Following you will find some reasons that may convince you that programming is for you:
Coding might be the core skill of the 21st century
I personally consider it probably the core skill of the 21st century, because computers are everywhere and they are here to stay. Even though not everyone in society can become a coder, learning to code helps you in all regards of (modern) life, might it be to think about a problem or just that it helps you understand your surroundings and your everyday tools better.
Coding also helps you to think in terms of abstractions. For example you want to write code in a high level way, instead of building your program directly into the hardware like in the early days of computing (a bug would be painful to remove). I ´ll admit that are several layers between those two, but I think it gets my point across. And thinking in abstractions helps not only to structure your program and source code, but also in day to day life, regardless of your job or task at hand.
That brings me to the next thing learning to code does for you. It helps to split a complex problem that might seem overwhelming into parts and make it manageable. Also to structure your code you need to define interfaces and means of communication between components (e.g. one part of the programming talking to another part, or think a webserver and webbrowser).
And maybe most importantly it helps you to realize a very important way of going about any problem: To step back and think about the solution you want to apply toa problem, before you start implementing it. Whereas I am sometimes still guilty of going the opposite way of this in some regards of my life.
Coding gets you a long way
Whatever you do, when you know how to code you can be better at probably any job today in regards of effectiveness and efficiency. So it makes life in general easier to go about, just because those darn computers are everywhere, and I dare to say it again: they won’t go anywhere anythime soon. Also if you want a demanding yet very satisfying career path, where you’ll meet lots and lots of highly skilled, like minded people from which you can learn in a lot of different ways, then coding can give you that. Additionally it lets you experience a degree of freedom at work that i haven’t encountered anywhere else in the work force.
Aside of all that it generally aids you in acquiring a succesful career in any field, because to become a coder you need to accept a mindset of constant learning and improvement in your life. I talk about it somewhat on my start page, that it is an integral part of the coding experience. And constant improvement is something that will let you stay ahead of the curve in any field, or activity you participate in.
One of the reasons why you need to do this in coding is, that the environment is changing so rapidly that you need to learn new stuff every day just to stay still. Luckily we live in the information age, where you can find everything on the internet, right? Yes and No, see my post The coding experience on this for more detail.
Besides all that, as a skileld coder you can practically decide which job offer to take, and probably have never to apply for any job because the companies come and approach you to work for them. Which is a kind of nice feature to it.
Coding is a FRIGGIN lot of fun
…at least most of the time 😉
Coding is so much fun for several reasons. First of all you can work with a bunch of super nice people, that for the most part have the mindset of constant learning and improvement, which makes it a wonderful place to work. It might seem competetive, but I’d argue for the opposite, because no one will ever know everything there is to know (…although with the singularity and stuff approaching, who really knows 😉 ) and so everyone is keen to gather some new insights on a given problem or topic.
Secondly it is so much fun, because it is immensely satisfying to tell such a dumb thing like a computer to do some stuff. For me it feels kinda magically that the machine does something I told it just by typing some text (and do some other stuff). I work in this field for several years, but each day as I learn something new or solve something that I considered hard at the moment I encountered it, I am amazed and deeply satisfied with it. In general I consider it fun, to gather more insights about how the world around me works. Some might call that curiosity or whatever, I simply consider that a deeply human trait.
There are probably lots of other reasons you and I could think of, but those reasons above should be enough to spark the passion for programming.
Summary
Because computers are everywhere and they are here to stay, learning to code might be a core skill for any job offering in the future. Maybe it will even be taught at schools as a mandatory subject. Besides that coding helps you to understand the world, and not just the world of computing, because it teaches you to think about problems in a structured way. And that is what we all want to become better in (knowingly or unknowingly), because it makes our life so much easier. Also coding is so broad and changes at such a fast pace, it helps you to accept a live long learning attitude, which also makes your life so much easier in the mid -to long term.
Additionally the job market is crazy shifted in the favor of the programmers, so you can decide where, how and with what and whom you want to work.
And the most important reasons of them all: coding is so much fun in a lot of different regards. Be it working with like minded individuals, solving difficult problems, or simply being satisfied with the command you have over the magic of the modern age which is computing.
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