Coding, or the ability to write basic web code, is becoming a must-have skill in todays social, employment and cultural environment. Coding has never been so easy, with fantastic resources such as Code Academy teaching the basics of coding in 1hr daily chunks spread out over a month or so. This can be simple stuff such as web programming, or more complex stuff like PHP, the back-end language used to power WordPress.
It’s becoming fun and as we see the old-world geek programmers slip away to the dark caves they originally came from it’s leaving the landscape open and free for a whole new generation who see coding as just another language.
As the Telegraph, and others say, you’re never too old to learn to code.
However, we’re starting to see a trend coming from the other end of the age spectrum, CodeClub started two years ago with the aim of putting a “Code Club” in everyone of the UK’s 21,000 primary schools. Brave, yes. Achievable, yes. Cost effective … well it costs £8 per child per year to put them through code club. It will be just about the cheapest thing you can do for a child and will enhance their career prospects no end and it’s a very useful hobby, to boot.
At Connected, we firmly believe that everyone should code so every staffer is pushed through Code Academy during work time and sent of training courses, including sales people would you believe! Our view is, if everyone in the company knows a little bit about WordPress development then we’ll all benefit, effectively everyone carves out their own little niche of WordPress experience and skills.
Finally, the experience is invaluable – if you work in the digital space then you’re going to struggle with your credibility and authority if you can’t code. It’s that simple, would you buy design services from a company full of people who didn’t understand design?
