Coding: the invisible Superpower in an Evolving World

“… code is a superpower …Understanding that code is the underlying framework of tech means that we do not have to be passive bystanders in our ever-changing digital world.” – Karlie Kloss

 

 

It was back in Summer 2018, my Mom was driving my fiancé and I to the airport where she was dropping us off for our 5-week trip to Europe. The three of us were talking about what languages we should teach our future kids aside from English.
My Mom wanted to have her grandkids learn Vietnamese. I think my answer was French or Spanish… I can’t remember.

When it was my fiancé’s turn to speak, he said something my Mom and I didn’t expect. He said he would like our kids to learn C++, or any Programming Language. My mom and I were both puzzled and brushed him off.

Once we arrived at the airport, my mom asked if we arrived early enough to check-in at the counter, but we replied saying we already checked-in online and already had our boarding passes on our Smartphones.

I’ll always remember her reaction when we told her this. She was astounded by how convenient the check-in process was and how it has changed over time. It was almost like her reaction was more indicative of how times have evolved.

It dawned on me just how much our current generation relies on the various devices and technologies that we have available to us. Whether it would be the internet to do an online check-in, or a smartphone app to host our electronic boarding passes.

If I look back in human history, a lot of it can be categorized by main technological differentiators of a particular era. Some examples are the Stone age… the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

I believe we are living in what many call the Information age. Some have called it the Digital age… the New Media age … the Electronic age…and a few others. But whatever name you give it, it’s clear we live in a defined and distinct era.

Just imagine living a few days without a lot of the devices and technologies that our generation has deemed vital. I know I would have a hard time doing this, but in contrast, our parents lived perfectly normal lives without them. It’s a testament of how much our lives have evolved in the last few decades and how it still continues to evolve.

I stumbled on a quote from Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube.
She said,

“Coding is like writing, and we live in a time of the new industrial revolution. What’s happened is that maybe everybody knows how to use computers, like they know how to read, but they don’t know how to write.”

What Susan said resonated with me.

Our parents and our educators put us through school so that we can be educated and contributing members of society. A lot of that schooling was teaching us how to be literate— learning to Read and Write. These were seen as essential skills.

But we don’t adapt this same mindset for instilling essential skills for our current and future generations, especially skills required for today’s society. We need to be teaching our society a skill for the Information age— Coding.

Reflecting on this thought, this sparked an inept desire to be more engaged with society and thus drove me to learn how-to-code.

So, I decided to take the plunge and submerged myself into the Programming and Web Development world. There was just a plethora of information I needed to make sense of. Reading and writing lines of codes made no sense to me at the beginning. It really was like looking at a different language.

I turned to online resources so I can learn basic HTML/CSS and JavaScript. It was difficult to grasp the concepts at first, but I discovered a growing satisfaction when I built a simple web application or debugged several issues in my code.

As I immersed deeper into Code and Development, my desire grew and it turned into a passion. This passion steered me into the direction of wanting to join the technology industry.

I read a quote by Karlie Kloss, Fashion Model and Founder of the Kode with Klossy Scholarship.

She said,

“I quickly came to understand that code is a superpower every young woman should be able to access. Understanding that code is the underlying (and invisible) framework of tech means that we do not have to be passive bystanders in our ever-changing digital world.”

Learning to code is a skill—a Superpower—that some people overlook.

My passion to learn how-to-code only grew. So I decided to take an Introduction to Web Development part-time at Juno College (Formerly HackerYou). After 8 weeks of learning, I was able to build a Responsive Website. I knew that this was the career path I wanted to embark on.

A few weeks later, I applied for Juno College’s 9-week Immersive bootcamp, and after going through the admissions process, I was admitted into their Spring 1 Cohort.

I just completed a great Week 1 and I’m excited to start Week 2 of the bootcamp. I see this bootcamp as another chapter in developing my Programming and Development skills. I look forward to what this journey has in store for me and I’m determined to continue learning and challenging myself.

So… here’s to a little virtual toast to my fellow classmates of #Cohort27, and any other how-to-coders as we make this transition to Technology…

-To enabling and challenging ourselves with our new Superpower, in this forever evolving world.-

xx Jenny