PS #10: Should you learn to code?

It’s a thing: everyone is learning how to code. Whether you think it’s “the new literacy” or just the best way to snag a 6-figure salary, you yourself are likely planning to try and pick up the basics soon if you haven’t already, because it seems like everyone else is.

But how many of these new programmers are actually getting jobs? If you’re serious about being a professional developer, how can you go from Codecademy to employed and respected rockstar?

Nathan Bashaw (https://twitter.com/nbashaw) is probably the best person to answer these questions. A self-taught programmer (with completely unrelated degrees in political theory and philosophy), Nathan has founded multiple startups, worked as both a developer and a product manager, and built the first version of a little website called Product Hunt (http://www.producthunt.com/). For obvious reasons, he is very passionate about helping others learn to code, and has created tools like Scratchpad (http://scratchpad.io/) and Dash (https://dash.generalassemb.ly/) that make it easy for people to dip their toes in the ocean that is programming.

Whether you are an aspiring programmer, a non-technical person wondering what the fuss is all about, or just someone with strong opinions on this whole “learn to code” movement, Nathan will be sharing advice and opinions about the right way to go about this process - and why it should be about building something that you think should exist in the world, not just learning to code for the sake of it.