Programming, says Scratch Jr., is the new literacy. It is a key word in education and beyond. The focus now is on integrating computer lessons into elementary schools, and indeed, several schools around the world have begun teaching children the basics of programming. One of the great things about programming is that when kids learn to code, they also pick up some of the other skills that come with it. Educators have a name for this learning phenomenon: incidental learning. For example, coding games and exercises are inherently complex and often require collaboration and teamwork. When children work together to debug code and find solutions to their programming problems, they not only develop programming skills (which are intentionally targeted skills), but also (accidentally) many other fundamental skills, including computer solutions. Problems, critical thinking, strategic thinking, systems thinking, logical thinking, design thinking and more. In fact, games and programming clas...