As a Gen Y-er and a member of the Twitter-obsessives club, digital skills are not alien to me. But even a journalist who is permanently glued to her iPhone and regularly works with a CMS (content management system) needs a bit of help.
So when the invite came to see why an increasing number of HRDs are sending their teams and boards on Decoded’s Code in a Day course, I said ‘yes’ faster than I can send a tweet.
Code in a Day promises to demystify the world of digital, taking participants from confusion to coding their own app in a day. Course tutors assume zero knowledge, although in a mixed session some are bound to know more than others.
The day started with a brief history of the internet and online languages, from HTML to CSS (cascading style sheets – the language of web design) to JavaScript, PHP and HTML5. Given we spend most of our day online now, for work or play, it’s surprising how little we think about how it works. Then, onto the actual coding, we were given the task of coming up with and coding our own app with geolocation functionality.
I decided to create a tweet-up app for a conference, allowing users to see who else from their social networks was in the building or new contacts to potentially connect with.
I found the coding itself surprisingly easy. There are clear rules, so if you stick to them, it’s almost impossible to go wrong. The open source nature of coding means people share everything. So, if you have an idea of what you want, it’s likely someone else has already written the code and you can just copy and paste.
Of course, the apps we created were pretty simple, but Decoded’s demystification sell is spot on. When I left that evening, I felt I actually understood the language of the internet, and had a fresh appreciation of the creativity of those who work within it. Will I be quitting HR magazine for a highly lucrative career as a web developer? Maybe, I hear they’re in demand.
Further reading
