If You Can’t Code, You’re Illiterate
Note: This article talks about my motivations for learning to code — to see the fruit of my labour a year on, check out www.openadtools.com
As a marketer I’ve always had the luxury of handing any changes to the website over to someone else who’s brain doesn’t bleed upon clicking ‘view source’. Sure, explaining for the tenth time what changes we want to the site or bribing the developers with a bottle of whiskey to fix an issue can be frustrating, but at least I don’t have to spend all day in front of a computer screen full of that ‘digital rain’ from the Matrix.
I am illiterate
Last year I came to the sudden realization that I was being a complete idiot. Frustrated with trying to explain an IT ticket for the fourth time to a team of developers, I took a break grab a coffee. Suddenly my brain made a random connection in the way that only seems to happen at the behest of a strong coffee: I realized the reaction I was getting from our developers was the same reaction my Dad (a mechanic) gives me when I turn a screwdriver the wrong way or struggle to change a tire. In the eyes of the developers, I’m the hapless guy that tries to explain a problem to a mechanic by making unintelligible whirring sounds. My tickets weren’t being done correctly because I didn’t know how to explain what was broken and how I wanted it fixed — in other words, in the world of web development, I was illiterate. Not knowing how to fix cars may get you ripped off by the occasional hand-wringing mechanic, but not knowing how computers work is increasingly more serious. So why is it suddenly so important to know how to code?
Talkin’ bout a revolution
Three hundred years ago the wealthiest people owned the land. Agriculture and shelter were the source of all wealth and those who had the most land by default had the most power and wealth. Then very quickly the industrial revolution turned everything on its head. Machines started automating jobs normally done by people and whole new industries were born. Agriculture went from employing over 90% of workers to making up only 2% of employment in the UK today. With the upheaval came social struggles but ultimately the revolution generated unprecedented sums of wealth. The factories and processes that made this possible became worth more than the land they were built on, shifting power from those who owned land, to those who owned ideas. What’s more, normal people learned how to read, breaking the monopoly on ideas that illiteracy once enforced.
Since the 1990’s the same shift is occurring — the information economy is destroying manufacturing jobs and further automating tasks. Computer programs are making machines more efficient whilst making old style machines obsolete. Now the computer programs are worth more than the machines they run on, moving manual workers even further down the pecking order. With the advent of 3D printing, nano-technology and advances in Artificial Intelligence, the list of jobs that can only be done by a human is shrinking. Surely it’s time for normal people to learn how to read?
The future is here
The World’s biggest companies are now tech companies — Apple is worth $600 billion: this makes it the most valuable company in the world with only 60,000 employees. To put that in perspective, Foxconn, manufacturer of Apple products, largest exporter from China and employer of 1.2 million manual workers, is worth less than 1% of Apple. Apple is worth more than the entire economies of Greece, Portugal and Spain in part because the clever programming and design in their products helps automate and make inexpensive, tasks that were costly or time-consuming previously. I know people will laugh when they hear me equate Apple and inexpensive, but just owning an iPhone gives you a GPS, communication device, a virtual secretary and more access to information than Bill Clinton had when he was president. Apple isn’t the only pioneer of the information age — Google’s entire mission is to “organise the World’s information” and has built a $200 billion business on using that information to serve Ads. Facebook was valued at over $150 billion on its ability to record the connections and behavior of a billion people. They recently shelled out $19 billion for WhatsApp — a service run by only 50 employees that allows 450 million people to instantly communicate across national boundaries for close to free. I could go on, but I’d rather not waste your time — you can always Google more examples, or ask your friends on Facebook or WhatsApp via your iPhone…
Go Forth and Program
Now whether you think the whole world is being eaten by computers or not, surely it can’t hurt to learn a bit of the language(s) that are now shaping it? You don’t want to be speaking Quechua when the guys with all the money and power are speaking Spanish. Whether you’re sufficiently convinced or not, I realized that being ‘not technical’ was no longer a valid excuse — I decided to do something about it.
I had read a TechCrunch article about a website called Codecademy so I thought I’d give that a go — it was free and the format seemed easily digestible so I had more chance of sticking to it. They have a challenge called ‘CodeYear’ where you learn all of the languages you need to build your own website, one week at a time for a year. After checking out the first lesson I found the project-based style to be intuitive and interesting to learn so I started down the path.
It was slow going at first but once I completed the difficult JavaScript portion I flew through HTML and CSS and was then confident enough to tackle JQuery and Ruby in a sprinting pace. Nothing was particularly impossible to understand once I got into the habit, and there’s a comprehensive Q&A for each section if you get stuck. Finishing Codecademy leaves you at the equivalent level to someone completing a beginner’s Spanish course — you can figure out most things, so long as everybody talks slowly, you’re not drunk and you have access to google translate. Although you’re probably not on ready to build your first app yet (i.e. you aren’t at the level of a 12-year-old), your brain won’t bleed as profusely when you click ‘view source’.
As well as being less afraid of diagnosing your own computer problems, and understanding how your favourite websites work, you might even find (like me) that you enjoy this new world. One amazing quality of coders is their capacity for generosity: in no other domain have I seen experts that could be earning six figures a year make time to answer stupid questions, write detailed tutorials and give away their hard work for free. If nothing else, you’ll get immeasurably better at writing intelligible IT tickets, which in itself is a noble life goal and something surely worth pursuing.
So what are you waiting for? Below are a few resources to get you started:
https://www.google.co.uk/
http://www.codecademy.com/
http://ruby.railstutorial.org/
http://railsforzombies.org/
http://railscasts.com/
http://stackoverflow.com/
http://www.w3schools.com/
https://onemonthrails.com/ (paid)
Contact me on Twitter with any questions / feedback @2michaeltaylor
