Everyone Should Code
In order for business and science to really move forward, we need to find ways to get all smart people to learn how to code. Knowing how to write software should not be limited to just developers and engineers. We need people in niche areas to understand computing and be able to identify problems than can easily be solved with the proper application of software. This is one of the main reasons for my decision to leave my job as a software engineer (which I do really enjoy) to pursue a life of medicine. I feel that my background in software can be combined with a medical education and a love for serving others to make me a very unique physician. We need doctors capable of revolution not just evolution.
It is nice to see the software field finally recognizing this. At PDC this year, Don Box talked about this very thing. He said one of his goals as an architect at Microsoft is to make it easier for smart people (in other fields) to push computers to solve their problems.
Since there will always be code involved in programming (at least for a very long time), it seems the best way to make progress on training and understanding is by getting kids involved at a young age. There are some really great sites out there to learn about different languages. Since I am mostly a Msft developer, I am most familiar with easy ways to learn c#. There are a couple of great sites put out by Microsoft such as Coding4Fun and Video Game Development. By combining those sites with the free Express editions of Visual Studio, we get a very powerful, inexpensive learning opportunity for both ourselves and our children.
4 Responses to “Everyone Should Code”
Brent, I agree with you completely. However, for people who have very little coding experience, like myself, if you could even call it coding (don’t know if shell scripting qualifies at all), how would you recommend that person go about learning? Which language to choose – should that person start from a very low level, like Assembly, or any of the C “variants” or Java? Or higher level stuff like PHP, Ruby, etc? The number of choices out there doesn’t help – I would like to learn… but where do I start?
I think that you can call that coding. Shell scripting has many of the elements of the other more traditional languages. If you are looking to learn, I would suggest going with C# or Java. The reason I say this is because both languages are very solid object-oriented languages. They both also have great variety of resources available such as the microsoft express products. One other thing I would reccomend checking out is the 16 video lessons that msft is available here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualCSharp/learning/
I couldn’t agree more. Even in a high-tech company when there’s some decision-making to be done if you suggest to the project manager they should fire up visual studio and try the alternatives first-hand they’ll look at you like a pineapple on a spring just shot out of your forehead. A lot of this stuff isn’t that hard – making software from scratch is even a very creative, enjoyable process once you learn the basics. Like painting or pottery. It’s fun as long as you don’t do it for a living.
Once again Lou, you never fail to present fantastic imagery!
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