Responding to the many school closures in and around the Madison area, Epic stepped in to provide a 2-week short course in programming for kids stuck at home. While Epic is widely known as a place where bright-eyed millennials can make their mark right out of college, the launch of Kids Code seeks to open the company’s doors to an even younger generation.

“Kids are just like everybody else. They want to have an impact with what they do,” said Cheryl Palmer, proud mother of three, over a Zoom connection. “As long as it’s interesting kids can pick up math, logic, and problem-solving a lot faster than everyone thinks.”

Each Kids Code participant received a scaled-down version of Epic’s data structures and function call training. Published projects include a fun MyChart game that incentivizes healthy habits and an AI algorithm that cross references patient DNA attributes on a 9-axis hyper-cube via virtual-coefficient linking.

This win-win scenario is not without its hiccups of course. For example, some young coders are able to work only 2 hours a day, given the “screen time” policies of their parents.

Early indications suggest that development can now be completed at a fraction of the cost.