Why do Digital and Coding Literacy Matter?
Now that we've walked through a high level definition for what digital literacy is. Now let's discuss the importance of digital literacy in all kinds of different fields.
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So, first and foremost, if you want to be a developer, digital literacy is an absolute must. You're going to have to understand all kinds of different topics in order to build-out applications. You're going to have to understand how web browsers work. You're going to have to understand the basics to start off of various programming languages and why you'd pick one programming language over another. So, from a developer's perspective, that's what's needed.

But what if you don't want to become a developer on a long-term basis? Maybe your aspirations are to be a CEO or some type of high ranking executive in your company, you still need to have digital literacy. And I want to talk about a tale of two CEO's that I've worked for through the years. So, one was a non-technical CEO and the other one did have a form of digital literacy. They weren't a programmer per se, but they did understand the high-level concepts and skills required in order to build-out applications.

With the first CEO, the non-technical one, every project that I worked on with them was a struggle. They constantly had expectations that didn't match with reality. They wanted outcomes, so they wanted the application to do things that either, weren't possible or weren't really practical. And so, the end result was that we had a number of failed applications, the company wasted quite a bit of money and everyone on both sides of the team, on the executive team and with the developers was just, constantly frustrated.

Now, let's compare that with the second CEO I mentioned, he's actually the CEO of Bottega and he has some experience in programming. He doesn't build any applications, currently, but he has in the past. He definitely has a very strong form of digital literacy. He understands various programming languages, he knows when you'd want to use one versus the other. He understands the way that databases work and all of these kinds of high-level concepts.

Working with him is much more efficient than that first CEO. When we plan out a project, he has the proper expectations on how long that project is going to take. He also has a solid understanding of the resources needed. So, how many developers are going to be needed? How many Project Managers? What the capital expense is going to be for servers? And because of that, each one of the projects we work on has a much higher level of success. And also, each one of the developers on the team really enjoys the process much more.

So far, we've talked about the importance of digital literacy for executives and also for developers. But, what if you don't want to do either one of those things? Having a solid idea of digital literacy is still important. And the reason for that is because the digital world has touched every area of our lives in some form or another. Whether it's financial markets, politics, or even real estate. You can't really escape it anymore, and so whenever you can have a higher understanding of how the Internet works, or how complex data systems work, or anything like that. It's going to give you a leg up in every part of your life.