In India, even toddlers are learning to code

Nothing distracts Rishi Shiv P when he is writing computer code. The five-year-old’s eyes remain fixed on the screen and his little fingers dance across the keyboard, as he unfurls drop-down menus and builds nested loops.

“This is Flappy Bird game,” he explained, sitting at his mother’s desk, his favourite corner in their Bengaluru house. The game is nearly complete. He is just adding his chosen colour to the background, against which a bird will eventually fly through an obstacle course. As Rishi gets busy finding the right command, his mother Recheshwari Shiv tells me about the games and animations he has created in the past four months. Even discounting for her love as a parent, the child’s aptitude for programming sounds prodigious.

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