Steve Jobs once famously said “Everybody should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think”. In an age where our world is ruled by the Internet of Things, cloud computing, a never-ending arsenal of new gadgets, and Bluetooth technology making its way into everything in between, it seems he could not have been more spot-on. Professor Mitchel Resnick of the MIT Media Lab concurs, adding that coding has, in fact, become “the new literacy”. These seem to be the driving ideas behind a new iPad app called Tickle, which makes learning to code as fun for kids as playing with LEGOs.

Tickle hit Kickstarter a little over a week ago and has already generated a ton of online buzz, making it one of Kickstarter’s most touted Staff Picks of the week. The name Tickle is a reference to Scratch, the programming language it uses to educate people about the fundamentals of coding. While there are several games and puzzles geared towards teaching kids how to code, Tickle stands out above the rest with its colorful interface and characters. Co-creator Mike Chen, a professor of computer science at U. C. Berkeley, says he wanted to create a program like Tickle because he wasn’t satisfied with existing methods of teaching students how to code. Tickle allows users to create applications and games by simply dragging and dropping actions and commands into the work area. Within the app, the first thing kids learn is how to animate characters by putting together building blocks of code. From there, they can add intelligence to auto-pilot air drones and even learn to control smart homes. Best of all, everything is designed to be as kid-friendly as possible – beautiful, vivid characters and sounds allow your tiny genius to build stunning games and animations with maximum ease, while the display was designed from the ground up with multi-touch in mind. Not only will they be able to build versions of popular existing games, but they will also be able to create their own original games that can be sold in the App Store. Proud parents gather round – your next game addiction on your tablet or iPhone could now be created by your six year old.

Tickle supports a full programming language with advanced concepts that are taught in Computer Science departments at top universities around the world, including U. C. Berkeley and Harvard. It supports concepts like data structures, functions, publish-subscribe, and Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Plus, it uses the success of existing App Store games like ‘Flappy Bird’ and ‘Angry Bird’ to keep kids interested in continuing their learning. Once they finish a lesson on a programming concept, Tickle shows them what they can produce with that new knowledge. “What we wanted to do was start by showing the end product of what you can create and then get kids interested. Then we show them, this is how you build it” Chen says. That approach seems to be working for them – with 20 days remaining in their Kickstarter campaign, Tickle has earned nearly half the $30,000 in funding needed to move forward with the project, which they hope to offer as a free app in the App Store. The app’s beta release is currently scheduled for September of this year, but only supporters who pledge $125 or more will have access to that.