Our Story
The Let's Start Coding story starts with a recent grad (Weston) and a programmer-turned-dad (Fred). During my college years studying marketing, I interned at a technology startup. Surrounded by bluetooth modules, talk of server farms, and code "going live", I decided that learning coding would be a useful skill for my career, even as someone more focused on understanding customers than building technology products.
Fred had begun programming as a kid in the 80s, when the "video games" were text-based choose-your-own-adventures. He'd gone on to build a number of technology products and companies, spending time in Silicon Valley and watching technology shape the world. As a father of 3, he was eager to share his passion with his kids and started to look for ways to introduce coding and technology to them.
In each of our respective searches, we were disappointed to find the options to "learn coding" included:
Tons of conceptual reading with no hands-on projects in sight.
Unexplained example code snippets on forums - no real learning happening there!
Kits full of "filler" components and messy wiring that made projects frustrating and overcomplicated.
Games and puzzles that claimed to teach coding, but offered little real value.
If we were facing these challenges, we know others were, too. So we set out to fix them.
At Let's Start Coding, our goals are simple:
Make fun products that introduce beginners to real coding.
Offer enough guidance so learners don't feel lost, but also leave room for creativity.
Ensure that everything works seamlessly right out of the box so early efforts aren't met with frustration.
To reach these goals, we've spent nearly 10 years:
Completely rethinking how electronics should be built for beginners. Goodbye breadboarding, resistors, capacitors, and nests of wiring. If you're not familiar with these, trust us, you don't want to be!
Developing a streamlined code editor that doesn't require downloads, updates, or dozens of dependencies on your computer in order to work. We stay on the cutting edge of coding in the web browser so you don't have to.
Creating hundreds of sequenced projects that help beginners climb the "skill tree" of coding. To create a DJ party booth with code, you must first know how to play a note, flash lights, create variables, manage timing, and read inputs. We teach each concept so that you can get creative with what you build!
Today, we can offer an all-inclusive solution where you can buy hands-on kits and learn to code at your own pace. Parents and teachers don't need to become experts to support their kids; our platform is flexible for many different learning styles and starting points.
We hope that our goals to spark curiosity and lend a guiding hand to new coders resonate with you and that we can be a part of your code learning adventure.
Thanks for your support.
Weston
Cofounder, Let's Start Coding
