Forget the Past, It’s A Coding Future!

My Take on the Top 5 Tech Stories of the Week

Literacy in the 21st century is far from just reading and writing skills. In fact, it’s more than typing, using email or searching online. The basic skill of the new generation, allowing people to change their lifestyles, social statuses, even geography? It’s coding.

Code is a universal language of digital world. But those who learned and mastered the usage of this language are raising the bar for the products they need. In fact, they don’t need to sit and wait for this or that product; they are able to create it themselves. The magic of web and software development is being revealed — how should big tech companies react?

Read my weekly round-up of interesting tech stories and share your thoughts!

As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

By Steve Lohr, The New York Times

The touching story of Paul Minton, who moved from waiter to data scientist with a 5-fold salary increase after three months of coding lessons, might sound like the new Cinderella. But the fact is that people learn coding nowadays for money, for opportunities, for fame.

What’s more interesting, the tech industry is embracing this life-rebooting effort. People are coming with a fresh mindset, creative ideas and life-outside-tech experience. Coding seems like a minor tweak in this list.

Demand creates a supply. In the growing number of coding schools you can find a course for anyone, from an infant to a housewife. Some even see coding lessons as an alternative to a traditional college degree. With the prices ranging from $10K to $20K per course, they are comparable to uni tuition fees.

Can 3 months and $10K be a game changer?

For sure, they can. Centuries ago the people who could read and write were rare, and had absolute power. For a long time it was enough to make a massive difference in one’s life. Now people without those skills are at a disadvantage in daily life.

Coding is following the same path. Google, Facebook, Microsoft rose to power using the knowledge of coding. Now it’s time to master this skill before it becomes too mainstream to make a difference.

So here is a life hack: make it your goal to learn basic coding before the end of this year. Beware, it’s quite addictive! While coding becomes yet another common skill to learn, like driving a car or speaking a foreign language, outstanding coding is still something that can bring a person into the millionaires club.

Facebook combats bias with training

By Jessica Guynn, USA Today

Speaking of the privileged positions of coders in Silicon Valley, Facebook tries to improves their lives by training employees to recognize bias at workplace. Moreover, Zuck’s empire decided to share it online to educate everyone about the culture of welcoming different people and ideas.

The move comes from a company where 68% of the staff are male and 55% are white. Diversity is indeed a hot topic, especially for the Silicon Valley tech industry, which is always hungry for more talented people from all over the world.

What does diversity mean for tech?

I might sound a bit cynical, but diversity in tech is far from being an unselfish move for equality in the world. In fact, it becomes another “perk” in corporate culture, another benefit of being a small part of a massive system driving technological progress.

The young generation of coders, who are not yet bound by family and children, choose freedom and a positive environment in the office above all, even above stability and reliability. Surely they notice the efforts to create such an atmosphere, just like they notice free cookies and coffee in the corporate kitchen.

Companies, in turn, can secure a virtual “badge” of being employee-friendly. The value of it might be denied only by Apple, where the brand halo effect is placed higher in the hierarchy of corporate values. But looking one step past this, the new — and even more essential benefit for tech — might be already there: openness.

Mark Zuckerberg Shares Big News: First Family of Facebook Expecting Baby Girl

By Matthew Deluca, NBC News

Tech leaders, just like celebrities, mostly like to speak of their products, not their private lives. That doesn’t make their private lives less interesting for the general public. But is it possible to speak of both?

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, “the first family of Facebook,” proved that it’s more than possible, it is socially praised. Zuck not only announced that they are expecting a first baby, he also shared the deeply private detail of three miscarriages which Priscilla went through.

“In today’s open and connected world, discussing these issues doesn’t distance us; it brings us together,” says Mark, reiterating the values of his other “baby,” Facebook itself.

Where are the boundaries for openness?

Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement seems like the epitome of the open culture which is popular in tech. Who if not him should motivate 1.5 billion Facebook users and thousands of Facebook employees to be open with each other?

Anyway, the message is clear, in today’s digital world, people can rise very high, but still face the same concerns and fears as all of us. And I want to use this chance to congratulate Mark and Priscilla for bringing a new life into the world.

Google Gives Up on Google+ as a Facebook Rival

By Alistair Barr, The Wall Street Journal

An old Japanese proverb says: if you sit long enough on a riverbank, you might see the corpse of your foe going with the flow. While Facebook is celebrating the future and working on corporate culture, Google is giving up its ambitions of creating a competitive social network.

First, it spun off Hangouts. Then the photo-editing features (the main competitive advantage of Google+) became a centerpiece of the new Photos app. Now Google+ gives up its last bit of control; other Google services like YouTube will no longer require Google+ credentials to upload content or comment.

Why did Google change its mind?

Major tech corporations are inevitably growing old. The key challenge for them is to “grow young,” or to keep up with the needs of the new generation of users. Google+ was good in terms of Google’s ad revenue strategy, but clearly did not fit into the concept of following user needs.

The renaming of the Google+ division into SPS (Streams, Photos and Sharing) sheds light onto the new strategy of the service, moving towards photo storage and video streaming. Is that going to be enough for the Snapchat and Tinder generation? We’ll see.

Windows 10 Review: A Throwback With Upgrades in Software and Security

By Brian Chen, The New York Times

Speaking of old products for the new generation — it seems like Microsoft found a way to be “sexy” again. As 90% of PCs are still running Windows, Windows 10 is for sure a major software announcement this year.

The key difference of the new release: it’s free! Of course, only for Windows 8 and 8.1 users and only during the first year. And yes, it is distributed as a service, so you can expect the update to come the same way Apple updates its OS.

Does the new get along with the old?

Surprisingly, Windows 10 is as much new as it is a throwback. The Edge browser; the voice assistant, Cortana; and new security features are definitely worth checking out. At the same time, Microsoft brought back the good old Start button and Solitaire — the latter, though, is now either with ads or paid.

We see a growing trend here. Not only Microsoft, but also Apple are embracing the tactics of long beta testing periods and continuous feedback gathering to make their software accepted by users. In other words, the army of users rule.

But here is the funny twist — the same users who are not ready for changes in long-term branded products are quickly and easily adopt new services into use. Some of these services are even the ones they created themselves. And this brings us back to coding as the skill and the increasingly exacting tastes of the new generation.

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