It seems that the entire world has decided to begin developing apps, web pages, and web apps. The Apple App Store and Google Play Store host millions of apps, and the number continues to grow. On top of that, more than 250,000 new websites hit the internet every day.
Each new page, app, or web app may involve developers, designers, programmers, and coders. While many people rapidly swap back and forth between these terms to describe the same functions, they actually have distinct differences.
It took less than three months for an online coding game to transform James Johnston’s life.
Johnston, 31, was designing software for orthodontists and living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when he landed a better-paid software engineering job in Silicon Valley at a major tech startup.
The key to this career upgrade and cross-country move? CodeFights, an online game that offers programmers the chance to improve their skills and get noticed by Silicon Valley titans like Uber and Dropbox.
Johnston told CNNMoney he discovered the game through a Facebook ad in June.
“I was kind of intrigued and thought it was a fun little activity,” he said.
Code runs the world, but coding today isn’t for everyone. Generally, it’s still done by a select group of mostly male, math-literate programmers, and the rest of us are just consumers rather than participants in code’s production. “The distance between using your computer and programing your computer has gotten wider and wider.”
Could that be about to change? The media theorist Douglas Rushkoff thinks so. He’s been championing a new iPad app called Ready that he thinks marks an important shift in our relationship with software.
“The distance between using your computer and programing your computer has gotten wider and wider,” he says. “I’ve been discouraged that most portals to being a digital creator have involved these really difficult coding languages that require you to be at a certain level of sophistication in mathematics. Ready has a really simple interface that lets people have the experience of programming something for themselves.”
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