开源日报 每天推荐一个 GitHub 优质开源项目和一篇精选英文科技或编程文章原文,坚持阅读《开源日报》,保持每日学习的好习惯。
今日推荐开源项目:《统一图标 RemixIcon》
今日推荐英文原文:《Learning to program is a great way to improve yourself and grow your career. Here’s why!》

今日推荐开源项目:《统一图标 RemixIcon》传送门:GitHub链接
推荐理由:一套可以用于各种地方的开源图表库。它的特点就在于所有的图标都按照一个规范进行设计,所以看起来风格都十分相近,而且放在各种地方都没有违和感,在同个页面需要用到很多图标时可以保持页面看起来风格一致。不过因为要遵守规范所以要在图标这方面本身进行贡献兴许不太容易,不过提供新的需求或者帮助他们完善搜索标签等其他的贡献方式一样可以让热心的小伙伴帮助建设这个项目。
今日推荐英文原文:《Learning to program is a great way to improve yourself and grow your career. Here’s why!》作者:Aditya Patange
原文链接:https://medium.com/@AdityaPatange/learning-to-program-is-a-great-way-to-improve-yourself-and-grow-your-career-heres-why-5cc8276453fa
推荐理由:编程是个好技能,在各个方面它能帮上你的工作的同时,也能改变你的主观世界

Learning to program is a great way to improve yourself and grow your career. Here’s why!

Welcome reader.

Now that I have successfully convinced you to click the link I put out, you can be assured that that in the next 7 minutes of reading this article, you will have valuable insights to take away into your daily life.

Don’t you want to change the world? Carve out a niche that is your own? (Source: www.etsy.com)

This post is primarily for you if;

You are between 13 to 19 years of age and confused about making a career choice

After reading this article you will have substantial evidence that programming is a valuable skill to invest time in irrespective of what you want to ultimately do in life. That will help you decide fast and take action to achieve your goals.

At this age, your time is best spent investing in your personal growth because few years down the line, you will be better equipped to deal with the real world. I started programming at the age of 14 and can confirm this, the benefits of starting early were tremendous. I want to encourage more young folks to do the same and reap the same benefits as me.

You are already creating value in your field of interest

This includes entrepreneurs, employees, business owners, artists and other professionals. I want to stress on the fact that learning to program will not only make you smarter but will also make you valuable asset in your area of work. Whether it is generating more revenue for your business, starting a company, getting a promotion, switching careers or simply improving the quality of work you do, you will become smarter and your perspective of the world will change for good.

As an entrepreneur who knows to code, I am not inconvenienced without a full-fledged tech team in early stages of projects I work on and can quickly bring my ideas to life. I can communicate with my clients better, understand problem solving, time-cost-performance trade-offs, prototyping, design thinking, latest disruptive trends, scalability, engineering principles and a lot more that’s required to build a great product. Much of which I learnt through my coding experience. A large chunk of my time can be devoted to developing other aspects of becoming a successful entrepreneur. I can focus on the heavy-lifting instead of worrying about learning the ropes.

You just want to change the world!

Then there is no better place to be at right now. Just dive in and keep reading.

So here is how it works, if you want to make the computer do something, you need to tell it what to do in the form of instructions (or code) that are specified in a programming language. Think of it as a way to communicate with machines. You can learn to program without learning the basics of Computer Science, but that is not very useful. When I refer to programming, what I inclusively mean is having Computer Science knowledge and knowing how to express instructions for the computer in a programming language.

Keeping that in mind, here are some reasons why you should learn this highly coveted skill;

1. Programming sharpens your thinking

Thinking like a programmer means thinking algorithmically and learning to break problems down. This makes you smarter because you learn the art of identifying patterns amidst the chaos life throws at you. It’s an exercise that repeatedly trains your brain to spot patterns, which in turn improves your decision making skills and your ability to approach problems that come your way. Deconstructing problems becomes second nature and you end up doing it unknowingly all throughout your life.

Programming is a great way to learn to think deeply and clearly

There is plenty research and evidence to prove that programming develops different parts of your brain and enhances your cognitive abilities.

2. It is a great way to utilise technology for impacting lives

Technology has subtly but intricately shaped the way our lives unfold. Today, computation has evolved to the point where we end up using some form of a computer more than 15 to 20 times a day without even knowing it! While this has solved a lot of problems, it has also created and shed light on new interesting and exciting problems. Being technologically averse and primitive in your thought process is akin to taking backward steps.

Source: Goalcast

As a programmer, you learn how to befriend technology and leverage it correctly to solve these problems. All of a sudden, you can create ripples of change and positively impact lives.

3. You can make a lot of money

If you’re reading this, chances are you want to get rich and live a better life. Let’s face it, money buys comforts, opens up new avenues and makes it possible to meet your daily needs.

Technology has revolutionised global economies and the largest companies today, in terms of market capital use technology heavily. There is a sea of opportunities out there for you to make money if you know programming.

If you come from another field and have no interest in becoming a Software Developer, that’s fine. Knowing to write simple programs to automate your work, analyse data and develop solutions for solving pain-points in your area will take you miles ahead. If you specialise in fields like finance & banking, biotechnology, sales, marketing and healthcare, the scope of creating a social and/or economical impact in these areas is limitless. There is also an upcoming area called LawTech that focuses on automating and speeding up operational tasks done by lawyers.

4. You don’t need a degree to make an impact

Computer Science and Programming is an area where your degree doesn’t matter much, unless you want to get into academia. You can learn from tons of blog-posts, videos, online courses, coding platforms and other resources on the Internet created by some of the finest in the field. Not to mention, the wide range of quality books that you can refer to, to deepen your understanding.

There are so many right and wrong ways to be a good coder and a degree course is not enough to stay well informed. The burden is on you to figure out what works and what doesn’t by practising regularly. So if you don’t have a degree in Computer Science, it does not matter. You can still avail all the free resources out there and be as good or even better than those with a formal degree.

Do you know that Google, IBM, Apple and many other tech-giants are hiring programmers without degrees?

5. The stereotype is nonsense — You can be anything you want

The reason I talk about this is because a lot of young people out there have false notions that being a programmer means being a nerdy introvert who spends all day in front of a computer.

Doesn’t paint a great picture, does it? I know a lot of programmers who excel at work and are also part-time artists, work devotedly towards their fitness goals, run side businesses, enjoy partying & socialising with people and live completely normal lives without compromising on their ambitions.

Brandon Tory: Senior Software Engineer & Rapper (Source: Instagram)

Brandon Tory has inspired me in that sense. I realised that my interest in rap and programming were conflicting because of the programmer stereotype that was imposed on me as a result of societal conditioning. Being a programmer has nothing to do with who you are as a person.

There are certain groups of people who will try to put you in a box from time to time, ignore their chatter and do whatever is in your best interests. 😉

To sum it up

By now I hope you are thoroughly convinced that learning Computer Science and programming is a great addition to your repertoire of skills. If you are not, then remember, all the claims I have made are backed by evidence.

Now you may have a lot of very valid questions like;
  • Ok, I am convinced that I need to learn to code. What do I do next?
  • I know to program, but I don’t have any of the abilities you mentioned. Why is that?
  • How can I balance my career and learn programming at the same time?
  • Which programming language is the best to start out with?
  • I hate mathematics and cannot stand it one bit. I have heard programming requires math knowledge. What should I do?
  • As a student how can I kick-start a side hustle and make money using my coding skills?
Don’t worry, I won’t leave you hanging. The above questions and many more will be addressed in upcoming posts. Fortunately, your progress will be much faster than me because I’m here to guide you.

A personal note

The purpose of starting this blog series is not just to share information, as there is plenty available on the Internet. The intention is to share my own experiences so that people can resonate with them. My self-improvement journey started started with learning to code.

I see a lot of young people around me struggling with depression, anxiety, no motivation, wasting time in worthless relationships with nothing in it for them and have a general lack of self-confidence which is all so solemn because they don’t realise what they are inherently capable of. This is my attempt to reach out and help them better their life and crush their goals.
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