Would we all benefit from taking free, compulsory coding or website development courses?

The image above, showing an elevator operated car park, would probably be more common in the future as we all hurtle towards an automated vehicle life. My first question is around making bookings to use the park, payments etc.

As an Entrepreneur specialising in digital businesses only, there are times I have to work with developers and other technology related specialists to get some ideas tested or prototypes built. I have great relationships with my wonderful developers and they have helped make me loads of money in my career. However, at 12 midnight when I have a great thought on how to consolidate our position with our customers or on a great new extension to our platforms to maximise our current marketing efforts, my developers are not there and rightfully so.

When I get up in the early hours of the morning I try to work out the strategy, test some of my assumptions, do some research and conclude if it might be viable. I refer to some books and review some benchmark sites. Finally, I always consider whether we can bring it to life with the flexibility to adjust to our customers as we should. When it gets to building a prototype or testing the ideas out, I am always weary, because I have to explain it all to someone else who has to build it. The bits under my control I am fine with and I enjoy that part of the work tremendously. The bits I have to explain to developers to build the prototype are not as enjoyable.

So, all that got me thinking, what if I could code or build websites myself, at least, to the prototype stage? I learnt to write a little bit of code (simple scripts and amend scripts in reality) by necessity a few years ago, but I have recently been forced to learn how to build Wordpress websites after some years of amending Wordpress dashboards without any guided training. I learnt how to build with Wordpress on https://www.wpbeginner.com for FREE. It is all basic stuff, but provides all the tools to put down ones ideas and even create some complex elements with plug ins. Can we build prototypes with a simple platform like Wordpress while we test our ideas, young and old, learned and illiterate, rich and poor?

Platforms such as the ones below could also help:

• https://www.wix.com/
• https://www.weebly.com/
• https://www.moonfruit.com/ and many others like them

Would we all benefit from learning how to put our online ideas up for testing? Maybe we would. So, why are we not trying to teach as many people as possible how to create prototypes or websites to test our ideas? I am not asking that we replace any subjects, just include coding or building websites alongside the current subjects in schools and other institutions. Governments would benefit immensely as our world becomes more automated and the jobs of tomorrow would require thinking along those lines. The workforce needs to be prepared for life in the future.

This may all be hogwash, but no education is ever really wasted including learning certain subjects that many have never used. I believe this will not be completely wasted if it becomes part of public education policy and would pay dividends in years to come. Or that could just be me thinking out loud.

Baba Oyewole

I like working with startups to build ecosystems, customer acquisition and attain traction.