Exploring the Art of Coding
Behind every beautiful blog, site and app there are countless lines of code.
To be a writer, painter, or any kind of artist, really, the process of getting started is generally the same: you need to learn the basics and the rules of the medium before you can manipulate and mold them into something new. The best creatives know how to string perfectly common words, colors, or textures together in an artful, efficient way to create something unexpected.
And still, we don’t often talk about coding as a creative endeavor. We also don’t often think of bloggers as coders. We want to change that.
Denelle Dixon-Thayer, our Chief Business and Legal Officer, wrote something a while back that has stuck with me: “Here at Mozilla, we believe that the Internet is strongest when everyone — regardless of gender or geography — can participate equally.” That starts with access and literacy — knowing the basics.
According to Girls Who Code, the gender gap is actually worse now in tech than it was in the ’80s with girls’ interest in computer science dropping off steeply between the ages of 13 and 17. There’s a lot of work to be done, even in the US, to bring girls into tech, and even more around the world. Raising awareness about digital literacy while teaching simple lines of code in a visual way seemed like a good place to start.
Last month we launched #TheArtofCoding, an Instagram-based campaign leveraging bloggers in creative industries like fashion, art, food, and DIY, to illustrate that learning to code can be a way to open up a new world of self expression online. Their levels of experience with code vary. Some know just enough to be dangerous, while a few were previously engineers or developers before stepping out and pioneering their own creative successes. Many of them shared the first line of code they ever learned along with their experiences.
The response has been really exciting. We see comments like these daily:
“I can code and this post caught my eye, lol. Not an expert by any means, but I manage my own html pretty well. It’s liberating!”
“So beautiful!! I would love to learn how to code! Seems like such an essential skill these days💕 “
“Very cool! Something we’re not very good at either, but maybe this will inspire us to be better! 💛💛💛!”
“I find this so inspiring. I have my bachelors in graphic design, and am going back for my masters in user experience and interface design. This field is so dominated by men. And to see a woman, a woman of color pushing through is such an inspiration. Thank you for sharing!”
What has been really inspiring, too, is how our Mozillian community in Mexico really hit the ground running with this campaign, rallying the most artistic contributions to the hashtag out of any other country, many from girls who weren’t previously connected to Mozilla at all. They even ran a live contest at Campus Party Mexico 2016.
Just like any other field: representation matters. If you know how to code, whether you’re in a traditionally creative field or in tech, add your voice to this conversation! Visually represent a line of code in #TheArtofCoding hashtag or share your story in the comments here.
If you’d like to learn to code, check out these learning tools and activities to get started.
