I'm having trouble understanding what "learn to code" means for most people. It's almost obnoxious when business types propose "learning to code" in a nonchalant manner as though people don't spend decades developing their programming skills. Yes, you may take codecademy tutorials and have a slight understanding of js syntax...but I wouldn't expect you to build anything of value.
All these comments about "no value" are hilarious. Honestly I dont think "serious programming" even matters. It's people learning, for example, that the 30 min daily process they do in excel can actually be a script that takes one second to run. The company is already seeing benefits to the culture and soon people will be thinking differently. That's a win.
That's awesome. Imagine working in an all Spanish workplace and refusing to learn at least some Spanish. I think everyone benefits from learning a bit of the language. You don't have to be fluent but even knowing the slightest bit gets you a lot more respect. You can see this when visiting foreign countries. Understanding and writing code should be the basics.
Partaking in expensive management fads is, perhaps, God's way of telling you you've got more funding than you need.
I'm really uncomfortable with the term 'learning to code', because when I read it makes me think that the company wants its employees to know in what circumstances you should and shouldn't use semicolons in Javascript, or what methods are available to strings in Python.
I don't think those things are useful unless you're actually writing code.
What is useful is understanding how software (and, for a lot of people, web software in particular) fits together. That means understanding what might make something computationally expensive, or understanding the advantages/disadvantages of loosely coupled components (etc etc).
This isn't to say that people 'learning to code' isn't a step in the right direction, but I don't think it's an end in itself, and for most people, writing code is only a doorway to that understanding if they have the time to take on projects that involve those problems.
What we need isn't lots of people who can do 'hello world'. It is people who are technologically literate. That needs to be the focus and goal.
Maybe next year all the programmers can learn accounting.
This makes sense to me for a number of reasons.
1) This can help people understand the tools that could assist them with their normal day jobs as hey gain the confidence to look into writing scripts and macros. IT staff in particular frequently lack any coding (scripting) skills unless they themselves are developers or Unix sysadmins.
2) They will have a better understanding of the web technologies they run across in their daily lives. This applies especially well to Codecademy users who learn JavaScript. 3) Learning to code teaches you to break a problem into parts and think analytically. Our society could use more people with good critical thinking skills, we can probably all agree.
4) Everyone in an enterprise should have a core understanding of the elements of major functions. Yes, this means programmers should understand the very basics of finance and human resources and probably other areas that don't occur to me at the moment.
There are two kinds of elitism: believing that decisions should be made by the most informed and qualified individuals versus believing that those who do not belong to the "elite" have no business even dabbling in affairs beyond their supposed comprehension. The latter isn't healthy to any organization, much less broader society.
Why not go the other way and make all employees learn about business and financial matters? Or would that be too dangerous, allowing for employees to become entrepreneurs and, possibly, lose them to their own startups?
Based on that picture, I pity the employees.
There's a big difference between learning syntax and learning to code.
A lot of people seem to be offended by this, or think it's a waste of time. I think you need to realize there's a difference between learning to code and being a professional programmer.
I see "programming" as a skill like "writing" or "basic math" that everyone should know something about. We all know how to write and do some math but we don't call ourselves "writers" or "mathematicians".
But you'd never claim it's worthless to learn how to write or do arithmetic. Why not programming?