The Awesome Power of NOT Writing Code
Writing Code is only a magic ticket if you’re really really into it…
This article was originally published on LinkedIn in November of 2015. I’m reposting it here as part of moving my writing to my own platform…
Oops... Did I say that out loud? My colleague, Doug Winnie wrote a very thoughtful Linkedin article about the idea that simply learning to code is not a guarantee that you'll be magically safe in the turbulent environment we all work in. Even though it's true, the world is obsessed with writing code. Stories about the importance of learning to code are all over my media feeds, and I honestly can't go more than a day or 2 without seeing something about how the future of jobs, the future of EVERYTHING is coding. It's not that I don't buy it, coding is really important, but I'm just not into it.
I'm not a luddite. My life, has benefitted tremendously from coding. I came into the work world exactly at a time when computers were just starting to take over the graphic design and photo retouching industries. I embraced these new fangled ideas, and thrived where others saw chaos and disruption. In fact, my whole meandering career can be mapped to critical shifts in computer based image creation and delivery technology. 8 to 24 hours a day sometimes 7 days a week since about 1991 I've been in front of a computer. But I'm not into writing code.
But Rob, we live in a digital world, and if you want to succeed, you've got to develop apps and websites, right? You'll never get rich unless you create the next unicorn-ephemeral-chat-social-sharing-on-demand-delivery-blah-blah. I guess so, but why would I want to do that? The rich part sounds nice, but if that's the only thing I'm after, then I'm probably not going to succeed.
At the heart of Doug's article is a bigger idea. It's the idea that you have to WANT it. Whatever that "it" is, you have to want it. It has to make you happy otherwise there's no point to doing it. And that's just it... the idea of coding doesn't make me happy. Riding bikes makes me happy. Helping people learn how to communicate with moving images makes me happy. To be sure that last bit benefits from coding, but I don't need coding to do it, and I'm OK with that in spite of the hype.
Headlines are powerful... It's easy to get caught up in the hyperbole around learning to code and begin to think that there's no place in the world for you if you're not into it. But that's just silly. The best thing you can do is go after "it" with your heart. If that "it" happens to NOT be coding, don't worry, you won't be alone.
