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What Comes After Bitsbox?

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If you've received all 36 boxes in our coding card product sequence, you might be wondering what to do next. The answer depends on what kind of technology your junior coder is interested in learning about.

The most obvious step after Bitsbox is probably Web Development—the creation of web pages and websites. Bitsbox teaches JavaScript, the language at the heart of web development.

Another option is Native App Development. "Native" apps are the ones that are developed specifically for mobile operating systems like Android and Apple's iOS. Android apps are mostly coded in Java, which (despite its name) isn't very similar to JavaScript at all. Apps for iOS (which run on iPhones and iPads) are built in Objective C or Swift.

Web Development


Bitsbox teaches JavaScript, which is the coding language programmers use to create interactive websites and web applications like Google Docs, Facebook, and Bitsbox itself. To create websites with JavaScript, here are some topics you'll need to know more about:

HTML & CSS


Without going into too much detail, HTML & CSS are languages you use to program the content, layout, and design of web pages. Bitsbox doesn't cover these at all, but for an experienced Bitsbox kid, learning them should be relatively easy.

SQL


Many websites use databases behind the scenes to manage the information you see. Amazon has a huge database of things you can buy, user reviews, customer payment data, etc. Facebook's database contains mountains of information about its users. Google's databases include websites, advertisers, ads, and lots more. SQL is a database technology that web developers commonly use to store the information on their sites.

JavaScript libraries and frameworks


Simply put, libraries and frameworks (like React and Angular, respectively) simplify the process of building websites by reducing the amount and complexity of the code you have to write. Coding a website from scratch with "vanilla" Javascript is like making a piece of furniture from a pile of unfinished lumber. Using JavaScript libraries and frameworks (of which there are many) can be like assembling IKEA furniture; you're still building, but there are fewer steps and a limited number of possibilities for what you can do.

Web Development Resources

Here are two resources we like for learning more about the above topics:

Khan Academy


Khan Academy is a well-known non-profit website that teaches lots of different subjects, coding among them. Post-Bitsboxers might be especially interested in the Computer Programming track, speeding through the Intro to JS: Drawing & Animation section and diving right into the one on Intro to HTML/CSS: Making webpages.Another super-interesting subject area at Khan Academy is the one on Computer Science. Instead of focussing on the programming part of CS, this section introduces some of the theory behind the discipline: algorithms, cryptography, information theory, and even how computers and the internet work.

Codecademy


Codecademy is a well-established website that teaches coding with interactive tutorials. It isn't designed specifically for kids, but it is intended for beginners. Codecademy offers courses that focus on a few different types of programming types; the one that's most relevant to Bitsboxers is the one on Web Development. Basic access to Codecademy is free. The paid Pro option is for people who want to skills they can use to get coding jobs.

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