{"id":20348,"date":"2026-04-28T16:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T16:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/20348\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T16:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T16:52:10","slug":"as-ai-rewrites-the-rules-of-coding-code-org-pushes-to-reinvent-itself-the-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/20348\/","title":{"rendered":"As AI Rewrites the Rules of Coding, Code.org Pushes to Reinvent Itself \u2013 The 74"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n

Teacher Jake Baskin remembers exactly where he was when he first watched the viral 2013 video<\/a> that introduced Code.org<\/a> to the world, inviting kids to learn how to code.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was sitting in my high school classroom in Chicago,\u201d he said. \u201cI got a link to that first video and thought, \u2018I\u2019m so excited. Someone else is saying the things I\u2019ve been saying to my students.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

A longtime educator who now leads the Computer Science Teachers Association<\/a>, he watched as the nearly-six-minute video showcased Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and a constellation of tech celebrities recalling their first experiences with a computer: creating games, drawings, quizzes and more. \u201cI was 13 when I first got access to a computer,\u201d says Gates, a wistful smile crossing his face.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t hurt that he and a few others onscreen were by then among the wealthiest people on the planet.<\/p>\n

The video soon helped spark what would become arguably the most successful education reform campaign of the past few decades.<\/p>\n

By 2021, 53% of U.S. high schools<\/a> offered computer science, known widely as \u201cCS.\u201d Code.org<\/a> persuaded legislators in 12 states to add it to their high school graduation requirements. And every U.S. president since 2013 has made computer science a pillar of their education agenda.<\/p>\n

Baskin liked the video so much he\u2019d go on to spend four years at Code.org, helping the nonprofit write its first curricula and building district partnerships nationwide.<\/p>\n

But fast-forward to 2026, and the landscape looks more fraught. So-called Silicon Valley \u201coligarchs<\/a>\u201d have spent the past few years secretly building addictive apps<\/a> and survival bunkers<\/a> while shedding thousands<\/a> of software engineers. And the organization that made \u201clearn to code\u201d a national rallying cry must confront an existential question: In an era when generative AI tools can create functional code from plain-language prompts \u2014 and where kids too young to drive<\/a> are making millions \u201cvibe coding\u201d professional-looking apps \u2014 where exactly does a nonprofit called Code.org fit in?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

RelatedWhen It Comes to Developing AI Rules, Who Asked the Students?<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

New CEO Karim Meghji admitted that he and his colleagues must reframe their offerings and message without abandoning their core ideals. \u201cOur foundational principle is not, \u2018More kids need to learn how to be software engineers,\u2019\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve been promoting is that a world that is very digital, and has technical products all around us is a world where students deserve to understand how these things function, how they work.\u201d<\/p>\n

That reframing comes at a key time for the nonprofit, whose gift-fueled funding has dropped significantly<\/a> in recent years, from $42.8 million in 2023 to $18.4 million in 2024. It reflects both shifting philanthropic priorities and the existential questions now swirling around the field of computer science.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Is computer science collapsing?<\/p>\n

The shift Meghji describes is happening not just in K-12 education, but in the higher ed landscape and in the broader job market. <\/a>Student enrollment in computer science at four-year colleges fell 8.1%<\/a> last fall, the biggest single-year drop of any major discipline since at least 2020. In one year, computer science fell from the nation\u2019s fourth-largest undergraduate major to its sixth, even as the fortunes of Silicon Valley continued to rise<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Karim Meghji<\/p>\n

At the University of California, computer science graduates are expected to number about 350 next year, a 59% drop<\/a> from 2025. Across the entire UC system, computer science enrollment declined last year for the first time since the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

The job market for young coders has softened, too. A recent study by Stanford\u2019s Digital Economy Lab<\/a>, using payroll data from millions of workers, found that by September 2025, employment for software developers aged 22 to 25 had declined nearly 20% compared to its peak in late 2022 \u2014 even as employment for more experienced developers held steady or grew. The study\u2019s authors described entry-level engineers as \u201ccanaries in the coal mine,\u201d early casualties of AI tools that can easily replicate their work.<\/p>\n

Other data paint a less clear picture. A recent report<\/a> by the finance analysis firm Citadel Securities found that in the long term, software developers\u2019 jobs may be relatively safe because replacing them en masse with AI would require \u201corders of magnitude more compute intensity\u201d than the industry has. Alex Kotran, CEO of the AI Education Project<\/a>, noted that job postings for software engineers are actually up 11%.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething that I just want to shout from the rooftops, is, \u2018We really don\u2019t know what is about to happen,\u2019 \u201d he said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

RelatedCan AI Keep Students Motivated, Or Does it Do the Opposite?<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

That uncertainty, it turns out, is what Meghji is emphasizing as Code.org shifts direction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, AI seems miraculous and it\u2019s improving quickly. But it also fumbles on occasion, hallucinating<\/a>, making up references<\/a> and generally threatening to wreak havoc<\/a> on the world. Meghji invoked the notion of AI\u2019s \u201cjagged frontier<\/a>,\u201d which describes its strange, counterintuitive competence in complex processes \u2014 but that can also fumble the simplest tasks<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Meghji, a veteran consultant and technologist who most recently was Code.org\u2019s chief product officer, that jaggedness is exactly why teaching computer science matters now: \u201cThe further we move away from how these systems work \u2014 the further we abstract away from what\u2019s happening under the hood \u2014 the more important it is that students learn foundational CS and computational thinking concepts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When AI shows its fallibility, he suggested, educators should view it as a teachable moment.<\/p>\n

As it rebuilds, his organization plans to keep coding at its center while weaving AI into instruction, Meghji said. It has replaced its well-known \u201cHour of Code<\/a>\u201d with an Hour of AI, and it\u2019s developing an \u201cAI Foundations\u201d course for high school students, due this fall, in which students use AI to help build and lay out interactive websites, then use a combination of their own written code and AI-generated code to improve the sites. A middle school curriculum is also planned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t start with AI,\u201d Meghji said. \u201cWe start with the foundation, teach the principles. Then we introduce AI coding, have students read code that AI is generating, find the issues, and hopefully have a higher ceiling \u2014 both in terms of their creative output, their agency, and what they\u2019re producing.\u201d He estimates that where previously perhaps five out of every 100 students built something genuinely impressive, AI tools could raise that to 30 or 40.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also tweaking the organization\u2019s business model. With philanthropic funding down sharply, Meghji said, he\u2019s exploring whether Code.org can generate earned income through curriculum offerings tied to dual-credit and career and technical education pathways, models where public funding could help students earn technical credentials. He wants its curriculum to remain free for students but is exploring state and federal funding to underwrite it.<\/p>\n

\u2018A fool\u2019s errand in any field\u2019<\/p>\n

Meghji is also eager to correct a misconception that he believes was never really Code.org\u2019s message: the idea that learning to code was a golden ticket<\/a> to a six-figure salary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur message was not, \u2018Hey, come to Code.org, take computer science, and you\u2019re going to write your ticket,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve always been of the mindset that every student deserves the right to learn the foundations of how technology works.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Jake Baskin<\/p>\n

Baskin, the computer science teacher, said he wishes that distinction had been drawn more sharply from the beginning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I could go back in time, I would try to keep the movement from explicitly linking computer science to short-term career outcomes, because that\u2019s a fool\u2019s errand in any field,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one knows what the jobs of the future will be like, and if they did, they\u2019d be very, very rich. It\u2019s about preparing students for the things we don\u2019t know that are coming and giving them the broadest opportunity to engage in what is meaningful to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

aiEDU\u2019s Kotran made a similar case, arguing that computer science should sit \u201calongside reading and writing and math and science,\u201d not as vocational training but as the place where students practice so-called \u201cdurable skills\u201d such as collaboration, design thinking, productive struggle and iteration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He worries about the consequences if schools abandon the field entirely. \u201cIf we turn our backs to computer science, you\u2019re going to have this deviation where kids who have access to those learning experiences are just going to be on a separate track,\u201d he said, with access to knowledge that others don\u2019t have. That\u2019ll worsen inequality.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

RelatedIt\u2019s Time to Embrace AI Literacy for Kids<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The strongest case an organization like Code.org can make, Kotran said, is actually a counterintuitive one: That AI, the very technology threatening to upend coding careers, might actually help recruit the next generation of computer scientists.<\/p>\n

\"\"Alex Kotran<\/p>\n

Despite the appealing creation myths embedded in Code.org\u2019s famous intro video, he said most young people who study computer science must put in upwards of two years before they get to a place \u201cwhere you could build something that\u2019s actually cool.\u201d But many students never made it that far. With AI, the time horizon shrinks: \u201cYour first class is like, \u2018OK, let\u2019s vibe-code something. Think of a problem you want to solve that\u2019s relevant to you \u2014 finding the right makeup, predicting fashion trends, sports data analytics, whatever,\u2019\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Students build something, but to further develop it, they need to go deeper and understand the code behind the vibe. Code.org and groups like it could open that experience up to students for the first time. \u201cI don\u2019t think we ever had something that powerful before,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if we wield it right, we can actually start to reach kids who don\u2019t think of themselves as CS kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you use this article in your work?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We\u2019d love to hear how The 74\u2019s reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers. Tell us how<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Teacher Jake Baskin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,14340,689,4576,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-20348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-code-org","11":"tag-coding","12":"tag-k-12-education","13":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}