Hello there!

If you're researching reasons why you should learn to code, then look no further. There are a lot of reasons to learn to code so I'll try my best to capture the reasons in writing as best as I can.

Automation

The world is moving towards full automation. Of course there are jobs that can't be automated. Not everything in life is yes or no, there's a lot of grey area.

And at one point we also thought that people needed to drive cars and that computers could never do that because there's too much going on to trust a computer. But companies like Tesla have completely changed that. Cars drive themselves because of coders. Rockets are landing themselves because of coders. There's even automation in space shuttles so astronauts don't need to do very much work. And people are being laid off from their jobs because of coders.

Instead of fighting to automation movement, why not join it? It's not evil or anything, it's just humanity leveraging technology the way we're meant to. If you want to have a job in the future, you need to know how to code (or have a super specialized skill, like being a surgeon).

High Demand

There is so much demand for programmers it's absolutely INSANE. Let's take a look at ONE programming language, Python (which happens to be one of the easiest languages to learn, too). Indeed.com has tens of thousands of jobs in the US alone. Not hundreds. Not thousands. TENS of THOUSANDS. Do a search for PHP, or JavaScript, or Java, or Ruby, and this number will easily hit the HUNDREDS of thousands of jobs in total, the USA alone.

Better UnderstandIng of the World Around You

By understanding how to code, you will have a better idea of how the programs around you work. When something breaks down or doesn't work, you'll have a better idea WHY, and a better chance of fixing it or avoiding the problem in the future. And when things go well, you can mentally dissect the program from its interface and understand why it's so great.

Improve Creativity

When you learn to code you'll run into a lot of problems. Like.. LOTS. Like.. LOTS and LOTS. The world around us is very "soft" but programs are very black and white, there's not much grey area with programming. You'll learn how to become creative with your solutions. It's no different than learning how to paint, but instead of having a steady hand you have a steady mind.

Improves Problem Solving

By solving lots of small problems you'll become a better problem solver in your day to day life. If you've ever thought to yourself, "why does this happen to me?", or "awmg I'm stuck in traffic AGAIN how has nobody fixed this problem?!", then put on your coding hat (or hoodie) and start dissecting the problem. You can see things from a different perspective. You can start working on a solution to fix the problem you keep running into.

Control Over Your Life

Sick of working a 9-5 job, being told what to do, and being underpaid? Learning to code can fix that for you. When you learn to code you can work for yourself, wake up whenever you want, and live the life that you want. More on this in the below sections.

Earn More, Work Less

If you made $15/hour right now and worked 10 hours today, you'd gross a total of $150. What if you could double your wage, and make $30/hour. You could make the same amount of money with only 5 hours of work, instead of 10. You just gained 5 hours of freedom every single day!

Or if you want to earn more, you'll still have that pay increase but you could work 10 hours instead of 5 hours at a rate of $30/hour for a gross total of $300/day. You just doubled your income.

Fun fact: Web developers don't make minimum wage. Not even close. ;)

Job Offers

With a little extra effort, you can meet business owners and other developers and in no time they'll be asking you to do work for them. This is, and has been, the case in my life for over 7 years now. Contracts literally just land in my lap. And I get the choice to assess and decline work I don't want to take.

Work Remotely

This is a fancy term for "work from home". Think about this: what if you didn't have to drive to work every day? Would that free up 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 2 hours? What could you do with that extra free time? Would you be healthier? Would you be happier?

Side Projects

Have an idea for a side project? Perhaps you want to automate your lights in your house so when you walk it the lights turn on. Raspberry Pi is where you'd start. Want to automate paying your bills, or automate handling wedding invitations, or make your own private streaming service?

If it has to do with software, you can make it. Almost nothing is out of reach anymore. There used to be a day where automating the lights in your house would cost $20,000. Now it costs $35 and some of your time.

Turn your side projects into reality!

Work On Your Dreams

Have an idea that will change the world? Mark Zuckerberg did when he created the first iteration of Facebook. The boys over at Google did the same thing. Bill Gates, too. This list goes on FOR AGES. Uber, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, YouTube... it all started with an idea and a little bit of code.

Whatever your idea is, learning to code can only help you get closer to reaching that dream.

It's Fun

People hear "its boring" and say "I don't want to write code all day", but the truth is it's quite fun. You get to create things you want to create, you get to work on hard problems (or easy problems), you get to make beautiful websites. Your fun options are limitless.

Even if you got a boring web development job, you can still come home and work on something FUN!

Summary

Learning to code is the best thing you can learn to do this year. It's never too late. In fact, there's such a demand for developers right now, even with the influx of hundreds of thousands of developers each year, that if you started learning to today and it took you a long time (6 or more months) to learn to code, you'd still be able to get a job.

If you learned to code today just for fun, but wanted to do it as a career 4 years from now, you'd still be able to get a job.

It's never too late to learn how to code. Software is eating the world faster than the world can create developers. We need more developers!

If you're interested in learning to code, I have several courses you can take. If you're brand new to coding, I'd suggest learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript basics. You can learn all of that in less than a month, it's all very easy.