I’m literally bursting with excitement at introducing my guest today. Yeva Patterson is an ultra cool 9 year old coder. She’s a big supporter of girls in tech and STEM, and I reckon she’s probably the youngest VR developer in the world! Today she’s sharing her tips to help get other kids into coding, and a special selection of book recommendations on coding for kids.

How I Got Into Coding

My parents are developers and they started teaching me how to code when I was 5 years old.

They were developing a mobile educational math app and they let me help. I would build levels for it and they actually put them into the app! I was so excited that people would play what I built so I kept going, learning more about coding and finding out what else I could create.

I realized that learning to code allowed me to be creative in a whole new way. I learned that you can code computers to do just about anything.

I found code.org tutorials particularly fun and helpful and progressed through their curriculum. I enjoyed getting their certification achievements. After I learned some coding basics I got to start using Unity3D game engine and worked on creating some fun apps. Unity now has a free asset called Unity Playground that is a simplified version of the more complex game engine. I’ve been playing with it recently and it’s really good for early programmers to first learn on Unity.

Late in 2017 I got to try virtual reality for the first time. Once I put the headset on, I fell in love! It was so much fun! I could fly! I could ride in Santa’s Sleigh and deliver presents and I could float above earth at the space station. Around the same time I was asking my parents for a rock wall but we didn’t have any space for a real one. So I decided the next best thing would be to climb in virtual reality so I built a climbing experience in VR. I made it into the shape of Google’s logo for their Doodle for Google contest because the theme that year was to doodle what inspires you. I am inspired by VR and the limitless possibilities of what you can do with VR.

What I love about VR is that it is not only really fun, it is also really useful. You can learn things in VR in such a different way. You get to be inside an environment and experience it and interact with it in a whole new way. My parents said that they could see how enriching learning in VR was for us. That’s when they decided to make a VR app to teach computer programming in VR. It’s called vCoder and it is the first virtual reality app that teaches coding in VR. I am helping them build vCoder because it is really entertaining to code in VR and I want other kids to learn how fun programming can be. This is really exciting because kids can enjoy and immerse themselves in an engaging VR world. Along the way they learn a valuable skill and see that they can learn to code too.

There are some great resources for kids to start learning how to code. I recently had a great time presenting to a class of Kindergarteners and First graders and I recommended they can easily get started at Code.org. They have tutorials even for kids that don’t read yet. I also recommend Girls Who Code.

I really enjoy teaching other kids about coding and have a passion for supporting and encouraging more kids to learn how to code. So I made some video tutorials on my YouTube channel, Yeva Codes, that helps young kids get started with code.org. I love doing it! I’m making more coding tutorials and will be adding them to my channel.

I hope to inspire other kids, and especially young girls, ​to learn how to code so they can create their dreams too!

These are my top books for getting kids into coding:

Hello Ruby Adventures in Coding (Journey Inside the Computer and Expedition to the Internet) by Linda Liukas

Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World – by ​Reshma Saujani

Girls Who Code: The Friendship Code – by Stacia Deutsch How to Code a Sandcastle – by Joshua Funk

Secret Coders – by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes Dot – by Randi Zuckerberg