Starting this spring, more Chicago Public Schools students will have a new language to learn: the one spoken by iPhone apps and Apple’s iOS operating system.
The tech giant is teaming up with the city to get its coding curriculum into more CPS classrooms and into the City Colleges of Chicago, and area companies and nonprofits are joining in by offering internships and mentoring opportunities.
The free curriculum is part of Apple’s year-old Everyone Can Code program and teaches the Cupertino, Calif.-based company’s programming language, Swift.
“We hope we eventually get coding required in all public schools in America, not only for a year but for every year,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said. “It’s a progression, just like English is, just like mathematics and other kinds of courses that are viewed as foundational.”
Apple developed its own coding language because it wanted something as easy to learn as its products are to use, Cook said. “We wanted it to be something that you could begin learning on but you could then, through the course of time, write the most powerful applications imaginable.”
While the students will learn just one programming language, those in the coding world say that learning one is the starting point for learning more. Swift has fueled the creation of apps such as Airbnb, Yelp and Venmo.