Hey everyone! This and the next Tale Tuesday will be a bit different, because they are written by Michael, the co-founding developer. I hope you’ll enjoy!
I’m sure a lot of people have an idea about what they think coding is but I’m willing to bet a vast majority of people have no idea what it entails. Simply put, coding is about manipulating data, it’s a set of instructions for a computer to perform. Does that mean it’s easy? Beyond introductory tasks from tutorials, no. It’s a skill that takes time to develop and requires practice to improve.
Now to the question that this article poses, can you learn coding easily? Yes. There are various video tutorials online, on YouTube for example, that are free and cover lots of basic concepts and terminology. Though many people fall into tutorial hell where they watch tutorial after tutorial in an endless loop of sorts. There are also classes at various night-schools or there’s always university for that matter, as well as books that you can use for self-studying. Learning to code has never been easier but learning to code is not.
I’m reminded of my time in university where I first learned programming and how it made no sense to me. I was completely lost and almost failed my first semester. I did fail one class and had to retake it in the summer. The teacher I had in the summer made things much clearer for me and I felt I finally understood the basics. The class wasn’t easy nor was it hard, but it was challenging and I’m glad I did fail so that I had a second chance to relearn some fundamentals.
I think a lot of issues people face with coding is that they reach a wall and don’t know how to overcome it. They come up against some problem that they don’t know how to solve, throw their hands up in the air and declare that coding is too hard and not for them. Programming is a skill that needs to be cultivated by solving different problems and continuously challenging oneself to improve.
Iguana Mercenary 