Benefits of Coding: 5 Things Learning How to Code Can Offer You
With the average senior software engineer making twice the average American household, the benefits of coding are both practical and obvious. If you’re thinking about learning a new skill or if you think you could make work easier with a little bit of coding experience, you could be making a great choice.
The number of available jobs for people with coding experience is astronomical.
Here are just 5 of the many benefits of learning how to code.
1. Customize Your Own Work
When you learn how to code, it’s like learning how to do your own plumbing or cut your own hair. That’s because it’s something that, when you need to have it done, you feel helpless without the aid of a professional. When you can do it on your own, you feel empowered with the ability to understand complex and difficult to access concepts.
It’s likely you already have your own website. If not, one of the reasons is probably the barrier to understanding the basics of coding. When you learn how to code, you can customize your online presence, your website, and offer assistance to others.
Even emails can benefit from a little bit of coding knowledge. Whether you own your own business or you just like to use email services to communicate with family and friends, coding will make it even more personal.
With coding, you can take basic and boring form emails and make them look like they were each personalized by you.
Coding also means that you can make programs work for you in ways that they don’t for the average user. You can create scripts to add or automate functionality that makes your job easier. Rather than do everything the hard way, make it work easier for yourself with code!
2. Get a Great Job
Just about every new job has some kind of tech element to it. Whether you’re working in fashion, manufacturing, or the service industry, there is some element of your industry that could be improved with coding. When hiring managers are looking for new talent, you can bet they’re going to take a more serious look at someone who knows how to code.
As the tech industry is becoming one of the biggest industries in the U.S., employing a vast amount of people, it’s still one of the best paying jobs around.
You could be working with data, designing websites, or building architectural models and you’ll need to know something about coding. You’ll also be paid higher based on how much knowledge you have about different languages and techniques.
Just about every company around wants to have their own app or to integrate with the most popular apps downloaded by users. If you know how to code, you can be an asset to help your company compete with the biggest players in the industry.
3. Expand Your Online Community
When it comes to community, the only thing comparable to the community of coders online is the CB and ham radio world of the past. People in the coding world have also made several channels for communicating with one another online. They use message boards, Reddit, and Twitter to talk about coding, things related to tech culture, and things totally unrelated to coding.
You can make a whole bunch of new friends who have the same social background, political stances, or movie tastes that you do. Oh, and they’ll also love coding as much as you do!
When you build your profile with these communities online, you’ll be able to have your most pertinent coding questions answered. You’ll also find that you have lots of things in common with the people answering your questions. The more you interact with the community, the more of an asset you’ll be.
You can even organize meetups to do hackathons or just look at each other’s projects.
4. Become an Asset To Your Company
As stated above, just about every industry needs people who know how to code. It’s like learning a second language, meaning that when you know how to code, you can be an interpreter. You can act as a conduit between your IT or development department and other departments.
People will turn to you with their tech questions, but you can help point them in the right direction. This will increase efficiency and make the higher-ups see you as an important asset in your organization.
The best benefit is that when someone asks you a question, you never have to tell them you can’t help them again.
Becoming an asset to your company is about more than just having skills. It’s about helping your coworkers and colleagues feel more comfortable with the tech around them. When they see someone who has a similar background along with the tech know how to get around, they’ll be inspired to learn themselves.
5. Experiment With Hobbies
If you’ve always been a little bit of a tech hobbyist, learning how to code can take your ideas up a notch.
For people who like to build and fabricate objects in the garage on weekends, coding can help you make better objects even faster. When you learn how to code, you can make your own CNC or work with a 3D printer.
If you want to make a more interactive website, coding is the answer. Learning to code can help you to make your own games or even write hacks to your favorite games.
If you want to learn what else you could be doing with your coding knowledge, click here to see more.
The Benefits of Coding Can Make the World Better
With the different ways you can automate what was once arduous and difficult work, the benefits of coding are innumerable. While the initial barrier to entry may seem high, there are so many resources for learning to code available that there’s no excuse why you haven’t learned yet.
If you want to increase your overall productivity at work, check out our guide to see how
