I’ve recently been musing about what the workplace skills of the future might be. Despite good intentions, we might have a big skills gap of a different kind to fill in the near future and I’m actually starting to wonder if code clubs are not the solution and if, perhaps, they might be obsolete?
Code Clubs
Whilst only a fairly recent development, code clubs are great: they are teaching kids vital skills it was thought they would need in tomorrow’s workplace. But I’m no longer sure that we need an entire generation of developers. The world has moved on, even from where it was only three years ago when code clubs really took off.
SaaS
Technology is now a much more common subject for schools and schoolchildren, partly thanks to code clubs. But there’s now a need for something more, for additional skills just beyond coding.
Tools such as those provided by 123ContactForm offer software as a service (SaaS), enabling people to build website surveys, forms and more without any programming knowledge. We can now create huge quantities of data without needing the coding skills we thought we would.
What’s becoming apparent is the that the growth of data, whether it’s marketing data, financial data, business analysis or any other form it might come in, requires different skills. We now need analysis.
Data Analysis
It’s acknowledged that there is a digital skills gap and that it is hindering organizations’ success with using data, with 52% of respondents to a recent B2B Marketing survey seeing a skills gap in data analytics. In a recent article, I also explored how tomorrow’s businesses may demand a far wider skill set than we imagine.
There’s a growing challenge to interpret information that a generation of developers, coders and programmers cannot help us overcome. Programming jobs are not going to be required in the same numbers, perhaps even by the time that today’s children leave school, but the ability to analyze is.
Beyond Code Clubs
So whilst code clubs started with the right idea and do some great work, they are no longer fit for purpose. They shouldn’t be abandoned altogether, but perhaps it is time for them to evolve. As the saying goes, the only certainty is that nothing is certain, and nothing could be truer of today’s digital skills for tomorrow.
The post Should we scrap code clubs? appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.