"All of my friends who have younger siblings who are going to college or high school - my number one piece of advice is: You should learn how to program"
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The advice elevates programming from a niche skill to a form of modern literacy. So much of daily life, communication, commerce, healthcare, entertainment, is mediated by software. Knowing how code works turns you from a passive consumer into an active shaper of that environment. It’s not only about writing apps; it’s about understanding the logic behind the systems that influence opportunities, information, and relationships. Learning to program gives you a toolkit to test ideas quickly, measure outcomes, and iterate, habits that compound over a lifetime.
Programming cultivates transferable thinking. You learn to break big problems into smaller ones, to abstract complexity, to design processes that are clear and repeatable, and to debug calmly when reality diverges from expectation. These habits strengthen reasoning across subjects: structuring an essay, designing an experiment, or managing a project. You also practice resilience. Code rarely works the first time; the mindset of diagnosing, adjusting, and trying again builds confidence in the face of ambiguity.
The practical payoff is leverage. A few lines of code can automate hours of routine work, analyze vast datasets, or connect people at scale. That leverage matters whether you pursue medicine, law, art, or business. Biologists script analyses, journalists scrape and verify data, artists create generative works, and entrepreneurs prototype products without waiting for a full team. Even if you never become a software engineer, fluency with code future-proofs your career and expands your creative range.
There’s also a civic dimension. Understanding software helps you question algorithmic decisions, privacy practices, and AI systems with informed skepticism. You can contribute to open-source communities, learn from peers, and appreciate that good code is written for humans as much as for machines. Start small, scripts, simple websites, data notebooks, and treat it as a language for thinking and making. The goal isn’t prestige; it’s agency: the power to turn ideas into reality and to navigate a world increasingly written in code.
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