A game this link that allows players to experience software development is a great way to introduce coding and programming concepts like loops and conditional statements. Games that allow this include Zachtronics’ Shenzhen I/O, which puts players in the shoes of disaffected engineers working for an uninteresting chip company and must build computer chips by hand. They are presented with increasingly difficult circuits to design, beginning with making lights blink in a certain pattern.

The game’s interface looks very similar to the tools used by developers in browsers and also teaches scripting. Another excellent example is Screeps, which incorporates JavaScript programming with massively multiplayer online gameplay to create self-sustaining colonies. Both games do a wonderful job of teaching fundamental concepts while also slowly introduce new ones.