Will the next generations learn that software development is the next big opportunity and has been for years?
There is a new opportunity emerging for young people to do productive, entrepreneurial, satisfying work: they can learn to code. Code isn’t that hard to start to learn – one outsourcing firm takes people with no training and makes them full-time Java programmers in 3 months. (Of course, mastery takes tremendous talent and craft.) Coding isn’t expensive – with netbooks, cloud hosting and storage, and open source software. Beyond a certain point, coders are self-taught, and can continue to advance their skills.
They’re handing out Gutenberg printing presses out there: with services like Treehouse (I’m a dues-paying member) and Codecademy (and its expertly-timed year of code), countless university courses free online, Google Code University, the warm embrace of Stack Overflow, in-person courses like Dev Bootcamp, summer camps for kids, even the promise of a one-day result with Decoded (the six-minute abs of learning to code), and great organizations like CodeNow (which I’ve been supporting) reaching out to teach code in underserved communities. I’m sure I’ve left many out.
Why aren’t more high schools teaching these skills?
Patrick Neeman is Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting platform and runs both the UX Drinking Game and Startup Drinking Game | More | Contact
If you're a UX Designer in San Francisco, ping me at Twitter. I want to add you to a list I have there.
