Why should you learn to code?
Published: 2021-08-16 16:37:43

If you want to stay relevant in the future you either need to be able to code or be able to tell really good stories. Telling stories is a creative task which is not a piece of cake for most of us, but coding is something that everyone can do.

In the 1960s, the number one and the most important skill to learn for an Indian was the English language. If you knew the English language the number of opportunities for you was extremely high. If you have studied history you will see the friction to learning English was quite prominent in India. If you read those stories, people in India were like 'I know my native language, why should I learn English?' or 'Our native language is the Indian language, this is where we come from.' etc. Other people kept telling them the opportunities are in English and English is the global language, it is how we communicate with people across borders. It helps us with export and export is where the money is and the mediocrity just did not get the point. They came up with thousands of excuses as to why you should not learn English. If you think properly, language is the ability to communicate with other human beings and English happens to be the most universally understood language. While you can communicate with other human beings in other languages like Hindi or Bengali, English is something that will get you better reach, will get you more opportunities.

Today learning to write code is exactly like learning the English language in the 1960s. Instead of talking to human beings, you are learning to talk to machines through coding. Just look around you, most of the things around you are made digitally. They have a digital interface, it's either IOT or actual computers computing. If you can't create for this ecosystem then you are going to lose out on opportunities. If you can't talk to computers how do you expect them to yield to whatever you want them to do? Today one of the most magical things about me and a computer is if I ever want to create something or I ever want to take a robot and program it to do something, I know how to do it. I might not know the exact programming language used to program that robot but I can pick it up with ease just because I know another programming language.

So it is so critical for us to learn to code because all opportunities are going to be there. Learning how to write code is the number one skill I recommend to each and everyone to learn right now. If you can learn how to write code, there is nothing stopping you and there is a new world of opportunities unlocked just for you. You can't see it but everybody who knows how to code can, it is right in front of them. Almost everything around you is programmable, everything around you will obey your will. You will feel like a god and you are missing out on that opportunity that all of us can have. All of us can learn this skill, all of us can learn how to program, it is not a zero-sum game at all. All of us can add value to each other by programming things around us. You also don't realise that a lot of people who know how to code are literally walking around like magicians. They have the ability to create anything in their head and make it real and you are missing out on the craziest opportunity to be one of us. I would love to be able to speak to my AC and lower the temperature but if LG is the only company that can do it then LG is the only one getting my money. If you know how to code, you can either work at LG or create an alternative for the market, otherwise, there is no opportunity for anything else.

So learn how to code, learn how to talk to machines, get over any excuses you have over your head because it is as important as you learning the English language in the 1960s.