Why You Need To Let Your Child, Younger One or Yourself Become A Programmer

Ever wondered why engineers used to be adored? Why people rank engineers as high as medical doctors, and, in some countries, even higher. It is because engineering is one of those rare fields of study where you are taught to create your idea. To never stop at thinking or having a great idea, but to always work at building something immediately useful and replicable from your ideas.

It is engineers who built the greater part of the modern life we enjoy. And like I used to tell my doctor friends -- "Doctors save lives; Engineers make your life worth living." Imagine being alive in a jungle with no access to any technology. That would be a life not worth living. To further prove our prominence, all the cool gadgets the medical world depend on are built by engineers.

image: swharden.com

So why programming?

Now engineering has evolved. To turn your ideas to immediately useful and replicable products, you now have the internet platform. Every year, the online world is booming. That is where all the innovation is mostly oozing from. And the new biggest companies in the world are those who operate in that space. 

And guess who control that space? Who are treated like Kings and Queens in that expanding world? It's the programmers. Think Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and those geeky programmers who are now billionaires because they wrote a computer program.

And as usual, things take a long time to catch up with the global trends here in Nigeria. Remember how Blackberry was still hippy here when the rest of the world had moved on to android and iPhones. Even the ATM got here 20 years after it had been in other countries. But the great thing is that when we catch up it's like a wildfire. Almost everyone has an android phone. There are millions of ATM machines in Nigeria. So I am sure that when the new online billionaire trend reaches here, it would make working in Shell and going into politics look less rewarding.

And that is why you need to start positioning yourself for the (permit me to call it) coming wealth transfer. Where the non-geeks and non-programmers will give their money to the geeks and programmers. Even if you can't prepare yourself, encourage your child and siblings to get into the programming space. Not only will they have a greater chance of becoming a millionaire, they will also never become jobless. No good programmer ever runs out of work.