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Intro to Computer Programming

4.7(5,100) on Khan Academy·3.1M enrolled
Beginner 15 hours EnglishFREE
SkillsProgramming basicsJavaScriptVariables and loopsFunctionsDrawing and animationProblem solving

Is this course right for you?

Our take
Yes if you are brand new to code or setting up a young learner, and no if you are aiming straight at a job. It is free, and the instant visual feedback makes the first steps genuinely fun.

Good for: complete beginners, including younger learners, wanting a gentle first taste of coding.

Skip if: you want job-ready development skills, or you already program.

The smart choice here is the drawing canvas: you write a loop and immediately see it move something on screen, which keeps beginners going where a blank console loses them. It is deliberately gentle and slow, so it is more about confirming you enjoy coding than covering ground fast.

It will not get you developer-ready and stops at the basics of JavaScript, with no modern tooling, frameworks or certificate. The material is older and uses Khan's own editor rather than a real-world setup, but the fundamentals it teaches are unchanged (as of 2026). Treat it as the on-ramp, then move to something like freeCodeCamp once you are hooked.

Comparison · LBS

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About this course

Khan Academy's Intro to Computer Programming uses JavaScript and a visual drawing canvas to teach programming fundamentals — variables, functions, loops, and conditionals — in a way that gives immediate visual feedback, making it especially effective for complete beginners, including younger learners. Rather than abstract console output, students see their code directly produce drawings and simple animations.

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Instructor

KA
Khan Academy
Khan Academy instructor
3.1M+ learners60 courses4.7 instructor rating

Produced by Khan Academy, a nonprofit educational organization whose computer programming curriculum has introduced millions of beginners, including school-age students, to coding fundamentals.

Frequently asked questions

It uses ProcessingJS, a JavaScript-based library for drawing and animation. The syntax is genuinely JavaScript, so you learn real programming logic, but ProcessingJS is dated (roughly ES5) and is a teaching library, not the JavaScript you'd write in a real job. Think of it as learning to program, not learning production JavaScript.

It's one of the friendliest possible starts. Because you draw shapes and animate them and see results instantly, it holds the attention of younger learners and anyone who's never coded far better than a text-only course. That immediate visual feedback is exactly why it works as a first taste.

Move to modern tools once the basics of logic click. Khan Academy's own Intro to Python is a natural next step, or freeCodeCamp if you want real web JavaScript. The point of this course is confidence and fundamentals; you graduate from ProcessingJS quickly rather than building on it.
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