I am going to talk a little about something that — yes, I know, I talk about it a lot — but it's been especially playing on my mind lately:
Learning how to code.





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Some/most(?) of us have been exposed to some Pascal, some VB, something! Maybe a little Java, maybe some C++, Javascript... At school in Cyprus we were taught a surprising amount, since my specific lyceum class had opted in to Informatics. So I'm very lucky.
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I'm also extra lucky because I did an undergraduate degree in CompSci — and that only makes me more certain of my advice: please learn to code. I implore you all, all my peers, to learn how to code, even if just a little.




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I promise you it will only open doors, in your mind, imagination, doors to better job opportunities, & on & on.
Recently, it's been playing on mind cos I've noticed the stark contrast between my peers/friends who know how to code (even if just a wee bit) and those who do not.Show this thread -
Really intelligent and kind people who have never been given this advice have been affected seriously, professionally, personally, by their lack of programming skills. And there is no reason for this — they just never had somebody say: "learn to code — trust me just do it."
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So here I am saying: trust me — just learn how to code. Open up a tab in your browser and go through the basic http://codecademy.com stuff. Yes, it's really important.
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In fact being able to code is what saved my life (100% literally) at least twice. It's why I still have a job in science, it's also how a landed a PhD place.
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So yeah, just do it. Even if you get stuck on what a for loop is or have trouble understanding logic tables or object orientation. It is worth it. Learn how to code.




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Sorry to all those who have missed out on careers because your undergraduate courses didn't bother to stress coding.
I am trying to change this for the next generations, and you can fix this for yourself too. It's never too late.





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Interesting, I'm older, but in my day, everyone was told to learn basic. Then, everyone was told that it wasn't necessary, all the programs had already been written, just learn to use them
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That's disturbing. "all the programs are already written"



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I guess that was shortly before word, excel, autocad and friends turned "computing" into "IT"
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Informatics is a cool word too.
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Sure, that's the word I had in mind, as that's what we'd use in Spanish, I translated to computing as it sounded a bit old fashioned!!!
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Ah! Got you!
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Anyway, your point stands. Compared to 25 years ago, it's easier to learn code, and the things that you can achieve with little effort are incredible!!
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I’ll challenge that. I had Basic in high school in the late 70’s, went on with FORTRAN & Simula as an undergraduate in the early 80’s, so your generation wasn’t the first to learn coding.
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So you're a Gen Xer, like me.
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OK, unaware of the nomenclature, just recognized millennial, which I’m not
. #NonNativeSpeaker
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