Apple wants to give you and your kids all a free coding lesson with its Hour of Code workshops

Ever wondered how those 317 apps clogging up your iPhone and iPad came into being? Well now you can take a peek behind the curtain and learn all about how they’re made with Apple’s free coding workshops.

Celebrating Computer Science Education Week, the Cupertino-based company has confirmed that early next month it will offer Hour of Code workshops at all 487 official Apple stores around the world. Nice.

What’s more, thanks to the recent release of the kid-friendly iPad coding app Swift Playgrounds, you can now take the wee ones along with you and get them interested in coding at an early age.

“Coding is just like any language, the earlier you’re exposed the more successful you’ll be,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering said in announcing the initiative.

“Whether at an Apple Store, in a classroom, or at home with an iPad, Swift Playgrounds brings real coding concepts to life and empowers the next generation with the skills they need to express their creativity.”

So, what are these workshops all about? Well, as their name suggests, the Hour of Code workshops run for, yep, you guessed it, an hour at a time, and will give kids and parents alike the chance to get to grips with the basics of coding.

Set to be held globally from Monday, December 5, to Sunday, December 11, you can already register for the workshops in your local area right here.

Can’t get to an Apple Store, don’t worry, this is just the tip of Apple’s get-into-coding iceberg. As well as the Hour of Code workshops, the big-A has added a new Hour of Code challenge to Swift Playgrounds, letting everyone practise at home, or set up their own one-hour coding event.

Want more? You got it. A new set of lessons have also been added to Apple’s ‘Learn to Code 3: Putting it Together’ programme which is again free to utilise.

“Hour of Code embodies our vision for Apple stores as a place for community to gather, learn and be entertained,” Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Retail said. “We’re proud to introduce Swift Playgrounds app into the workshops and honoured to again work side-by-side with code.org on this incredibly important initiative.

“Hour of Code is one of the absolute highlights of the year for both our teams and the families that visit our stores.”