Do We All Need To Know How To Code In A World Full Of Tech?

We can’t deny it being a necessity to have your smartphone in your pocket, your laptop in your backpack and possibly your tablet in one of your hands. Technology is all around us today, from the traffic light at the intersection, to the way you get your coffee served at a shop. Everything is automated nowadays. But the actual question is, do we all know how it works?

Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, said that “becoming literate in code is as essential to being literate in language and math”, a “necessary tool of the century”. President Obama seems to agree that “computers are going to be a big part of your future” as he stated it. But is coding really for everyone? Is it a necessity for tomorrow’s society?

Looking at an event called CodeDay in Santa Monica, California, we see some examples of how coding impacts our lives. CodeDay is just one event supported by StudentRND, who organises such events all over the US, and it attracts more and more coding enthusiasts. The event is about pairing up in teams and coding an app in 24 hours.

It usually takes place in the weekend, from noon Saturday until noon Sunday as it is described, in which contestants need to release an app which is planned and coded within those 24 hours. It is an interesting idea to make your weekend productive, having the alternative to go at a party and get ‘wasted’. This way, you also learn new things and improve your teamwork as well as your coding knowledge, while having something to put on your resume.

Michael Bloomberg, former New York mayor, has even tweeted last year that his new year’s resolution would be to learn how to code. Some other thoughts about coding comes from Jacob Sharf, a junior at UCLA, where he predicts that “It’ll be something that everyone knows, just like everyone knows how to read or write, it’ll be taught in middle school or elementary school, and so everyone will be familiar with the basics of it.”.

Moreover, last December, the president announced a Computer Science Education Week through YouTube. In addition to that, Tony Cárdenas has also introduced a bill called ‘416D65726963612043616E20436F646520’, which states in hexadecimal ‘America can code’, hoping to classify computer programming as a foreign language, and allocate grants for schools to start teaching coding as early as kindergarten.

Examples such as these go on and on, and the truth is that you do not have to be a genius to ‘code’. However, you are not required to know how to code to use technology now, and probably even in the future. Tech devices, operating systems and so on are made extremely easy and very intuitive, not as they were back in the 80’s where you would get a pointer on-screen waiting for commands to be inserted every second for each and every computing operation.

Although, coding is extremely beneficial and can really help you understand and probably invent new things. And you can start to code on almost everything nowadays. From PCs, to laptops, netbooks, even tablets and smartphones. Coding and ‘code’ altogether is everywhere, so why not give it a try?

Thank you NPR for providing us with this information