If you had told my teenage computer-loving, theatre-kid self that I'd end up coding for a living, I would have laughed while adjusting my spotlight. Yet here I am, in my third year as the Email Marketing Manager at iD Tech, where the connection between STEM and the stage makes perfect sense.
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. And no matter how much technology evolves, I’ll never forget the satisfying clicks and beeps of my dial-up modem connecting to the early web or the awful screeching sound of someone picking up the landline while you were online.
As a millennial kid who loved tech, I spent countless hours on Angelfire and GeoCities (IYKYK), painstakingly learning HTML and CSS to build my corner of the internet devoted to anything representing my personality. From a cheese for every letter of the alphabet to my favorite dinosaurs from Jurassic Park, this brand-new digital frontier was a miraculous place that allowed a creative freedom we’d never had before. Think: the endless Minecraft worlds of today, except with 56kbps.
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 to become 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 through email campaigns. When my boss asks for a complex marketing project, I instinctively break it down into components, just like a director breaking down a script into beats. That ability to see the big picture while managing the details directly results from my coding experience.
My manager recently told me I'm "best in class" at my job, and I know it's because of this unique combination of skills. The unseen web of abilities that make me effective at problem-solving, logical thinking, and creative visualization started when I began learning to code at eight years old. Those skills serve me every day, regardless of whether I'm writing a complex email template or planning a marketing strategy.
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 modern technology. This is why focusing on coding skills early is more essential than ever.
Education teaches you to analyze. The educated mindset excels at dissecting and criticizing with questions like, “What did Shakespeare mean in this soliloquy? What were the major forces of this historical period?” Coding teaches you to create. The engineering mindset excels at building and improving with questions like, “How can I design a better email campaign? How can I automate this repetitive task?”
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 writing code in seconds and generating 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." Scroll through any news site and you'll read about how AI is replacing jobs. However, the reality is that the AI revolution makes coding education more critical than ever before and gives those who code a massive leg-up in almost any career.
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 novelty into the ways we educate future innovators. Yesterday belongs to us, pioneers of Web 1.0. Tomorrow belongs to those who make 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 modern digital marketing, today's students who learn the art of coding are preparing to thrive in careers we haven’t even imagined yet.