Among the many careers to choose from, coding is starting to emerge rapidly in demand, but also in students gearing to that career path for multiple reasons. Many have a passion for their hobby with coding and would like to turn it into a career, others may be interested in it for the promise of a more than stable income. As it grows, though, many aren’t aware of the different aspects that can go into it locally and globally.

Junior Christian Portell has been teaching himself to code since he was in fourth grade. Using a variety of online resources like YouTube, he has created various projects from animations to games. He hopes to follow his father in the career working with him at Boeing, an aerospace and defense corporation.

“You’re gonna try to do something, and then you’re gonna fail over and over,” Portell said. “And it’s just the problem-solving aspect to make it work, that’s the part that I enjoy.”

Then there’s senior Savanna Degenhardt and Co-Founder of the girls robotics team. She came into coding in fifth grade when she was taught through her middle school robotics program, she is also partially self taught. She hopes to go into geospatial intelligence and computer science looking at things like GPS tracking. This can show the variety of the field from coding with various companies like flight control software, to collecting data of the Earth through this technology. 

Coding can be used through a variety of platforms, with it also being used for games to web developing to map making. As they all have their levels of difficulty a good knowledge and experience is often needed to start-out professionally. Issues can arise as trial and error may not work with all fields and having a strong skill to problem solve which is where experience becomes invaluable. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s pros; this career can often offer flexibility and strong creativity depending on the specific job role.

“A lot of people are going into it at varying skill levels,” Degenhardt said. “If you say ‘Oh yeah, I want to major in computer science’, I think you should have some kind of experience in computer science before you make that call although I do think it is a great and lucrative and growing field.”