How Learning to Code Gives You Superpowers

Fifteen years ago, the web was a very different place. Technology was becoming an industry, instead of a fad. The value discovered in the dot-com boom was being explored. No longer was there just a tech guy in the basement who handled everything from e-mail to printer configuration. Now entire companies were being built up around stores that were entirely digital. The startup culture was starting to make its force felt, and a new economy was being born.

In this new world, survival and success were tied to a new set of skills. It was then, in the early 2000's, when the tech industry realized that while much of the initial momentum had been built on the backs of skills brought over from the analog world, true growth was going to come from the emergence of techniques and mentalities that were brand new. The world was advancing into a digital age, and our disciplines were going to go with it.

The royalty of this new realm were the programmers. They were the ones who had figured out how to bridge the gap from thinking computationally to being able to speak the language of computers, code. They were the problem solvers, the innovators, and the builders who were crafting digital properties out of nothing more than ideas. Products the world had never seen before were now available at the touch of a button. The world was shrinking, the distance between customer and company shrinking thanks to the advances brought by technology.

Programming is an Art

If you look back over those fifteen years, every four to five years saw a new generation of technological advancement and a need to modernize the skills that were previously developed. The web and the world of technology is a fluid, dynamic place. What is a best practice one year can be antiquated by the next year, but for those who know the language of computers, who know how to communicate the solutions, it is an evolving process. Programming is the art of taking an analog problem and solving it in a digital way, breaking that solution down into steps so simple that even a computer can understand how to do it.

Programmers Only Need an Idea

Houses require wood, stone, and glass. Vehicles require metal and rubber, and works of art need canvas and paint. Programmers only need an idea, a problem that needs a solution. Coding gives someone the ability to build something completely new, never seen before, out of nothing. Knowledge of language, the development of digital literacy skills, an understanding of how the computer can and will process data, these are the cerebral resources that fuel the construction of a piece of technology.

Programmers don't require capes to be superheroes. There's no magic ring from another planet, no science experiment gone awry that bestows superhuman abilities, no radioactive spider that bites a programmer to make them powerful. They are able to do it just from learning to code. Learning a simple skill based on the principles of computational thinking gives them the ability to create tools that can literally change the world. That's the greatest superpower of all, taking an idea and making it not only be real, but useful.

Programmers Build Bridges

Programmers are still the royalty, and their roles have become ever more diverse. The cloud has opened up a dramatic increase in the need for people who are able to bridge the gap between business and technology, and the programmers are the builders constructing the next generation of applications, hardware, and networks that will power us through to the next phase of this digital revolution which we are currently enjoying.

Our graduates are our heroes and we continue to celebrate and support them. The education team at Lighthouse Labs is made up of people who have seen the tech industry grow and take on a life of its own, and we cannot wait to see what our graduates are going to do next. That is why we make sure that they continue to receive our mentorship, our career guidance, and our updated curriculum so that each new step they take is as a community.

At Lighthouse, we recognize that digital literacy and the understanding of programming are an ever-changing landscape. In the four-plus years that we have been operating, we have graduated hundreds of developers who found jobs changing the world and solving problems. Ninety-six percent of our grads found work within ninety days of graduating. We brought them into a world where their contribution would earn them an excellent reputation. We taught them the skills they needed to succeed. In short, we gave them superpowers.

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