But the games took forever to load, and while waiting I would often pore over the incredible programming manual that came with the Spectrum. The book was full of simple programs written in the ...

It was a very simple program—all it does is draw a square on a screen—but that's the point, says Hadi Partovi, co-founder Code.org, an organization that promotes computer science education.

Last June, GitHub, a subsidiary of Microsoft that provides tools for hosting and collaborating on code, released a beta version of a program that uses AI to assist programmers. Start typing a ...