What is coding, exactly?

Programming is the act of writing a computer program, and computer programs are written in code. Because of this, many people say "coding" instead of "programming", but they mean the same thing. You'll sound cooler if you say "coding".

Coding is the work of writing instructions that a computer can follow. You can't write code in English or any other human languages—computers aren't smart enough to understand those yet. Instead, you write code in dedicated languages that computers can understand.

Once you know one coding language, it's pretty easy to learn another. This is because almost all programming languages use the same concepts. The words are different, but the structure is basically the same.

Bitsbox teaches kids to build simple apps by writing real, text-based computer code. The coding language we use is JavaScript, with the addition of a few dozen special commands (words, basically) that make it easier for newbies to build cool stuff quickly.

JavaScript is a very, very popular programming language which is used by millions of professional software programmers all over the world. Its main use is in programming web pages—just like the one you're reading now.

The apps that kids build with Bitsbox are actually individual web pages written in JavaScript. That's why they work on any computer or mobile device with a web browser. A web browser is the software you use to surf the web. Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari are all common web browsers.