Is Coding a Life Skill?
Big, fast, changes only happen when they’re forced by necessity, writes Morgan Housel, partner at Collaborative Fund and a former columnist with The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. You can say that about innovation and acquiring new skills too. New professional skills only last three - five years approximately and one must keep upgrading. The question then is, upgrading to what? There are too many options out there and that can get very confusing. I often get asked, what the skills of the future are and all I tell people is, ‘anything that rocks your boat’. Meaning, they are extremely personal and interest-driven. However, there are some skills that are Life Skills and almost too critical to live without.
Before we delve deeper, let us define a ‘Life Skill’.
Life skill is a term used to describe a set of basic skills acquired through learning and/or direct life experience that enable individuals and groups to effectively handle issues and problems commonly encountered in daily life. [1]
With this context set, let us discover if ‘Coding’ is a ‘Life Skill’. In its most basic sense, coding is translating logical actions into a language that a computer will understand. This allows us to tinker with apps, create software and websites, play video games and much more. When I was researching this piece I spoke to many developers and experts and learning to code reminded me (a non-coder) in many ways of learning a new language, let’s say English; much like words that humans use to communicate with each other that are strung into logical sentences.
Researchers at the University of Washington have found that language abilities and problem solving skills best predict how quickly people learn a programming language and also that non-math people can be computer science people. Though, several assumptions about the prerequisites to learn programming exist, more and more research has found that it is more like acquiring a new language, let’s say you now have more options like: Russian, Mandarin and Python or Java. [2]
Brief evolution of Programming
Programming is said to have developed in the late 1800s with Ada Lovelace being the world’s first programmer. She used programming to translate a scientific paper written by an Italian engineer. By the 1950s and 60s most of the really ‘big’ ideas in computer programming were developed.
The development of new programming languages in the last few decades has focused a lot on developer experience. This may mean trying to enable code that is easier to write (the driving force behind Ruby) or easier to read (Python), or making certain types of logical structures and modes of problem-solving more intuitive.
Why is ‘Coding’ considered a Supercharger?
We use multiple synchronised devices at an average of 2617 times a day and hence, communicating with the devices we spend our lives with has become super important. This makes coding basic literacy of the digital age.
In the real world, coding provides an edge to automating tasks and makes life on the computer extremely simple. According to Albert Sebastian, Technical Faculty at The Masai School, learning to code is like learning to be analytical and using logic; hence he believes it to be a necessary skill to have as technology adoption is now universal across industries.
Further, coding can be credited for improved performance, simplification and efficiency as related below:
“Simply put, coding can help you communicate with the computer and command it to listen to you,” said Sagar Bakhtar, a computer science engineering dropout from Amravati, who loves to code and learned it on the job. He has been coding for over five years and went on to train with Pesto and was then placed with a US based company as a Front End Engineer. He adds, “Coding helps us understand the world around us.”
“Coding is about performance enhancement, like a tank of nitrous oxide for a supercar. If you are already good at it, it can help you become better, faster at scale”, Charity Majors, Co Founder/ CTO of Honeycomb.io said.
Examples of what coding can do.
Simple:
Building a calculator, personal website, music player, news aggregator
Medium:
Building chat apps, social networks or even e-commerce websites
Advanced:
GPT3, building a professional game, self-driving cars or even landing people on the moon
So, when does one start?
Coding is a skill that can be self-taught. All you need is a guide/ mentor. There is no age to learn to code. It is not for only those who pursue engineering (or for that matter have a college degree), but those who have an aptitude for logic, computers and technology. This drive can be innate or can develop over time. The New Education Policy of India allows students to choose coding from class VI onwards. Coding, as opposed to popular myth, is gender agnostic*!
11 year old Veer Dayal told me he loves to code (as he has a natural inclination towards it) as it has improved his Math skills. He started learning to code when he was 7 and now aspires to create multiple apps and believes that coding is an art form that requires absolute passion. He is among the very few students in his class who know to code and that makes him really cool. Currently he has created his own Star Wars game and in his own words, ‘no one can win this game.’
Swanand Kadam, creator of Kalaam.io, a programming language in Hindi, has been teaching kids (under 16 years) from the hinterland to code. He tells me that kids love to solve Math problems and create games when they learn programming and he has also observed that both girls and boys absolutely enjoy coding as they love building stuff online.
Further, Sebastian, spoke about his erstwhile colleague, who at 40 built his first product which took him two years and how he learned to code on the job and went on to teach others too. Sebastian adds, ‘programming is perhaps one of the only industries with a relatively low barrier to entry. All you need is your laptop/ desktop and access to the internet. You become a programmer the moment you start writing code.’
On the Other Side of the Fence.
Sneh Ganjoo, Cofounder of Kloudi.tech, is an Electronic Engineer. Kloudi.tech enables every developer in the engineering team to become a 10x developer by solving for the workflow of faster bug resolution. She can read code, but does not code herself. She believes that technology is a tool to execute her larger business idea; for which she does not necessarily have to code. To her, coding is an art and only those who are passionate can write great code.
Nitish Mehrotra, another Cofounder of Kloudi.tech loves to code. He however, believes that coding can never be forced on anyone. About his Cofounder not coding (despite running a Dev-Tool company) he says, the level of empathy she brings in is absurd (in a good way). She understands what the customer wants and all I have to do is code!
Some ‘buzz-words’ that require perspective.
Coding or programming is a medium to solve a problem. Things may change overtime and are unpredictable. What stays is the power of reasoning, logic and analytics.
AI: While a lot of people have been predicting that AI platforms like GPT3 could pose a threat to coding, most developers believe that machine learning and AI will be the future of coding; wherein the computer can code on its own. This makes GPT3 a great byproduct of coding and in no way a replacement for coding.
The no-code movement: “No-code is redefining what traditional coding skills achieved using syntax and complex algorithms. The power of no-code is that you can literally instruct a tool/platform to do things by interacting with "logic" visually using simpler UX paradigms like "drag and drop" etc. Tools like Webflow and Bubble allow creators who are not necessarily programmers to still bring interesting products to life,” said KP, who has built @letterdropio@getcuppaio and is not a coder himself.
Most coders agree that plug and play systems cannot replace problem solving skills; however, they believe they can help non-coders learn how to code. Coding unlocks logical thinking and the analytical part of the brain and there is no threat to coding anytime soon.
Finally, is Coding a ‘Life Skill’?
Navin Kabra, Cofounder and CTO at ReliScore.com, a startup focussed on helping companies filter job candidates based on evaluation of actual job-related skills, does not believe that coding is a life skill. The important skill, according to him, is understanding how software works in general.
“Understanding the building blocks of any piece of software/technology, getting an idea of its internal logic, building a model in your head, and then using that model to visualize how to get it to do your bidding, is an important life skill, and the importance will continue to increase as software eats the world, and more and more aspects of our world get taken over by AI and algorithms.”
Coding is the easiest way to pick up these skills but it is not the only way. An advanced user of MS Excel has these skills even if he/she can't code. A blogger who can visualize what she wants her wordpress blog to do, imagine the plugins she would need, find the right combination of plugins, and get them working together also has these skills.
To conclude, from my multiple conversations, I figured that there are those who love to code and those who don’t. Both can co-exist. Like with everything else in life, passion is what drives your choices. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this strip.
You can also read the responses to my question ‘Is Coding a Like Skill or Not’ on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Is-coding-a-life-skill-or-not
*This post has been written in partnership with Akhil Tolani, Cofounder of StyleDotMe, who helped me put the technicalities together.*
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From the British Council: https://www.britishcouncil.gr/en/life-skills/about/what-are-life-skills
(read detailed findings of the study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8)
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/nep-2020-making-education-more-inclusive/