Musings of my coding life

In April, 1995, exactly today, my mom told me to forget outdated enrichment classes like learning how to play the piano, playing squash, swimming and encouraged me as a tween to get focused on programming. She told me that in decades to come, computer programmers will become a hot commodity in the work force and that the kids who will learn to code are poised to have a great future.Back then, I was among the few children who were being sent for computational thinking and coding lessons as my mom increasingly saw the value in starting me early in a manpower-hungry industry. On the other hand, my father, keen reader and buyer of newspapers and magazines, supported the idea that technological skills will be highly sought after. In a nutshell, I was lucky to have parents who understood the importance of programming and they wanted me to be prepared for the future.My parents recognized that coding was useful and important, as the world and future will be driven by more and more computing technology.They had the appreciation that technology will also help me in school work and vividly recall mom telling me that the coding will be an education trend in two to three decades. The programming lessons I embarked on trained me in logic and clear thinking. It has been a valuable skill that helps me in everyday of my life. Am grateful that my parents were willing to pay a premium for the skills coding lessons that has imparted me positively since tween and prepared effectively on how to apply 21st century tools.Twenty three years down the line, the rising demand for coding skills has led plenty of schools, governments, corporate organizations to rethink their strategies.From programming language that are based on visuals and animation being made more accessible, to traditional languages that are lines and lines of code, coding is one way you can be guaranteed of a job now and in the future.

Significant number of parents now know coding is an essential life skill that prepares their children for the future and have come to terms with the fact that technology is here to stay.As a tween, I was one of the most enthusiastic type you could find with programming and I took to the challenge of coding with full gusto and was able to navigate the language a lot quicker than I expected. When it came to tutorials, I worked through each stage carefully.Trying my hand at coding and gaining new skills eventually set me up for stronger career prospects down the track and to this day I have no regrets missing those piano classes.In my view, introducing kids to computer science has never been more critical to prepare them for the jobs of the future. While I cannot tell you that I know exactly what those jobs will look like, even five years from now, I however do know they will require a greater ability to understand and engage in computational thinking and coding across every sector whether its fashion, food production, medicine, mining, the demand for coding skills will be a must have. When my father emphasized the need for me to learn computational thinking at high school, I felt like my teenage life was isolated but the experience has provided me with the strongest possible pathway to engage with and excel in computer science, and benefits from the careers it has enabled along the way, is the envy of my former high school mates as I ended up having some of the most sought-after and highly-valued skills making me a creator of technologies in different sectors like media, banking, logistics, hospitals to mention but a few.Unlike my tween and teenage coding learning era, computer enthusiasts no longer need to read bulky textbooks to learn how to code, the benchmark to entry has gotten smoother coding offered directly in elementary schools, there are coding camps, online tutorials among other options that make computer programming easy to begin, fun to learn, and a social activity. Coding is fun, and for kids, from as young as four, I urge their parents or guardians to help them begin to learn and combine it as a social activity. This article first appeared here