As a developer, I often get the question: “Why programming?”
During my days as a teacher, I rarely looked at a computer during the day, let alone actually use one to solve my daily problems. I found I was encouraging my students to be creative and make things every day, while not having the skills or ability myself to do the same.
When I became a programmer, I was finally able to gain the skills to be able to create things that tangibly solve problems people run into on a daily basis. Being able to create something from nothing is why I became a programmer, but there are many more reasons why someone should consider the career. Here are my top three reasons why you should!
Relevancy
Learning code is a really important gateway to understand how today’s society works.
Without a baseline knowledge of how the technology you interact with works, you run the risk of missing out on emerging careers, regardless of whether you use a programming language or not.
Being able to talk to others about how things are built is an invaluable skill that will set you apart.
Solve real problems!
While having a basic understanding of programming is necessary to communicate with others in programming related industries, a deeper understanding of code can help you solve problems in your daily life.
For example, when I first started to program, I would practice by creating things I knew would make me more efficient.
I realized that I could write a program that would create a new daily workout routine for me based on my previous workouts.
Writing the code to solve this problem took me about an hour on a weekend afternoon, and it’s saved me a lot of time searching for or thinking about workout routines every time I plan on going to the gym.
Help real people find real solutions
At its core, programming is really just taking problems or inefficiencies and using code to solve them, or make them significantly simpler.
During my first job as a programmer, we worked with a mental health organization that was trying to reach hundreds of people. Their main issue with the site was being able to receive donations, since they are a nonprofit, most of their business depends on them.
Thanks to our programming and problem-solving skills, my team and I were able to create a much more streamlined process for the mental health organization, that was user friendly and efficient.
Watching the new site develop, hearing their needs and solving a real-world issue they had, showed me how good programming can make a big difference to others.
Ultimately, programming is really about a mindset. It’s about being able to take big or small problems and break them down into manageable solutions.
The way we develop today has allowed so many people to be able to make everyday tasks, like communication or travel, so much easier.
All of this is possible because people chose to learn programing, and utilized their skills to develop these processes.
There are SO many reasons to learn programming; these are just a few that were important in my transition from teacher to programmer.
If you have questions about starting your journey, don’t hesitate to reach out.