Google’s interactive ‘Coding for Carrots’ doodle celebrates 50 years of kids coding

The doodle, called Coding for Carrots, allows users to help an animated rabbit navigate a block maze.

Here’s everything you need to know about Google’s Coding for Carrots doodle. (Google)

Google is celebrating 50 years of kids coding with an interactive doodle on its home page. The new doodle is part of the Computer Science Education Week.

The doodle, called Coding for Carrots, allows users to help an animated rabbit navigate a block maze. The task is to help him reach these carrots by dropping programming blocks into the space below and hitting a big orange play button to test your code.

The game celebrates the beginning of Google's Computer Science Education Week, which is one of the projects run by the tech giant.

"In the 1960's, long before personal computers, Seymour Papert and researchers at MIT developed Logo - the first coding language designed for kids. With Logo, children could program the movements of a turtle, giving them the opportunity to explore ideas in math and science. Papert and his colleagues envisioned that computers could eventually be used by all children as a powerful tool for learning. They saw coding as a way for kids to develop confidence and fluency with a piece of powerful, modern, and one-day ubiquitous technology," Champika Fernando, Director of Communications, Scratch Team wrote in a blog post.

"Kids programming on computers must have sounded futuristic and impractical in the 1960's when Logo was first created. In fact, even in the 1980's when I wrote my first lines of code, my working-class parents questioned how coding would ever benefit their nine-year-old daughter," she added.

The doodle is the combined effort of Google Doodle team, Google Blockly team, and researchers from MIT Scratch.