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How Coding Helps Students

How does coding help students? We get this question a lot!
This is a key question to ponder over carefully since digital literacy is as important (if not more so) than any other life skill. When parents think about extracurricular activities for their kids, then soccer, dance or learning a new language come to mind. It is sad that while learning other languages is afforded high priority, speaking the language of computers (coding) is ignored even though it is far more important. AI is expected to replace many jobs in the not so distant future. There are grim predictions over rapidly dwindling employment opportunities in the future when several jobs will be automated by computers. Hence, parents should take no chances. They should exhort their kids to learn the art of coding from a young age. This will help them to meet future challenges in an increasingly uncertain world. Several great coding books are now available for aspiring coders as young as 5 years old. Here are the benefits of coding for students:

Top Career Track

Coding and IT jobs consistently rank among the most well paid and fastest growing professions. The top 3 fastest growing jobs are IT-related. Statistician job growth is expected to be an extremely high 35%. (And yes, this job requires coding skills in statistical languages like R and Python besides math skills). Next on the list are Information security specialists and data scientists for which the job growth rate will be 33.3% and 31.4% respectively. Again, these are very fast growth rates. Software developer jobs are expected to grow at a rate of 22%. The good news is that the median pay for all aforementioned jobs is very close to six figures.

Coding Promotes Problem Solving Skills

Coding is one of the most meaningful ways of boosting your kids' problem solving skills. For nurturing problem solving skills, most parents encourage their kids to play sudoku, scrabble, lego or some other puzzle game. However, they will not directly acquire well-compensated job skills this way. But with coding, kids acquire at least two distinct job skills. First is coding itself, a highly lucrative job skill. The second is logical problem solving. Coding is all about problem solving. Students will learn how to break down big complex problems into smaller subproblems that are easier to handle. They will also have to leverage their logical skills. Hence, through regular coding practice, students can elevate their coding prowess and develop strong problem solving ability.

Coding Develops the Most Important Quality - Persistence

How many talented and smart people have you seen who did not live up to their true potential? Probably many. Being smart is not enough. You also have to be persistent, otherwise all the smartness in the world will count for nothing. Smart but unsuccessful people are living proof of this. In fact, it is far better to have average intelligence and high persistence than to be smart but not persistent. While it's true that average IQ folks will take a longer time to get there, they will in fact finish the race thanks to persistence. Very smart people who are not persistent will never make it. Coding instills this prime attribute in kids. With coding, your kids will deal with an apparently endless series of perplexing problems that will require a lot of persistence to solve.

Dealing with Failures - Successfully

If you never failed, you never tried. As simple as that. No matter what career track you pursue, failures of some sort are inevitable. Many people fail to understand (in the first attempt) complicated math and science concepts. However, no matter how hard it is, those who stay calm (even when confronted with repeated failure) and persevere finally succeed in understanding. Dealing with failures is an essential life skill that you should teach your kids. They should realize that failure is temporary and that they will eventually succeed if they keep trying. Coding entails innumerable failures. Hence, coding inculcates a strong sense of grit in students. Grit is paramount for success. So with coding, students can develop this invaluable trait. Coders have to frequently rely on novel solutions and lateral thinking to make their software work. When coding, kids have to constantly try out new ideas and experiment with possible solutions so that their code works well. This can foster creativity and help improve their computational thinking ability.

With Coding, Economics is on Your Side

As explained above, coding jobs are proliferating at a blistering rate. But with coding, the good news keeps on coming. Another vital aspect of this field is that there is a huge shortage of skilled coders in the job market. And you will be pleased to know that this shortage is projected to increase further. Did you know that there is a shortage of at least a million coders in the US alone? With a growing gap between demand and supply of skilled coders, those who enter this field will not only enjoy substantially higher pay; they will also be free to choose between different coding jobs.

Great Backup Tool

You might be concerned that your kid is not interested in pursuing a coding career. No problem.You can allow them to pursue any profession that they are happy with. Your kids can fall back on their coding skills if necessary. For example, if their job has become redundant or taken over by AI. Your kids can also use their coding skills to work on lucrative side gigs besides their job. They are likely to gain a lot of extra income this way and save far more money than just by working a 9-5 job. You may realize that many people these days work on side gigs to pay for the high costs of living and to save enough money. Whichever way you look at it, coding is empowering. Coding allows your kids to speak the language of computers. Kids who understand this language can harness the power of computers - by leveraging extremely fast and error-free processing. Now that you know how coding helps students, you should motivate your kids to learn the art of coding.