Must-Have Skill and the Way to Rocket Launch Your Career. Why to Learn Coding Even If You Don’t Want to Be a Programmer

Even though a significant proportion of people who are learning to code do this in order to become professional programmers and work as software developers, it is not the only reason to invest your time (and money) in gaining this increasingly valuable in today’s world skill. People tend to start learning how to code for multiple reasons even if they aren’t looking to have a professional career in software development. Learning to code is gaining momentum worldwide, as software products make their way into the lives of the majority of the population and programming as a skill becomes more and more important. What are the most common reasons to learn coding for people who are not interested to do it professionally? Today we are going to answer this question, based on multiple surveys of CodeGym’s students learning Java, as well as data from external sources.

1. Understanding software development and how to interact with programmers

One of the most frequently mentioned reasons is the desire to acquire this skill for understanding how software and software development works in general. The knowledge of a programming language can be much more than a marginal addition to your professional resume. For some positions knowing how to code really makes a difference, as it gives you the ability to be more effective in your current role and potentially reach new career highs. For example, knowing how to code will definitely be an asset for business leaders who are looking to understand what it really takes to develop a certain software product, for project managers, support managers and other specialists working in software development who need to communicate with programmers in their work on a regular basis.

2. Career growth opportunities

For the reasons stated above, just knowing one of the main programming languages can easily lead the way to career growth and new professional opportunities. Simply because knowing how to code is not such a common skill in today’s world, and the majority of people who have it do work as professional software developers already, having it as an addition to your main skillset can be a considerable factor rocket launching your career. Especially so if we are talking about the career in the tech industry of course.

3. Improved logic, problem-solving, and analytical skills

“I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think. I view computer science as a liberal art,” Steve Jobs once said. Today, in 2021, this quote is a bit of a cliche, but the founder of Apple was probably right. Knowing how to code can have a strong effect not just on your work, but on life in general as it changes thinking patterns in your brain and improves the way it handles programming-related skills such as logic, patterns recognition, problem-solving, analysis, and so on. Many experts these days are advocating to teach coding and computational thinking in schools and universities, actually.

4. Increased productivity and self-sufficiency

Companies in almost any sector of the economy have to hire programmers and technical specialists because they are the ones who know how to solve technical tasks, of which normally there are plenty even for the businesses that are not in the tech field. Studies have shown that knowing how to code makes you more productive and self-sufficient both as an individual employee and a part of the team, as you can complete more tasks without the need to ask a technical specialist for help.

5. You can use this skill for side projects

Having personal projects aside from your main job is beneficial in many ways. It helps you to grow as a professional and individual, as well as makes life more fun and balanced. In today’s world, knowing how to code proves itself as a very applicable skill for people who are working on their own side projects, in any field whatsoever, and are not able to hire expensive professionals to help them with the development of a website and mobile application, for example. And if you are looking to launch a tech startup, knowing how to code would definitely make it many times easier and cheaper.

Quotes and opinions

Here are some good opinions on why you should learn how to code even if you don’t plan to be a professional programmer from Quora, a popular question and answer website. “I've taught thousands of students how to build real-world web applications and we hear the same story almost every single day. People start outsourcing the coding of their web application to a freelancer. Almost immediately they realize that what starts out as a 1-month $5,000 project, quickly ends up costing well over $20,000. More often than not 6 months go by and the web application is still not working properly. Taking 6 months to build and launch your initial web application is a really long time — and $20,000 is a lot of money. Instead of taking this gamble, you could have used your own coding skills, built out your web application in a few weeks, tested it with real users and implemented the first three rounds of real user feedback to make solid improvements,” says Ken Mazaika, CTO and co-founder of the FirehoseProject. And here is a real-life illustration from Ridham Tarpara, a software engineer at Zuru: “I will give you an example that I experienced last month. One of my friends is working as a marketing professional and he was assigned to get his potential customer’s details from Facebook (i.e. go through the related profiles and their friend lists recursively and find businesses) and then note down the business name, phone numbers, address, website, emails etc. He was given a target so he was working at home when I visited him. I was looking at what he was doing for a little time and asked him if I could help. So, in short, I wrote down one Node.js script which fetches data from pages and stores that in a sheet in like 15 minutes and taught him how to use it. Initially, it took him 1 minute around to get details of one client, now in one minute, he was getting hundreds of client details. and he was the hero in the office the next day.” “As others have noted, understanding code is more important than producing code. In Jobs' case, he was never a great coder or electrical engineer, but he understood them both well enough to hire the best and to push them to excel,” Brooks Talley, a project management specialist from Intel, points out.

How and where to learn coding as an additional skill

There are multiple ways and learning techniques to learn coding without spending too much time on it and getting distracted from your main job. For example, if you have chosen Java as the programming language to learn (here are a few reasons why it would be a wise choice), you can start from one of the recommended books for Java beginners, try some coding games to practice what you have learned in a fun way, or maybe watch some YouTube tutorials. Or you can just use CodeGym as a way to combine the learning benefits of all the methods mentioned above in one tool. CodeGym was designed to be a perfect match for casual Java learners without any prior experience in coding whatsoever. Here are just a few of the reasons why CG’s approach is so beneficial.

• All the Java theory is presented as part of this interactive approach in an easy-going way, as much as possible. Our theory lectures are filled with jokes and pop culture references, but not too much, just enough to give you a mental break without going far away from the main subject of the course.

• Along a CodeGym course, you get achievements for each and every action that brings you closer to the ultimate goal: solving tasks, studying on a regular basis, helping others with questions in the Help section, even for commenting lectures or tasks. This way, your mind gets regular positive reinforcement, which keeps it focused on future success.

• The fact that the course is divided into levels, with each level including about 15–30 coding tasks, 10–20 Java lectures, and motivation articles to keep you going, is another way to ease the mission and trick your mind into learning Java on a regular basis. You don’t have to focus on the final goal first, focus on getting to the next level. And the next one. In a few months, you’ll be half the way there without even noticing. In total, CodeGym has 40 levels, which are divided into 4 quests.

And we could go on and on. We also have new pieces of content being published every week with all kinds of new information to help you learn and apply the new knowledge in real life. Like these tips and tricks to learn Java as quickly as possible.