Everyone Should Know How to Code

It's a bold claim. I know.

And to many people, the idea of learning a coding language may seem completely intimidating.

But it doesn't have to be.

I'm not saying everyone should be able to code in a professional environment, or even that they should be completely proficient in whatever language they choose to pick up. If you’re still holding on to the idea that you need to succeed at something in order for attempting it to be worthwhile, you need to let that go, ASAP.

With all the free resources available to everyday people like me and you, whenever you have a few free minutes out of your week you don't know what to do with, I highly recommend picking one of those resources up and playing around with it.

Even if you don’t ever become a full-fledged professional programmer, there are plenty of benefits to learning how to code. According to Codecademy (2022), there’s plenty to gain from learning how to code. For one, it helps us better understand how the technology we use everyday functions. Right now, I am typing into a document that auto-saves at every change I make. It can tell when I misspell a word, or use improper grammar. This is all made possible through some level of coding.

Plus, learning a coding language can also help with improving your problem-solving skills, logic, and reasoning. Learning a language means learning how to break down a problem into pieces, look at their individual properties, and then understand how they all apply to each other. If that is the only thing you gain from this experience, it’s still a huge win, because those skills can be applied almost everywhere in life.

And these are only the benefits that exist outside of the coding world.

So where should you start?

Well really, that’s up to you. There are a variety of different coding languages out there, and you shouldn’t force yourself to learn a coding language that you aren’t fully invested in. However, if you are a beginner coder looking for a beginner coding language, I’m gonna drop a name you may have heard before.

Python.

Python is the go-to for beginner programming languages. Not only does it happen to be quite versatile, but it is a high-level programming language. This means it’s relatively close to English, making it fairly simple to pick up quickly once you learn the basics.

Since Python has such a vast user base, especially with beginner coders, it is so easy to find resources and tutorials to learn how to use it. There are a variety of apps available to introduce you to the basics. Many of them are free to use initially, but you may end up hitting a pay wall with a decent amount of them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t a good starting point. A few of the top apps on the GooglePlay store for teaching Python include: Learn Python, Codecademy Go, Sololearn: Learn to Code, and more.

Of course, learning how to code doesn’t mean sitting down and studying terms and concepts.

Learning code can mean challenging yourself to solve problems tailored to beginners.

Here is a website that will provide you with beginner Python challenges, and the solutions to them. In my opinion, learning through experience is the best way to engage with code. Not only are you enjoying fun logic puzzles and learning new things, but you are creating something from nothing, which is really what makes coding so rewarding of an experience.

It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s rewarding.

So why not?

Get out there, Google some tutorials, and start coding.