Please do learn to code

Recently I woke up to dozens of messages from students who had read an article titled “Please Don’t Learn to Code.”

At first, I assumed Jeff Atwood’s 2012 article had spontaneously reappeared on Reddit. But no — this was a brand new TechCrunch article of the same name, which echoed Atwood’s assertion that encouraging everyone to learn programming is like encouraging everyone to learn plumbing.

Here’s why programming — unlike plumbing — is an important skill that everyone should learn: programming is how humans talk to machines.

“Everyone needs computer programming. It will be the way we speak to the servants.” — John McCarthy

People have been managing other people for thousands of years

The ancient Romans built their empire on the backs of slave labor. The British built their empire by imposing their will on the residents of dozens of colonies. Even America became the economic force it is today largely thanks to cheap immigrant labor during the industrial revolution.

But here in the 21st century, we no longer get work done by managing people who tend grain fields, import spices from Asian colonies, or install railroads across the Rocky Mountains.

Now we get work done by managing machines.

The nature of work has fundamentally changed

Today, it is no longer humans who do most of the work — it’s machines.

Think about it — every day, humans make 3.5 billion Google searches. Machines carry out that work — not humans.

Think about how many man-hours it would take for humans to conduct even a single Google search manually. Can you imagine a bunch of PhD’s phoning each other around the clock deliberating about which documents they should recommend to whom? This work is only even remotely practical if it’s done by machines.

TripAdvisor helps you decide where to go for vacation. Expedia helps you book the right flight to get there. Google Maps directs you to the airport. All of these services are within the reach of average consumers thanks to the hard work of machines.

But machines are only able to do all this work because humans tell them exactly what to do. And the only way for humans to do this is by writing software.

That’s right — computers are not nearly as smart as humans. For computers to succeed at the jobs we’ve assigned them, they need us humans to give them extremely clear instructions.

Coding isn’t some niche skill. It really is “the new literacy”

Program or be programmed

Ships are meant for sailing