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Eugene Dorfling
Eugene Dorfling

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Why everyone should learn how to code.

We now live in a world where programming languages and education has become easier for the layman to use. Knowing how to code and build programs that automate many of our daily tasks means that soon we will much rather have a computer keep track of stuff and rely way more on the computers to handle our daily chores and tasks.

UX design has become so good (with the help of AI and ML) that we will soon see interfaces where we simply think about something and the computer happily performs the task that we thought about. Yes, I am talking about a mind-reading personal assistant.

The thing is when we simply think of ice cream and poof there it is, we will never know how ice cream is made and will never be able to make one for ourselves. There are a lot of things, some more concerning than others, that will be automated and run completely by computer algorithms.

This not only means loss of control but the loss of the ability to control. We will have no idea of how things are done because we have hidden them behind a beautiful UX wall that we simply ask and receive.

We are nowhere near a perfect mind-reading personal assistant but we are fast approaching this reality.

This means that what we do now for an income is going to be taken over by software but until then the value lies in creating that software. Whatever skill you have mastered becomes way more valuable if you have the ability to transform that skill into a computer program.

We now have the choice to simply enjoy the evolving technology having no idea how it works, or be a part of the global team building it.

A world that is mostly run by computers is inevitable from my perspective so fighting it is not an option. You can either add your creative perspective by contributing or you can enjoy the chat with your assistant not knowing what really goes on behind the scenes but you trust that those who chose to build did a good job.

The point I am trying to make is that whatever career or industry you are working in, software is going to become a very large part of it soon. The part that controls things and makes decisions for us. We now have the opportunity to take whatever creativity or skills we have and transfer them into code that forms the thinking behind those decisions.

We need to translate our precious and valuable way of thinking and problem-solving skills into computer-readable programs. These programs will soon be doing our jobs all on their own and I would hope that they were trained by the very best human practitioners.

We have figured out a lot about how the world works and trained ourselves with great skills through evolving our kind. But it is now time to hand over the hard work to the computers as they become more and more powerful. I believe coding is like voting, if you choose not to, don’t complain about the outcome.

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