This article is adapted from an edition of our Off the Charts newsletter originally published in October 2021. Off the Charts is a weekly, subscriber-only guide to The Economist’s award-winning data ...

Ubuntu is a free computer system, like Windows or macOS, but it’s built by a community. It’s great for programmers because it’s very flexible and has lots of tools already built-in that help you code.

Joel Gratcyk's son Wesley spends a few hours a week learning to code in Python, PHP, and Swift. Wesley started taking free courses when he was 7 and uses both online and library resources. Gratcyk ...