Can You Learn To Code In One Day? We Sent A Non-Nerd To Find Out
  BY Louise Jack
  A U.K.-based program called Decoded promises to teach n00's to 
code in a day.  Writer Louise Jack (and many ad industry types) 
signed on to find out if they can walk in with a civilian's basic 
web knowledge and walk out with an app.
  If so many people's jobs are touched by the Internet and 
digital technology, then how come so few of us have even a basic 
understanding of how things work? This is the fundamental 
question behind a new course in the U.K.  called Decoded which 
promises to teach people how to code in one day.
  There are plenty of courses and a seemingly endless series of 
conferences, workshops and events that discuss "being more 
digital" and "integration" and which encourage a change of 
mindset.  But really, if you are in the creative or 
communications industries on any level and you haven't already 
addressed this, then what have you been doing for the last 5-10 
years? Decoded's aim is to go beyond changing mindsets and 
actually teach non-developers how to code.
  Decoded was founded this year by a team of four that includes 
the influential London-based ad creative Steve Henry, Kathryn 
Parsons and Richard Peters, both former planners at Ogilvy Group 
and the founders of The Scarlett Mark, a hard-to-pigeonhole 
agency that has focused on content creation, product development 
and innovation and Alisdair Blackwell, an award winning 
web-designer and developer, who is also a passionate educator.
  "The internet is beyond doubt the prime medium for 
communications and commerce.  Unlike TV, it's a two-way tool," 
says Henry.  "And yet how many people know how it works? Probably 
less than 3%.was
  I went along to a Decoded training day intrigued by the claim 
that by the end of eight hours I would be able to build a 
multi-platform location-based app in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.  
It's not that I thought they were lying, I just couldn't see how 
that would happen.  It did.
  My only previous experience with coding was a module of my 
journalism degree that required me to build a simple publishing 
website in HTML.  This was seven years ago and in the intervening 
period the tools that help users to access and utilize code have 
been transformed.  In other words, if I can do it, anyone can.
  The day is broken into two main parts.  First, participants are 
taken through a condensed history of the internet, explaining 
significant events and developments.  Although I was really 
familiar with the names: Google, Yahoo, Internet Explorer, HTML 
etc and thought I understood what they were and are, I hadn't 
really grasped how they all connected or how a development in one 
area--for example, browsers--leads to changes in other areas.  It 
was like having the lights switched on.
  We were then taken through the three kinds of code that we 
would be working with; HTML5, CSS and JavaScript and got a better 
understanding of the purpose of each.  However, we are not 
talking about dumbing down coding; there is no pretence that it 
is either easy or simple.  The complexities are acknowledged but 
that does not mean a useful understanding cannot be achieved.
  Nobody is expected to leave being able to look at pages of 
compressed code and to nod knowingly.  But what became clear is 
you don't have to.  There are a range of helpful tools (we used 
Coda on the day but many options exist) where the process is 
simplified.  Moreover, the world of developers, which many of us 
think of as being a closed one, is actually completely the 
opposite.  Since the dawn of internet time a culture of 
open-source and shared knowledge has been the norm for them.  (In 
other words, if there have been problems communicating with 
technologists -- it's not them, it's us).
  There is nothing stopping a semi-skilled person tapping into 
that community and asking for help.  Plus, there are huge 
libraries of pieces of code for almost any function you can 
imagine.  All free, all put there by the developers' community 
for the greater good.  All you have to do is be able to use 
Google to locate what you want.
  We had a brainstorming session where we nailed exactly what 
functionality the app we were going to build should have.  The 
idea was that the app would deliver a new message to someone's 
mobile device when they came with a certain distance of a 
particular location.  The planning session was enlightening 
because what became obvious is that it's easy to describe how you 
want a user experience to feel -- friendly, welcoming and so on 
-- but what you specifically want an application to do is 
separate to that.  If you need to brief or collaborate with 
developers, briefing on the former is of little help when they 
really need to know about the latter.
  Part two: We snapped open the Macs and got into it.  Yes, we 
all made mistakes.  But no one was left behind and there is 
something great about getting in and making something.  At the 
end, with all bugs finally sorted, when I refreshed the browser 
and the thing almost unbelievably, actually worked, I clapped my 
hands and beamed like a five-year old that had just completed a 
complex Lego construction.  It is fun.
  So to whom would this really be of use and why? Founder Richard 
Peters says: "We don't tell people what their outputs should be.  
What people take away from it will be different; they are all 
intelligent they all have different roles.  You see during the 
day, it elevates quite high thinking from different people about 
different things.  One person might say, `What can I do with all 
this data`, whereas others are thinking about how can they can 
build an app and someone else might thinking, `I'm getting ripped 
off".  What people take out of it depends on what they bring into 
it."
  Mel Exon, founder of BBH Labs the innovation unit of agency 
BBH, also attended Decoded and is sending ten people from her 
team.  She says: "Everyone in business today needs to get a grip 
on this.  We are sending strategists, creatives and some team 
management people.  When we have a better-than-skin-deep 
understanding of technology, two things happen: we have better 
ideas and we also treat our internal and external partners in a 
considerably more effective manner."
  Exon adds: "I think it's wrong when people use expressions like 
`the language the developer can understand` and make them sound 
like an alien nation.  It's not an alien nation; they are human 
beings who have just got a particular skill set.  It's about 
speeding up and improving our relationships with the people who 
are actually writing code."
  The benefits to this are immediately apparent because if the 
developer has the right information then he or she is then freed 
to have more time to think about different ways of addressing the 
functional needs that are being sought.
  Exon says: "One other thing is creativity happens through the 
act of coding.  When you're actually in there writing code, you 
have a hundred ideas, you suddenly see something in eight 
dimensions instead of two but it was only in the act -- beyond 
the planning stage--that this happened."
  Copyright B) 2011 Mansueto Ventures LLC.  All rights reserved.


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