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Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

Coding holds the key to jobs for young people

Computer coding is now part of the national curriculum for school children, threatening to leave young adults in the lurch as a skills shortfall takes hold in the short term.

Roughly half of jobs in the top income quartile in the US are in occupations that require workers to have some computer coding knowledge or skill, with the UK likely to be very similar.

Tech retailer Ebuyer has teamed up with She Does Digital, an initiative for women in digital industries, which says that this trend will continue as coding begins to touch almost every sector, becoming ever more essential in the future.

Gintare Gervyte, a CRO analyst who works with She Does Digital, explained: “Coding skills mean more than just creating websites and apps. It includes rapidly growing sectors like cybersecurity, data science, machine learning and the constant evolution of automation with things like self-driving vehicles.

“Even if you don't work in an area that you'd traditionally associate with technology, the use of algorithms and automation is finding its way into almost every industry - from agriculture to transport, accounting, fashion and more.

“Coding will become increasingly important, even if that's only the basic knowledge of it. The world around us is evolving at the speed of light, which means that more and more tasks around us are being done by robots or machines. These can only be created using coding skills.”

To help young adults take advantage of the opportunities opening up, Ebuyer has created the following tips for those who want to teach themselves the basic skills:

  • It may seem like an alien concept, but coding is essentially writing instructions for a computer to follow, so try to think about real life examples, such as following a recipe, that you can use to think through the basic process.
  • Scratch is a great resource that teaches the basic training on HTML, CSS, Javascript and many more, with useful step-by-step tutorials. It’s a great tool to kick off the process with.
  • Coding kits are the perfect gift for coding novices. The Arduino Coding Kit teaches the basics of electronics and programming to build internet-connected devices.

Paul Lyon, IT director at Ebuyer, said: “The advance of technology we’re seeing at the moment means that the demand for people who can use computer coding will increase before the children currently learning it at school start work, meaning that young adults now have a golden opportunity to take advantage of these jobs - many of which can be very lucrative.

“Even if they have no interest in becoming a software developer, the range of industries that the skill is starting to be required in means that people with these skills can have an extremely wide choice of career paths. Many people may not know where to begin but starting to learn the basics at home means coding is now easier than ever to get to grips with.”

To see Ebuyer’s full range of products for learning to code, visit https://www.ebuyer.com/store/Toys,-Games-&-Gadget/cat/Gadgets-and-Gifts/subcat/Educational-Kits.

https://www.shedoesdigital.co.uk/