Why learn to code?
Learning how to program a computer can be really intimidating at first, but what isn’t? It’s easy to get paralyzed by the many different coding languages and frameworks when you’re trying to start coding. It can get really confusing because there are so many choices. So where do you start?
It’s important to remember that writing code is all about the process of breaking down and solving problems. At the end of the day all we are doing is taking some big ambitious goal and then slicing it up into smaller and smaller segments until we have a clear idea about what all the little parts of this computer program are, and how they work together to create an application that does something that we want.
When teaching people to code we to start by asking them what they would like to create. We find it’s better to first identify a project and then work backwards to figure out what technologies we need to use to build it. Once you identify what your project is and what you’d like your computer program to do you can then start choosing a language to build it with. If you know how to use a computer than you’re already halfway there!
For example, let’s say you want to create a computer program that tracked your expenses as a student. You’d like to have a simple form to enter in how much money you have at the start of each month and how much money you’ve spent and what you’ve spent it on. You also want to see a report at the end of the month.
You could code a web application that gives you a simple web form that captures your expenses (by learning some basics of languages like HTML and PHP). You could then store all this information in a database (using MySQL, a free database engine) and then serve these pages from a website locally on your laptop (using Apache, a free open source web server). You can use some graphics to show some graphs of your spending versus savings and use all this information to plan for your next month of expenses.
There are so many free resources out on the Internet that can help you with learning how to code. In addition to learning a coding language you can also write code directly into your web browser on these websites while learning. There are also some interesting and challenging examples to get you started. Two of our favorite sites to learn how to code are:
When we’re coding we also constantly check developer sites that have code examples and forums. These sites contain snippets of code that we can use and remix into our own projects. We primarily use these two sites but there are many more out there on the Internet:
There are so many jobs right now that require proficient skills in the area of computer coding and software development. However we only have a small pool of good computer coders locally to fill these jobs. A lot of companies have to look outside of Papua New Guinea for good software development talent. There are also many different career pathways for people that can write computer code. If you get really good at coding you can even become a software or web developer and turn coding into a fulltime career. With computer coding skills you can work anywhere in the world!
With this information at your fingertips you could help fill this need and begin a lucrative career in ICT starting with your first line of code.