Programming is the new black
Tons of people wishing to to be born with the ability to code, like superman and his laser-eyes, so that they could get rich quickly in this get-rich-quick developer friendly atmosphere.
I’ve had the luck to study Cybernetics and Computer Science and I believe that even though I wasn’t really motivated by the Cybernetics part of the course I followed for 3 years, it turned out to be really smart decision for my career taken by the “not-so-bothered” younger me.
After finishing my higher college education and beginning to work, I have met a lot of people with different backgrounds that do not know how to code in semi-technical roles.
There are plenty of engineers, mathematicians, electrical engineers, marketers, lawyers, salesman, social media managers, chemical engineers, not to mention literature experts, copywriters, psychologists that just don’t “compute” programming.
The worst part from my perspective was that when it came down to compiling data reports in M$ Excel, they couldn’t do any form of scripting or advanced data manipulation and always asked for my help: It made me feel good at times, but inside of my head I was thinking “Oh, here we go again”.
Sometimes I start talking to people with such backgrounds and they tell me that they’re somewhat sad that they will never be able to find a job that will pay as much as a developer because due to their lacking ability to code.
When I ask them the questions such as
“Why don’t you start learning how to code”
or
“What is stopping you”
usually they answer something like
“ I wouldn’t know where to start”
or
“I am NOT interested in to learning how to code”
or simply they assume they are too stupid to become developers .
This saddens me, I think anyone can become a coder — although they need to find the right motivation to. Usually you need to be willing to, by applying yourself to solve a problem. You’ll find that coding will help you in this intent.
It will simply be a matter of time as eventually everyone on this planet will know how to code (the basics of coding at least) or.. well, unless we get wiped out.
Maybe we won’t be able to teach everyone how to reverse engineer executables, read assembly or program micro-controllers in C but I believe everyone will have a bag of general concepts somewhere in their knowledge bag, the same way we teach everyone the basics of maths to get around in everyday’s life.
The reason why I’m writing this article is because I want to address the answers given me by those people I’ve had numerous conversations with.
The same people that claim they will never be able to become coders or that they will never be able to make as much money as a developer .
You don’t have to become a developer to make a lot of money: in fact there are thousands and thousands of people who do not know how to code and yet are millionaires because of their incredible business and entrepreneurial spirit.
If you want to get rich you need to be good at what you do and not give up or stop working hard. Do you think Superman would be Superman if he had retired on a remote island after finishing school.
It is pretty sad that our society cherry picks engineers and software developers over historians, musicians and writers.
We’re just in a phase of society where coding jobs are necessary.
I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people out there that have studied something in college that does not allow them to enter the world of software development. They are now suffering from the way our society is treating them because they have less job openings or chances of getting a job over someone with a computer science degree.
In fact our way of handling this has not changed, nor evolved at all; it is a common pattern in history as we know 500-600 years ago people who knew how to write where seen in a much better light than those who just knew how to harvest field and plant seeds.
As a society we’re not there yet: we just cannot treat everyone equally, we judge people based on their field of study and interests.
People are forced into career choices because of the economy of employment and job security.
In a different world, in a different time or a parallel universe there probably is a society where computer science is taught to everyone since early days. In such world, the job of a software developer is probably not as economically rewarding and exciting as it is made out to be in our society, and especially not as rewarding economically.
If we look at the starting salaries of software developers against marketers, salesmen or general executives we often see that a software developer’s salary is double or triple the amount of others.
This is forcing people to take career decisions they might regret further down the line. The “if my mother is a lawyer I have to become a lawyer too” or “My father is a doctor then I will become a doctor too”.
It turns out to be a really rewarding role financially speaking that will place you in a spot that will always carry a certain weight on our society over a librarian for example. There is no point in denying that.
There is only one solution to this problem: teach how to program to everyone in school since the young age. By teaching how to program I do not mean teach them the concepts of computer science and programming written 40 years ago but instead focusing on what matters today things such as game development web development mobile development design of interfaces basics of illustration and computer architecture with the tools of today; leaving the in-depth subjects to those who really want to learn them.
But guess what? Then it will be different, there will be another role who will pick up the blame for being the next computer engineering.
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