At a White House summit earlier this year, US President Barack Obama said he considered learning to code as important as learning the alphabet and the colours in school. “It's got to be everybody,” he said. “Everybody’s got to learn how to code early.”
So what benefits can come from an entire generation of learners studying a programming language?
Programming teaches you how to think
Though not a programmer himself, the late Steve Jobs proposed that programming should be for everyone. “I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.”
Jobs went on to say that programming should be considered equal to writing, maths and science. “I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do.” What makes his opinion so impressive is that he said this 20 years before Obama.
It's not just for nerds
One of the biggest names in IT, Bill Gates, agrees in part with Obama and Jobs and says that children should be given the opportunity to study a programming language from an early age. “I think more kids should learn to program. We don’t have programming enough on the curriculum. It’s not just for nerds like when I did it.”
However, he cautions that coding isn’t for everyone and that it shouldn’t be given the same level of importance as regular subjects. “I certainly wouldn’t [equate it to] math or literacy.”
A head start for women
Women are poorly represented in the software-development industry. According to the US Government’s Department of Labor, just 20 per cent of US software developers are women.
In stark contrast, research conducted by Intel in 2012 shows that women in Western countries use the internet 17 per cent more than men. Coding in the school curriculum will help reduce the shortfall of female coders by introducing girls to coding at an earlier age.
Creating clients who understand
A staggering number of industries are reliant on good code. Businesses with a broader base of staff who understand software and the development process are better positioned to engage the right software developers and manage software projects. Gates believes that programming is key to this. “Understanding how the computer works gives you a real sense of what it can do and what it can’t do.”
In that same environment, an idea might normally be presented in a PowerPoint, Word doc or even an email. While the majority of non-software developers won’t have the skill or scope to complete a piece of software, having some programming fluency empowers them to prototype their ideas. After all, a partly functional prototype can have more impact than a static presentation.
Maximum exposure
The technology sector has been a huge hub of disruption and innovation over the past two decades. With the exciting prospect of introducing coding to school curriculums, who knows which young learners will become the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates?
