Last fall I attended an event where Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian keynoted. An audience member asked him about learning to code and included in his response about its importance was (something like) – “learning to code is learning to learn”. That gave me a real aha because don’t companies want employees who are really able to learn?

Although I can find my way around a computer, phone, devices, social media, and my website, I am not a technology person. But even at my low level of tech savvy, I am beginning to understand that in the future knowing how to code will be one of those skills like driving or typing. You will function in the world much more effectively if you can do it.

Since seeing Ohanian speak, I notice when coding is in the news. This story on NPR about a game that teaches programming fundamentals to kids aged five and under caught my ear. It reports that over the next ten years in the US there will be more tech sector jobs than computer science graduates to fill them – a million more. Already, recruiters and business owners in my community tell me finding coders to fill available job openings is a challenge.

Because I like to provide information people can use to grow, here’s a link with resources for learning code. Some free, some not.

Finally, a quick and (mostly) unrelated story – two weeks ago I attended a NASA event. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant kicked off the meeting and in his speech shared his belief that someday every kid would have a UAS (unmanned aerial system aka drone). Yesterday, I was in a boutique and the young woman helping me said she was terribly frustrated with the rainy weather because over the weekend she won a drone in a contest and hadn’t been able to fly it yet. It was my first encounter with a drone owner!

The future is now.

Would love to know what you think about learning code. Share your thoughts in the comment section.

My goal is to write 30 blog posts in 30 days the month of September.

#30in30