Why I Decided to Learn How to Code

As a business student studying finance (that’s pronounced “fi-nance”, not “fuh-nance” like your friend who got his first investment banking internship says it), the thought of learning code is far-fetched.

Like you, I see every aspect of my life becoming more automated. So I decided to get ahead of this curve before the robots take my job. But please, before we go on and you (don’t) take my word for it, watch this video to sufficiently p̶r̶i̶m̶e *scare you for the rest of this post and life.

Cheaper Ways to Learn How to Code (and why I didn’t do those):

Contrary to my choice of learning, I will provide this disclaimer: there are great, free or nearly free ways to learn.

1)) At School — this option may seem like the best one, and I tried, but as a business major taking intro computer science classes is incredibly difficult. The intro classes for CS are weed-out classes much in the way other majors’ intro courses are. Imagine taking Orgo or Bio while you’re taking your core business classes…I’d make a funny scientific euphemism for dying, but like I said, I study finance so I guess you’d file for Chapter 7? IDK. You’d kill yourself.

*If you’re a high-school student reading this, take this as the best advice I can give you: STUDY COMPUTER SCIENCE. Sorry, what’s that? My first ever blog post as a student with no real idea of what he wants to do isn’t convincing enough? Fair enough. I will, however, tell you that an incredibly powerful woman recently told an accounting-major friend of mine that she’d pay for him to go back to school and study CS. I feel like that’s gotta be worth something.

2)) Online — it’s 2015 (hilarious if this is how you found out, but then again some of you act like you have no idea. I’m talking to you, Safari users) so there are several online resources — some free, some you have to pay a little bit, but they’re free after you pay.

• Codecademy — offers easy, interactive tutorials for popular languages like Python and Ruby. Codecademy can also help you to create your own website from scratch. Are you one of those girls (*all girls, but it’s cool, you’re not like most girls) who can’t go to the bathroom without your friends, or the male equivalent (please let me know what the male equivalent of that is)? Don’t fret! There is an option to do the lessons with your friends.

>Here’s a full list of websites to learn programming<

I’ll be brief with why this was never an option for me: I simply do not have the attention span to learn such a comprehensive skill.*

*Without turning my brain into Michelle Obama “healthy lunch” type mush by way of taking 25mg of Adderall per day.

3)) Bootcamps— this last option is a recent not-so-cheap craze and the way I’ve decided to learn how to code. Coding Bootcamps, typically 8–12 week fully immersive programming courses, are popping up all around the country and boast pretty impressive placement guarantees, sometimes foregoing tuition and instead taking a cut of your first year salary. Cocky bastards these nerds are.

>Peep this exhaustive list of coding bootcamps<

Back to me.

By now, you may be thinking “You’re probably just doing this because you couldn’t get an internship this summer.” Oh you weren’t thinking that? Now you are? Stop thinking that. It’s not true! Okay, fine, it’s a little bit true. But it’s not because I couldn’t get AN internship, it’s just that I couldn’t get THE internship and that’s partly because I don’t know what THE internship is. What I do know is that programming jobs are plentiful, pay a pretty penny, and being “proficient in Excel”, as all of our resumes read even though we don’t know the shortcut to edit the current cell (it’s F2, I Googled it), isn’t going to cut it much longer. You’re still here? Still reading? And you’re not my mother? Thanks for reading, dad!

Look, here’s the deal, the reason why I’m writing this is because I care about you and so long as you don’t feel like this scene from Billy Madison (RIP good Adam Sandler movies), I’ve done my job. But then again, I don’t have a job and the actual reason I’m writing this is because my bootcamp (Iron Hack), which begins next week, like most, request that we blog to help retain more information and maintain a positive outlook, as described in this TED Talk.

I will likely continue to blog throughout my bootcamp experience and literally don’t care at all if you follow along. However, since you all are my best friends and confidants, I am offering this sweet deal: At the end of the program we have a final project building a website (some students of previous cohorts have pursued their ideas full time). I do not yet have an idea that I’m set in stone on creating. So, if you have an idea you’ve been too busy to create or didn’t know how, email me and let’s create the next Uber for Snapchat like Venmo but Airbnb and Instagram for college kids.

More Opinions on Why You Should Learn To Code:

• What Most Schools Don’t Teach starring Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, will.i.am, Chris Bosh, Jack Dorsey, Tony Hsieh, Drew Houston, Gabe Newell, Ruchi Sanghvi, Elena Silenok, Vanessa Hurst, and Hadi Partovi.
• NBA Superstar Chris Bosh: Here’s Why You Should Learn to Code via Chris Bosh, 2x NBA Champ, 10x NBA All-Star
• 10 Life-Changing Reasons You Should Learn to Code via Laurence Bradford, history major.
• Why You Should Learn to Program (and How to Do It): An Interview with Voicemail Inventor Scott Jones via Forbes
• President Obama Asks America to Learn Computer Science