should treat coding like any other mental exercise which helps develop logical thinking and problem-solving capabilities in children. This way they would be encouraged to learn more about coding without thinking of it as a difficult subject.
Katariya himself had an important message for his fellow peers and even grown-ups who are pursuing programming as a course. He said, “I think computer programming is really fun and is similar to solving puzzles. If we think that we are just trying to solve puzzles, coding won’t feel that difficult and you may start enjoying it.” Now, what’s stopping you from starting coding?