"Baffled by web code? A new course might help"

Not enough people know the 'information superhighway' code, but a UK start-up in Shoreditch aims to remedy that. Monty Munford reports

Not using the letter E would be hard

I'm probably not the only one who has thought that going on courses is a waste of time. Whether it's learning about wine, how to cook or trooping off with work colleagues for a bonding weekend, it's never got me going.

A year ago I did think about collaborating with some developers I know to arrange a 'How to make an app' weekend but that idea, like many before them, petered away into a new round of ideas... and another round of drinks. More fool me.

Though the simplest ideas are often the best, it is the acting on and improving them that is the mark of the true entrepreneur. So, please be introduced to Decoded, a company that will teach you how to make an app, not over a weekend, but over a matter of hours.

The company is based in Shoreditch, in east London, and its one-day course promises to teach attendees how to code from scratch a multi-platform app in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. It sounds more relevant than knowing how to smell a Chablis or cook a casserole, and infinitely more useful in an world increasingly dominated by digital.

Decoded was founded this year Kathryn Parsons and Richard Peters, former advertising planners at The Ogilvy Group, Steve Henry, an ad creative, and Alisdair Blackwell, an award winning web-designer.

"We set up Decoded to demystify the dark art of code. Learning code felt like something impenetrable, alien, belonging to another world. Yet code affects and influences every aspect of our lives," said Kathryn Parsons. “We wanted people to feel empowered, to be able to communicate with developers, create and code themselves and realise the art of the possible.”

Attendees have included CEOs of FTSE 100 companies, creatives, strategists, investment bankers, publishers, media owners, journalists, producers, start-ups, teachers, students....and even the Cabinet Office is attending in the next couple of months.

The testimonials are certainly effusive, if not a little over the top... or in the case of Octopus Ventures' Alliott Cole, under the water.

"Coding is now not the preserve of techies with 10,000 hours of experience and expertise. For me, it was akin to the first time I went scuba diving: the sense of wonder as you dip below the waves for the first time and the true landscape of the sea bed is revealed", he said.

Florid testimonials aside, the subject is certainly a hot one at the moment. Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's McTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival made headlines when he told the audience that the UK risked losing its computing heritage because of a lack of education.

According to Schmidt, UK kids were learning about spreadsheets and word processing, but absolutely nothing about how software works and what code is. This is something that Decoded is absolutely passionate about and is to roll out its day-course to schools.

They recently ran a competition with London’s Stoke Newington Schoolwhere the winners were taught how to turn their original concepts for apps into reality within two days.

The company will also be working with the progressive St Aubyns schoolnear Brighton to offer coding courses for their kids. Rather tellingly, one school is a state school, the other a prep school. In coding all kids are equal... and so they should be.

Closer to home, this writer is currently bemoaning his decision at 15 years old to choose ice-skating over computing at school, a decision that still haunts him but one that probably explains his decision to go on the Decoded course next month.