If Kids are Coding, Why Aren't You?

Did you know that kindergarteners are learning how to code? How amazing! The motive behind young children learning how to code is due to these 5 important reasons:

1.    Coding is another language

2.    Coding fosters creativity

3.    Coding helps children with math skills

4.    Coding improves writing academic performance

5.    Coding helps children become confident problem solvers

Exposing children to coding at such an early age where their brains are like sponges will be very beneficial later in life. From the Learning Resources blog, it clearly states that coding helps children with communication, creativity, math, writing, and confidence; which can have a huge difference in the workforce later in life. Not only that, but it also shows how coding is transitioning the digital world EVERY single day!

Why Marketers Need It

Going back to current marketers, the skills that marketers need to have in the workforce have changed in the last few years, as coding has become a higher demand in companies. This goes back to what I talked about a few weeks ago about being a T-Shaped Marketer, which Smart Insights refers to as developing a range of marketing skills by going in depth in one or two specific areas. For this reason, many marketers are trying to understand the basics of coding and article Marketing Week explains that “marketers should absolutely be able to look at a website and know how that website is working and the code behind it.” If marketers want to truly know everything that goes behind a website and how it functions to better understand how customers are viewing the website, then coding is crucial to know.

Coding is practical and essential to know as a marketer because it’s easier for coders and marketers to communicate and meet their goal in the workplace by having the same understanding of the coding functions. What my Management Information System (MIS) professor once told the class was, “coding is translating geek to human.” During the time I didn’t exactly understand what he meant by that, but know that I took some classes on Codecademy, I understand that coding is a unique language.

Another reason why coding is such a useful skill to acquire according to Helen Warren-Piper, a marketing director for Premier Foods is: “coding makes marketers drive a better cost deal for the company because they know the true cost of doing it and how long things take, but it also means that creatively they know what’s possible and not possible.” This is extremely important to keep in mind, because at the end of the day companies want to save money and time, so having marketers with coding experience and or knowledge is really useful. Personally, I think that coding is a very valuable tool to have and it seems that the future is heading that way where marketers might soon be required to know some coding to get hired. For instance, in the Bloomberg article it is says that coding schools like General Assembly offer a three-month crash course for $11,500. I know what you’re probably thinking, THAT’S EXPENSIVE! But it's definitely worth it, if students from Ivy League schools are having a hard time finding jobs, and instead are taking the time and money to take coding classes from schools. With this in mind, coding boot camps didn’t exist four years ago, but today there are 80 of them that have pulled in $59 million in a year, and most of the students are college grads. It makes me wonder, why aren’t colleges teaching students this material? That’s why Harsh Patel, cofounder of MakerSquare, says that “colleges are preparing students for things employers were hiring for 15 years ago.” It’s definitely worrisome because students in University’s need to learn updated information for what the current business market is looking for, and coding is the way to go.

To start coding myself, I went on Codecademy and learned the basics for both HTML and CSS. To my surprise I thought it was so interesting to finally learn what coding is like and it’s true when people say it’s a whole new language to learn. At first it was very confusing to figure out how Codecademy works, but after a while I started to understand the patterns.

Here is the difference between HTML and CSS:

·     HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is used to create the structure and content of a webpage.

·     CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a language that web developer’s use to style the HTML content on a web page.

By dipping my toes in the world of coding, I now want to learn more so I can truly understand the extent of website building. Codecademy is an amazing tool to code for beginners like myself where I can learn the basics and continue to improve as I go to the next module. Working on both HTML and CSS for two hours, I reached 33% of completion on HTML and started a little bit of CSS. With only a few hours I was able to learn so much and could continue to learn more and more. With this in mind, I think it’s very easy to access Codecademy and anyone who’s interested should learn because it’s very valuable knowledge.

So…

TAKE THE TIME TO LEARN THE FASCINATING WORLD OF CODING, BECAUSE IT’S WORTH IT!