Think about it: something I did reached 10,000 actual living people and had an impact (however small) on their life. That would never have been possible if I didn’t know how to code.
(ability to code) != (eyeballs reached)
I've written blog posts viewed by 100,000 people in one day.
I've also written software used by 1 person to save millions of dollars.
Both are rewarding, but I'd still rather build something. I think that's the most appropriate metric.
Great points. I like this rewrite for the plumber at your local McDonald's:
"Think about it: something I did reached 10,000 actual living people and had an impact (however small) on their life. That would never have been possible if I didn’t know how to plumb."
This statement works equally well for many professions.
Think about it: something I did reached 10,000 actual living people and had an impact (however small) on their life. That would never have been possible if I didn’t know how to code. != Imply that (ability to code) = (eyeballs reached)
I don't think the implication was supposed to be that you can't reach people without knowing how to code, but that in this instance, him knowing how to code gave him the ability to have an impact.
It seems an important enough distinction to point out.
Edit: <i></i> didn't make italics
Edit 2: Thanks wallawe
Not directly, maybe. But having some acknowledgment of basic data principles (particularly delimitation, meta-ness, maybe even regexes) can substantially increase your ability to write digitally. Markdown, for instance. And of course, being able to maintain or customize an existing platform, whether it's WordPress or Tumblr.
It's sad to say, but delimitation is not a skill that is in the mind of the average professional adult. Try sending someone a tab-delimited text file to someone who has only known CSV or XLS sometime.
As a person in the media/reporting industry, I've almost committed to making it my life mission to teach people the usefulness of basic regexes.
I've taught a lot of "learn to code" sessions...My main goal is to not for them to remember the specific syntax, but that programming gives you the ability to repeat a task thousands of times (for loops) and differentiate between them (if statements)...how many (non-worker-drones) people would be content spending significant amounts of their dayjob time doing manual copying-and-pasting and click-series-of-links-to-download-reports if they were aware of these basic coding constructs?
I have a BS in CS and have tried so many times, even learn regex the hard way, and still can't remember the special characters and how they interact. Oh the pain.
(ability to code) != (eyeballs reached)
I've written blog posts viewed by 100,000 people in one day.
I've also written software used by 1 person to save millions of dollars.
Both are rewarding, but I'd still rather build something. I think that's the most appropriate metric.