If there had been a high school superlative for “most likely to become a coder,” I can tell you it wouldn’t have been me. I was the kid spending hours in our high school auditorium, building scenery, adjusting spotlights, and obsessing over how the story would come together on stage. What I didn’t realize then was that the skills I was learning in theatre would be integral in my path to becoming a coder, as the Email Marketing Manager, here at iD Tech.
I credit my journey to growing up in a generation that straddled two worlds. We had to memorize the Dewey decimal system and learn to use online search tools to find books in the library. We were the first generation to text each other, but "be home by dark" was still our curfew. No matter how much technology evolves, I’ll never forget the specific clicks and beeps of the dial-up modem connecting to the early web or the first time I looked up how to use HTML to customize a MySpace profile.
The early days of the internet made it seem like anything was possible. Our generation brought our natural tendency to tinker, explore, and understand the physical realm into the digital world, becoming invaluable masters of the web. This has been the millennial superpower in the tech industry, and even those of us who built our skills through self-taught methods have been able to make careers out of the coding experience we gained.
On the other side of the spectrum, my time as a theatre kid taught me to block scenes and visualize how actors move through space to tell a story effectively. It taught me to adapt to different situations and think about scenarios from multiple angles. Now, I use that same spatial and critical thinking to map out user journeys or complex business logic. That ability to see the big picture while managing the details directly results from my foundational days of learning to code.
Understanding how technology works requires a much broader knowledge base than when I was teaching myself HTML after drama rehearsals. I could pick up the languages of the early internet in a relatively short time, but today's kids must develop a deeper foundation before they can truly harness the power of today’s tech. This is why focusing on coding skills early is more essential than ever.
Looking back, I often wish I'd had access to something like iD Tech when I was growing up. While I'm grateful for my self-taught journey, having structured guidance from experts and a community of like-minded peers would have accelerated my learning tremendously. Instead of piecing together knowledge through trial and error, I could have built a more solid foundation and explored advanced concepts much earlier. The mentorship and hands-on projects that iD Tech provides would have helped me connect the dots between my creative interests and technical skills years before I figured it out on my own.
My time at iD Tech has taught me that coding and STEM skills are valuable in virtually every career path, not just traditional tech roles. Whether your kids are heading into business, healthcare, entertainment, education, or even the arts, understanding how technology works and thinking like a programmer will give them an edge that's hard to match. In a world where digital tools touch every industry, the ability to understand systems, solve problems methodically, and create solutions is universally valuable. I've seen colleagues in marketing, design, operations, customer service, and more all benefit from having even basic coding knowledge.
And now, as the technological landscape is being shaped yet again by AI, today’s kids need bigger skills for higher stakes. With AI tools that write code in seconds and generate everything from essays to entire applications, it's natural for parents to wonder, "Is learning to code still worth it?" The answer is a resounding "yes." Even with the power of modern AI tools and the era of “vibe coding,” the projects that truly stand the test of time are still designed and maintained by coders who understand what’s going on beneath the surface.
Whether today's students will be equipped to lead in the new, fast-moving, AI-infused landscape will depend directly on our ability to foster curiosity and instill a sense of novelty in the ways we educate future innovators. Yesterday belongs to us, pioneers of Web 1.0. Many of us stumbled into being coders.
Tomorrow belongs to those who make the deliberate choice, and the effort, to learn and speak the languages of technology fluently. Just as my experiments with HTML and CSS on the early web prepared me to excel in my coding career, today's students who learn the art of modern coding are preparing to thrive in careers we’ve yet to imagine.