With rapidly developing technology, the demand for skilled computer scientists is surging, or at least people with some skills in programming. Things become even more hyped when one looks at the successful Silicon Valley software engineers such as Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, who according to some spend nights smoking weed and coding whilst making millions of dollars. Even Obama, while in the office, was pushing for legislation to make computer science compulsory in all public schools. In other words, the hype is real.
Arguably, learning to code is, in some way or the other, a ticket to economic salvation. Just think about all the job positions you can apply for when you have what people call ‘coding literacy’. It would also be silly to say that learning to code is not practical for general purposes, such as programming your own apps so that you can multitask during your working hours. However, is coding beneficial for other things than employment and productivity? As an emerging psychologist, I’m clearly interested in what is going ‘under the hood’ – does learning to code change the way we think?
Programming languages are what they are named – languages. However, they are quite different from ordinary – human – verbal languages that we speak every day. While our everyday language is fraught with ambiguity and vagueness, programming languages are precise. And while our everyday language seems to be rooted in the richness of our experiences in the environment, giving rise to the possibility of some meaning getting lost in translation, there is no meaning lost when one carries out the same task in different programming languages. This is because programming languages are formal. Essentially, programming languages can be thought of as an implementation of formal logic – a ‘clean’ way of arguing, not troubled by all sorts of synonyms one can use in everyday language. Think of there being one way to name a bread. Life would be so much simpler (albeit less rich). Surely, there are multiple ways to do one task when one is working on a coding problem. However, when one chooses a specific method, the way it is implemented is always the same. For example, there is always one way to define a variable.
Therefore, it seems like the largest benefit of learning to code is the precision and formality coding brings. But what’s in it for us? Well, if you think about it: when coding, one must also keep in mind the overall logic of the code. This is especially obvious when we get error messages. At first, we get upset. Then we realise that there’s something wrong with our code and try to solve the problem – a process called debugging. After we solve it, we come to a deeper understanding of the logic of our code, i.e. how the computer thinks as it reads the code. Basically, it seems to me that by coding, we’re learning to reason. Obviously, reasoning skills are of golden value, especially nowadays when curricula are shifting towards being more critical thinking-based, and jobs are becoming more cognitively demanding. Thus, everyone should learn to code – for their own good.
Photo: Getty Images
With rapidly developing technology, the demand for skilled computer scientists is surging, or at least people with some skills in programming. Things become even more hyped when one looks at the successful Silicon Valley software engineers such as Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, who according to some spend nights smoking weed and coding whilst making millions of dollars. Even Obama, while in the office, was pushing for legislation to make computer science compulsory in all public schools. In other words, the hype is real.
Arguably, learning to code is, in some way or the other, a ticket to economic salvation. Just think about all the job positions you can apply for when you have what people call ‘coding literacy’. It would also be silly to say that learning to code is not practical for general purposes, such as programming your own apps so that you can multitask during your working hours. However, is coding beneficial for other things than employment and productivity? As an emerging psychologist, I’m clearly interested in what is going ‘under the hood’ – does learning to code change the way we think?
Programming languages are what they are named – languages. However, they are quite different from ordinary – human – verbal languages that we speak every day. While our everyday language is fraught with ambiguity and vagueness, programming languages are precise. And while our everyday language seems to be rooted in the richness of our experiences in the environment, giving rise to the possibility of some meaning getting lost in translation, there is no meaning lost when one carries out the same task in different programming languages. This is because programming languages are formal. Essentially, programming languages can be thought of as an implementation of formal logic – a ‘clean’ way of arguing, not troubled by all sorts of synonyms one can use in everyday language. Think of there being one way to name a bread. Life would be so much simpler (albeit less rich). Surely, there are multiple ways to do one task when one is working on a coding problem. However, when one chooses a specific method, the way it is implemented is always the same. For example, there is always one way to define a variable.
Therefore, it seems like the largest benefit of learning to code is the precision and formality coding brings. But what’s in it for us? Well, if you think about it: when coding, one must also keep in mind the overall logic of the code. This is especially obvious when we get error messages. At first, we get upset. Then we realise that there’s something wrong with our code and try to solve the problem – a process called debugging. After we solve it, we come to a deeper understanding of the logic of our code, i.e. how the computer thinks as it reads the code. Basically, it seems to me that by coding, we’re learning to reason. Obviously, reasoning skills are of golden value, especially nowadays when curricula are shifting towards being more critical thinking-based, and jobs are becoming more cognitively demanding. Thus, everyone should learn to code – for their own good.
Photo: Getty Images
