Back in the day, learning computer programming was largely optional unless you specifically wanted a career in it. However these days with all our gadgets and tech, learning to code has become more important than ever, especially since it opens up so many different avenues and career paths.So much so that Rakuten’s CEO Hiroshi Mikitani has revealed that he wants to make it so that all of his 17,000 employees will learn how to code. Speaking to Emily Chang of Bloomberg Television, Mikitani said, “If you’re working for Toyota, for example, you know how the automobile works — basic structure of the engine, suspension and so forth. So if you work for an IT services company, you need to have the basic knowledge of what’s in the computer.”
Mikitani isn’t alone in this and according to Thomas Malone, a professor of information technology and organizational studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, “We are all living in a world shaped and defined by IT, but many of us have a mental model of technology that’s analogous to disease is caused by evil spirits. You can give people enough understanding so they know how to ask the right questions.’’
In the recent years we’ve started to seen various companies try to tackle teaching coding to our younger generation. Apple has launched initiatives such as Swift Playgrounds, while Mattel has used its Barbie franchise to try and encourage kids to pick up coding.
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