What is Stopping You From Learning to Code?

As someone who learned to code after my 28th birthday, I can confidently say that code, is for everyone. There are often only a few reasons that people give as to why they can’t learn programming and usually they are rooted in misconceptions. The first reason and the one that stopped me from learning sooner, is:

“Don’t you have to go to college to learn that?”

In years past, this argument may have held water. However, thanks to the internet, we have entered a time when education is democratized more than ever before. There are YouTube videos and entire websites devoted to learning most of the skills you need to start a career or hobby as a developer.

Depending on what you’d like to focus on, there may be an argument for college. Some jobs are restricted behind a bachelor’s degree but to learn many of the skill necessary for entry level positions in today’s market and to code as a hobby are easily attainable at websites like freecodecamp.org and Codeacademy

“But I’m not good with computers”

I would wager to guess that most people resistant to learning programming, give this response as their first rebuttal. I don’t pretend to believe that anyone can make a full-time career of programming. However, I think that anyone can learn very useful skills that translate to better problem solving, creativity and confidence in whatever it is they do.

Also not surprisingly, many people who say this, have never given code an honest attempt or they don’t know where to begin. The resources I linked in the previous section, are wonderful places to begin and provide plenty of content for the average person.

I have a two-year-old and it’s amazing watching him grow. Part of the reason children learn and retain so much information is because they are constantly curious and don’t allow the fear of failure to keep them from trying new things. Our limits are often set by us. Be curious, expect short term failure and wear it as a badge of honor. See how much you learn.

“Code has nothing to do with what I do”

I think the tragedy of this reason, is that these people don’t realize that code truly goes beyond computers.

I would posit that every day, people interact with all kinds of code. Code in its simplest form, is logical instructions. Think about the last time you were driving a car and sat at a traffic light. You know that when the light is green, you go and when the light is red, you stop. Our brains have created a set of instructions to interpret traffic light data. Code works in a similar way. We can then imagine that learning the skills to code benefit other domains of cognitive reasoning. There is in fact some evidence, while not conclusive, that could point to this article on cognitive benefits of learning to code: National Library of Medicine

In conclusion, I think we’ve been conditioned to come up with many excuses to learn coding or quite frankly any skill and I encourage you to challenge those excuses. Since taking part in a coding boot camp over two years ago, I push nearly every person I meet to at least expose themselves to code. It is extremely accessible, simpler than you imagine and more applicable to everyday life than you would expect.