7 Reasons Why You Should Learn To Code
By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on February 23rd, 2024 1:47 pm | 5-min read
Learning how to code is fun, but did you know you get a ton of other benefits from it too? Systems thinking, problem-solving, and marketable skills improve when you learn coding. Should you learn coding, and why? In this tutorial, we’ll discuss a few reasons why it’s a smart idea to learn programming. Here’s what we’ll get into:
- What is coding exactly, and how does it work?
- How to automate things with “if this then that”
- Coding is learning how to think in systems
- Learning how to code helps you master low-code platforms
- The meta skill of learning how to learn is super valuable
- How does programming improve your problem-solving skills?
- Learn to launch and build apps, to build better things
Table of Contents
What’s Coding?
Programming, or coding as it’s often called, is the activity of telling a computer what to do. You typically code with words, in a specialized syntax, that are executed by a computer to produce a desired result. Here, check this out: for i in 1...10 { let result = i * 7 print("\(i) x 7 is \(result)") } The above code will print out the multiplication table of 7, i.e. “8 x 7 = 56”. It does so by repeating a set of instructions 10 times. This is called automation. A fundamental principle of programming is repetition. You need to be a little bit lazy if you want to become a good programmer! We’ll code it once, and repeat it an infinite number of times… Computer code is executed line by line, from top to bottom. The code will often “jump around”, for example when we’re calling a function. Functions, and other abstractions, help us to define code that’s easy to read and maintain. Other building blocks of code are classes, types, and conditionals. Speaking of conditionals – let’s move on to IFTTT… You can play around with the code in the above editor. Give it a try! Change the code and then click Play. The programming language we’re using is called Swift.Automation: “If this, then that”
You’ve probably heard that phrase before: “If this happens, then do that.” They’re called if-statements in coding, and computer code is full of them. Your code makes decisions based on input – all day every day. Here’s the anatomy of an if-statement: if expression { do this } In the above code, we want to take action if a certain expression is true. A few examples:- if userIsLoggedIn == true {
- if tweet.liked == false {
- if status == .disconnected {
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Systems Design: Thinking In Systems
When you’re learning to code, and writing a program, you don’t have to start from scratch every time. We’ve got libraries of code you can use, called Software Development Kits (SDKs). And there’s more…- A computers’s Operating System (OS) has drivers that transform signals from peripherals to events you can use in your code – like mouse and keyboard presses, or taps on a smartphone screen.
- You can use online web-based resources, such as a database with dinner recipes, and download those in your app, and work with them. The data from those webservices passes through the internet, and touches many computers in between.
- Software developers often design elaborate systems, called architecture, that makes it easier for you to code with their libraries and SDKs. They’re systems you can talk to, called APIs, that make your coding a lot more productive.
Get A Better Grasp Of Low Code Platforms
An upcoming category in software development are the so-called low code (or no code) platforms. With a no code platform, you can build apps, websites, software and more writing a single line of code! How do they work? Most low code platforms have a visual editor, in which you can build scenes, pages or app screens. You can combine different building blocks and integrate them with each other, to build an application. The purpose of the app is the same as any other: take input, and provide output. The concept of low code isn’t new. Think about Microsoft Excel, a spreadsheet program (or Google Sheets, or macOS Numbers). Within a spreadsheet, you could use dozens of predefined functions to transform the spreadsheet’s values. You could, in fact, build entire programs with it! From budgeting to taxes to planning, anything can be automated in a spreadsheet. If you’ve got these tools, why should you learn to code? It’s simple: low code tools are based on the same building blocks as actual computer code. They evaluate user input and take action based on it. Once you grasp those fundamental concepts, working with low code platforms becomes much easier. Learning is a skill in and of itself, too. Let’s discuss that next.Meta: Learn To Learn A New Skill
Coding is a valuable skill to pick up, but you also gain something by learning. You learn to learn a new skill. (Read that sentence again!) When’s the last time you learned something new? Chances are, if you don’t have a learning mindset, that your skill of learning is a bit rusty. Learning how to code will help you master the meta-skill of learning itself. A few examples:- You learn to plan. You set a goal for yourself, and figure out the steps you need to take to get there.
- You learn to persevere. Learning how to code is challenging, so it’ll train the muscle that helps you say: “OK, let’s take another look at it.”
- You learn to digest. You use specific skills to deconstruct information, and to assemble it again in such a way that you’ve internalized it.
- You learn to practice. Practice makes permanent, and it’s crucial in learning anything. With coding, you practice by building something new.
Improve Your Problem-Solving Skills
An often heard benefit of learning how to code, is that learning coding improves your problem-solving skills. But how does that work? The activity of coding, and building software, is essentially solving one problem after the other. First, you gotta figure out what you’re going to build. You discover that you don’t have the required software. You try to install the tools, but you see an error message appear on your screen. What do you do? You type the error message into Google and you start to read through potential solutions. You try a few of them, and use the results to refine your Google search. Finally, you’ve found a working solution, and you successfully install the required software. Neat! This is problem-solving. Coders do it every day. Googling is part of the job description! And so is using other tools, like debuggers and logging, to figure out what’s going wrong in a program’s code. Learning to code improves your problem-solving skills, because coding consists for a large part of solving problems. Finding out why an error or bug happens helps you understand how a system works, and that helps you prevent errors in the future. This accumulation of problem-solving skills and insights is what makes software developers valuable.Build & Launch To Change Your World
If you look around in the App Store, you notice two factors that successful apps have in common:- The most successful apps solve one problem well
- The most successful apps improve or automate a solution to a problem
- PhysiApp helps physical therapists send their clients exercises, including videos, so they can spend more time during consultations on stuff other than showing how to do exercises.
- HeavySet helps people track their workout exercises. It’s not more effective than just using a pen and a notepad, but it’s more efficient – and the app has a ton of features, like graphs and calculators, that a paper notepad doesn’t have.
- Plantsome tells me when to water indoor plants based on plant type and size. You water plants more accurately, and (hopefully) don’t forget to water them, thanks to reminders.
Further Reading
Awesome! We’ve looked at a few different reasons why you should learn coding. Here they are once more:- Learning coding helps you understand automation and “if this then that” reasoning
- Learning how to code helps you think in systems, and to understand the systems that make up everything
- Learning programming helps you understand low-code or no-code platforms better, because they use the same building blocks as coding
- Learning how to code is a great skill to learn, and it helps you master the meta-skill of learning how to learn – which is valuable anywhere, anytime
- Learning coding improves your problem-solving skills, because you spend much of your time coding with solving problems
- Knowing how to build software, and how to promote it, is a great combo that helps you change the world around you for the better
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