Top 5 Benefits of Learning to Code

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“Coding is the new literacy. To thrive in tomorrow’s society, young people must learn to design, create and express themselves with digital technologies,” says Mitchel Resnick, a media arts and sciences professor at the MIT Media Lab. Mitchel is essentially saying coding is the new language that young people must learn to succeed in the future.

What is Coding?

Code is a set of instructions that computers can understand. Coding is a means to instruct computers to do certain tasks. Some say learning to code is similar to learning a new language because you are speaking a language that computers understand. For more details on coding, Watch What is Coding? 15 Facts for Beginners here. 

Top 5 Benefits 

Problem-Solving Skills 
“I don’t think everyone will be a coder, but the ability to speak and structure your thinking in a way a computer understands will be one of the core future skills in whatever field,” says Linda Liukas, founder of the Rails Girls coding organization. Ultimately, children can benefit from learning to code because they learn computational thinking. Computational thinking is a valuable problem-solving skill that everyone needs. To know more about computational thinking, read Computational Thinking Decoded here. 

High in Demand 
Coding is one of the most sought after skill in the current and future workforce. Coding is also one of the major components of STEM education. In fact, many countries are considering making coding a subject in the school curriculum. Need more convincing? Check out the top 5 Companies with the Most STEM Job Openings Now. Aside from that, coding can be fun so be sure to pick programming languages and concepts that interest you. What’s better than having a fun job that will pay handsomely right?

Planning Skills
Programming and coding involve analysing your desired outcome and figuring out how to get there. In other words, you need to plan. As you figure out the steps you need to get your desired result, you are primarily using planning skills. You will also develop an analytical approach to your steps to ensure they work.

Learning Complex Concepts
Programming is unique because you can learn new concepts that are rare in other disciplines. One popular concept that’s common in coding is recursion. Recursion is a process that calls itself until it meets a particular condition. You will be exposed to a lot of complex concepts similar to recursion when you learn to code. This exposure will enhance your ability to understand other complex concepts in the future.

Different Perspectives
Coding exposes you to various concepts, and that will affect the way you perceive things. Every programming language has its concepts, and every time you learn one of them your perception changes. Programming is similar to playing music or painting in the way that it leaves an enormous impact in the way you think by opening new possibilities. In other words, programming forces you to act with an open mind.






Source: www.freestylemind.com , www.codeconquest.com, http://dailytekk.com  and www.connectionsacademy.com