Why You Should Be Learning A Programming Language In The 21st Century And How?
All of us at some point in our lives have said to ourselves “I should learn a language!” It may have come from the perspective of future career development, the desire to live and work abroad, or simply curiosity. But in the 21st century, the one kind of universal language that we all should be learning is a programming language.
Much doubt?
When one first thinks of learning a programming language, an array of demotivating thoughts cloud ones mind, ‘Its too late, should’ve done it when I was young’, ‘Who am I kidding?? you gotta be a scientist to learn a programming language’, ‘I don’t have the time or resources to do this’, ‘There’s no use for this in my line of work’ … and so on and so forth. Believe me, I’ve thought ’em all and heard ’em all.
My story
Take my story for instance. I started learning programming just over a year ago at the age of 30 with no background in computer science or even a requirement in my field of work i.e. business. I could very easily get through life without even thinking of learning one. But having learned one, I can confidently say that it has made my life more interesting, more enriching and the world around me just makes more sense.
Reasons to learn a programming language
Think about it, our existence is surrounded by software now. We all function with a device in our pockets like a third arm which controls so many aspects of our lives like communication, transportation, entertainment, information etc., and we have very basic to no idea of how it all works. So many of us are walking cluelessly in a digital world ignorantly letting these technologies take over our lives. I know I was.
Learning a programming language bridges that gap and empowers you to understand these technologies better and enable you to manipulate them to harness their full potential.
Programming languages aren’t relevant only for aspiring programmers or software developers, it has applications for people in literally any field. We all work with emails, excel sheets, pdf documents, websites, images etc. and spend too much time doing simple tasks that can be automated with a little programming knowledge. It can help us streamline our day to day activities, increase efficiency and make working with computers a lot more interesting. We can use it to be creative and build simple applications with limitless capabilities around the globe.
Having this knowledge also opens up a world of opportunities to transition in to different fields and collaborate which otherwise would not have been possible. With the rise of artificial intelligence, the threat of being replaced by a programmed script or an AI bot is bigger than ever. We need to diversify our skill set and remain relevant in a world that is rapidly evolving. Things are going to get only more software dependent, not less, that we can all agree on. Doesn’t it make sense to be a part of it rather than be intimidated by it and risk becoming redundant?
Remember a time when putting MS Office as a technical skill on a resume was a thing? Nowadays, it’s a basic requirement to have such computer skills and it is assumed (or even expected) that you already know it. Knowing a programming language may become that very thing fairly soon if not soon.
How to go about it?
But the good news is, you can learn it from the comfort of your own home with little to no financial requirement. All you need is the will to learn.
The world wide web has brought the knowledge of all the encyclopaedias and libraries to our finger tips and with the rise of massive open online courses (MOOC) on the web, an online market for education has flourished providing educational courses on every conceivable topic. Skilled professionals and educators have flooded the market with high quality courses for pennies which would otherwise cost thousands of dollars through institutionalised education.
I would make the argument that it’s a waste of money to spend your future income on a university by going in to debt for the first decade of your work life when you can learn the same concepts through online courses for a fraction of that. We haven’t got there entirely yet but the shift has begun. Employers are looking for skill, passion and practical experience as oppose to a piece of paper with an official university stamp.
Easier said than done though, right? Well to that I say, better tried than perceived. Even if I may have slightly convinced you to learn a programming language, there are questions left to answer. What language to learn? there are hundreds of them. How to go about it? Where to learn it from? How much time will it take?
What language?
It all depends on what you wanna do with it. Web development? Mobile development? Some other application you may have in mind? There are different languages for different applications. This is where things get confusing and messy. I would suggest you to read blog posts and watch videos on this topic, there is so much information out there, too much for our own good I’d say.
But if you’re one of those that wants to learn a general language with a wide variety of applications that is relatively easy to pick up, and don’t wish to spend a terrible amount of time researching what language to learn, I would suggest learning Python.
Python is a very powerful language with applications in web development, game development, machine learning, artificial intelligence, data science, even simple things mentioned above like automating excel sheets and email dispatch. You could be the one building AI applications that would have made your previous job redundant. The syntax of this language is very understandable and simple to read. You could probably look at a simple piece of code and guesstimate what it’s trying to do without any prior knowledge.
Where should I learn it?
The easiest way to learn Python would be through websites like codecadamy.com. It’s free and you don’t have to worry about set up like downloading an app to execute code, setting up an environment or figuring how to use command line. You can get to all that once you’ve tried it and wish to see it through. It’ll teach you all the basic commands with examples in a cloud environment on the website itself.
Even if you spend an hour a day or a few hours over the weekend on this, you can learn the basic syntax and get an idea of the how the language works in a month. If you wish to continue to learn, you could check out websites like automatetheboringstuff.com (or buy their book) which will teach you fun, cool hacks you can apply on your machine. You can take it in whichever direction you like based on your interests and goals. There is no limit to what you can do with it.
Conclusion
The idea here is to learn the concept of a programming language. You don’t need to get hung up on which language has the most potential or which one will still be relevant in a decade. The building blocks of all programming languages are the same. Once you learn one, the others will come easier and faster. It’ll just be a few more symbols or its execution will be a little different.
It’s about taking the leap of faith and getting your hands dirty. Even if you don’t finish learning it, just having experimented with it will leave you with a better understanding of how software works and how it makes our world tick.
