National Coding Week is an annual event that aims to encourage more people to learn to code in an effort to fill the current skills gap.

The widening of the digital skills gap in the UK has been much reported over recent years. According to a recent study by Qlik and Accenture it’s estimated this skills gap, evidenced by the difficulty to fill positions or filling positions with insufficiently skilled workers, is costing the UK alone £10bn a year in lost productivity.

Just 2% of the global population knows how to code, yet the demand for software developers is set to grow by 24% over the next few years, according to software company Pegasystems, suggesting that efforts to introduce a greater proportion of the population to coding are much needed.

Our CEO Becky Simms said: “We’ve created this brain teaser to celebrate National Coding Week to drum up passion for this much needed skill and hope to inspire people of all ages to get involved.

'With the average time set at 30 seconds to complete the game we're looking forward to seeing the record being beaten.

“Coding is central to our industry and to the technology we all use as part of day to day life, it is vital we continue to inspire young people to think about coding as a really exciting career path.

“Being a coder is such a specialist role that fits into many different industries now and the need for this is only going to continue to expand as our digital reliance grows.

“Anyone that wants to get into coding I would suggest starting online and finding some of the brilliant tutorials and free courses out there to see if it is something they enjoy doing.

“Part of being a coder is having a love of ‘test and learn’ so the easiest way to find out if you like it or not, is to give it a go!

“If you find yourself unable to step away from the computer - then you’re hooked and it is definitely a career path you should consider.”

“We have a team of coders within Reflect Digital who build everything from client websites, to games to systems to help make our business more productive.

“They are integral to everything we do, the heart of Reflect Digital is marketing our client’s businesses and to do this, the technical piece of the puzzle is intrinsic to success.”