Why we should encourage people to teach themselves how to code

Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think

This quote belongs to the most visionary and dreamer immigrant (well, sort of) of the world. Steve Jobs.

Software and computers are taking over the world. Almost every corner of our globe is controlled by computers nowadays. When humankind found the technology, they are so impressed by the power of it, and started using it to facilitate their lives. Furthermore, they used it to shortened wars, saving lives. They used to travel beyond the limits of the sky, for traveling to the moon, and now we know they will use technology to travel the Mars.

And it is impressive to witness the new history and even contributing it to go further with solid steps.

I believe you’ve already seen the huge fast of the technology improvements, and you are aware of the situation that, when NASA landed their first astronauts to the moon, their technology was worse than our mobile phones that we are carrying in our pockets right now.

So you might want to call this era that we live in as the Golden Era of Humankind.

A better future is coming for us.

Are we doing enough in our schools to encourage computer science and prepare our students for this future? More than half of projected STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) jobs are in computing occupations. There is more demand for people who can write computer programmes than there is supply.

In the United States, there will be 1.4 million jobs in computer science over the next 10 years but only 400,000 will qualify for it.

And we all are seeing that in Europe, and lately in Asia, there are plenty of newly started startup companies, and more is coming on the way. It is very convincing 5-10 years from now, we are going to say “not enough qualified people to work in technology companies” again and again.

Some of the schools all around the world are giving great lectures in Universities for the people who attended to take a role in Computer World. And that’s why Google and Apple, Facebook and Amazon, Microsoft and Uber are finding themselves in fist fight all the time for one important person. And we can increase the numbers of the examples. There are numbered people who can do some things. Some of them are already found the best job for themselves, or started their own companies. And the rest of them deserves to fight. Because they are indispensable. They can make a lot of money for the companies which they work with a teeny tiny idea they made up.

However, when it is happening in between the US’s biggest companies, the rest of the world is arguing about the national discriminations, border disputes, language differences and so on. We reiterate that the Teaching and Learning of Science and Mathematics in English is about gaining knowledge and not about the national language. We cannot wait for someone to translate the lessons of computer programming when the development happens in real time.

Instead of giving students the choice of acquiring the knowledge in the lingua franca of STEM, especially in the areas of computer science and get on with it, we are arguing about oils, borderlines that we want to take in, how to make more money without doing anything.

Let me give you an example here.

In 2016’s numbers, Apple’s income is approximately 234 billion USD. However, Norway could able to make 220 billion USD, as a whole country.

Here is another.

While Samsung able to make 177 billion USD as a single company, Turkey was able to make 170 billion USD as a whole country.

You see the difference? They say 120 thousand people are working for Apple. Turkey’s population is 77 billion people.

So this directs us to idea that, 120 thousand people has way more right to speak in changing the world than 77 billion people who lives in Turkey.

You do the match for life quality.

Obviously, we are spending money for wrong places, and making wrong investments.

Of course not the whole investment is wrong.

But here is an example.

In 2008, NASA signed contracts with SpaceX and its rival aerospace company Orbital Sciences, to the tune of $1.6 billion for 12 launches and $1.9 billion for eight rocket launches, respectively.

And the movie Interstellar spend 165 million USD to be filmed.

So with basic math, 10 Interstellar movie budget can carry us to the space.

This is not a pointable example for us to cut the budget for fun, but we should be aware of the situation that we can travel to the space much easier than we thought.

What we should do about it?

There is a boy named Lim Ding Wen who was nine years old in 2009 when he first created his drawing software for the Apple IIGS programme. He gained recognition as the world’s youngest iPhone application developer, with his hit creation called Doodle Kids. Ding Wen is a Malaysian living in Singapore. He created this application for his younger sisters to play at drawing on mobile gadgets.

His father, a Penangite who is a content developer for mobile application software, is one of the factors of his successes. A lesson learnt from Ding Wen’s accomplishment can be emulated if children are given the opportunity and encouragement to start Coding early in their lives. Ding Wen is already a technopreneur at the tender age of nine. Imagine what he can achieve by the time he is 20. Could he be the next Mark Zuckerberg? Can we create more of these gifted technopreneurs?

Of course we can.

As a reader of this post, you are a person who tries to keep updated yourself in the future, either for living a better life, or help to make the world a better place. Did you even ask yourself, what would you want your children to be good at? What would be the lecture that you would give your children to share the same goals about the world, and live his/her life better than anybody and in case of any unexpected situation, can live in another country without any trouble?

This directs us to the question of, “What is the best option in jobs, that can give VIP importance to a person in any country, without language borders”.

Computer Science. Computer Programming. Software Programming.

But, do you think University is enough to take in the best knowledge about the specific area?

Computer science is already a subject in schools in China, the United Kingdom and Australia. Malaysia needs to emulate a computer science standard which is focused on creation and not just the use of software and other computing tools. And we also need to address the development and the setting of standards for computer science teachers.

You know this guy?

These photos was taken in 1995.

I believe this is going to let you think about it for a while.

Steve Wozniak was trying to teach children – this is important, not to grown ups, to children! – computer science lectures. And he even made it fun for them.

22 years later after, now some mumblings are going around about starting to teach computer science in high schools, in elementary schools.

This is why Mark Zuckerberg became a billion dollar student in America.

There are many Coding tutorials which offer free services as well as applications and software available on the web. People do not need to be geniuses to code. Anyone as young as six years old can learn to code. Start with the most simple and basic.

Why you don’t want yourself, your friend, or your child to be next technopreneurs?

Why you don’t want yourself, your friend, or your child to be next Steve Jobs?

Why you don’t want yourself, your friend, or your child to be next Mark Zuckerberg?

Setting aside the border disputes, language differences and so on will be a starter pack for you, for the science.

There is no stopping us, we are only limited by our imagination. So start small. Learn to code. It is the future. Without computer science, nothing much works. We should be part of creating the future.

After all, I would suggest you to take a look at this post, and let you know that it is the post that encourages me to write this one, with using some part of it.