Why I teach myself how to code — and why you should too (Even If You’re Not a Developer)

Quite a good number of people don’t really understand what coding is. but people who learn how to code can apply their knowledge far beyond their computers. The world we live in today is a tech world and everything nowadays is computerized, Our computer science education is lagging far behind society’s needs. Which is why I took matters into my own hands by teaching myself to code.

My story is for sure not a really interesting one, as from the base I’m not a scientist. Yeah, scientist as most people say. During my secondary school education like most other young people out there, my ICT lessons still just consisted of creating a presentation on PowerPoint and writing Word documents for exercise. Which apparently at that time was the best training in the world. Lol! —

Well let’s go straight to the point, why do I teach myself to code and how I do it?

As I earlier mentioned our society needs developers, not just developers but good ones … Those who can think through problems and bring a project forward. When i was little i always fantasize about computer programmers and from childhood i knew already what i will want to do in the future. Principally i teach myself to code because:

1- Studying the hard way is the best way: While this might seem a little funny to you but when you finally realize that studying the hard way is the best way, you are one step away from being that cool professional developer you have always wanted to be… This is because when you study something the hard way it sticks not just in your short term memory but in your long term memory. well, at least that is my experience.

2- Develops Problem Solving Skills: Coding is probably one of the best field that pushes you to think out of the box, meanwhile it might be really challenging but it is far way rewarding. Before learning to code i wasn’t really good at deriving technical solutions to problems, which was really common among arts students and is still the case nowadays. At its inner core, a coding language is simply a system of variables and rules governing them, just like English. learning how to code on your own builds up your problem-solving skills which is most of time needed in a project and why not in real life.

3- I do what i love and i love what i do: Again this might sound funny but if you don’t love problem-solving or coding, why put in the efforts? for the money? or for the applause? Think again. Coding goes well beyond that. Well generally, in life when you love doing something you are always ready to do the extra walk it take to get more of it. the same thing applies for me in coding. i do teach myself to code because simply it’s fun and i love it. So i suggest you think again about why you are in tech and take a stand so you can do things for the better.

4- Practice makes perfect: It is always said practice makes perfect and i strongly believe in this saying. When you do something over and over again of which you are the one who took the initial initiative to, you’ll give in more seriousness, the best is when you do it most often.

Alright that said, let's dig into why you should learn how to code as well!

When people hear about coding they see terrifying, complex blocs of lines on the computer screen they can’t understand but in reality, coding has nothing to do with this, if you take time to read carefully and try to understand you will pretty much understand (Just like any other thing it can be tricky at times but could also be fun). Trust me, there is no magic in programming. it’s just logic, concentration, and determination. The question is why should you learn how to code? well as a marketer or a businessman you will probably see no interest in learning how to code as this probably has nothing to do with your future job or career. But you see Learning how to code has a few advantages, such as:

Learning how to code opens you up to career opportunities: You never know in which company you will end up working nor what you will do. So preparing for another carrier opportunity could still be a great idea

You’ll have the superpower to create: we often only hear about superpowers in science fiction movies but in this case you are a full flesh superhero. What do I mean by superpowers, if you can write code, you can build, create. Think and build something people will use.

You’ll Learn New Skills: if you are a knowledge lover like i am you’ll probably love to learn new skills, and learning how to code is one of the best skills you will ever acquire. basically there are an infinite number of reasons you should consider learning how to code some of which are the reasons i decided to code.

I’m no good writer I must admit but why should you learn how to code even if you are not a developer. You see, one of the main reasons I’ll talk about here is the fact that it develops problem-solving skills in you and pushes you to think and think through problems to come up with an efficient solution. This is one of the skills I personally didn’t have before joining entirely the tech field and I believe it’s really helpful even out of the tech domain.

That said you should consider joining the tech field and start coding right away because that might just be where you’ll land your next career.

if you are a developer please, share with us what you think about coding and why one should consider joining the tech field.

Thanks for reading.