Think that learning to code is out of your grasp? Think again.
The talent crunch in Vancouver's booming tech sector has been widely documented, with HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes claiming that at the current hiring pace, their existing job openings won't be filled until late 2017.
Yet despite coding's undisputed position at the top of the career skills food chain, many would-be tech employees are struggling to leap into the mysterious world of computer programming.
"People have always wanted to program, but they've been afraid because they thought they'd need to be rocket scientists," says Malcolm Ferrier, who heads up the management program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
That fear is dwindling, he says, due to the abundance of options that people of all ages and experience levels can use to break into tech.
While traditional four-year computer science degrees still provide students with rigorous theoretical backgrounds, aspiring techies no longer need to spend four years (and $30,000 or more) to learn the skills necessary for day one on the job.
BCIT has a rich history of full- and part-time options for learning tech skills, both for aspiring programmers and for MBA types who want to equip themselves with more technological savvy.
For more than 30 years, BCIT has offered a rigorous two-year Computer Science Technology diploma that is designed to help people build apps at a very deep, industry-focused level. BCIT says that this diploma - which is also available part-time - has better job placement rates than many four-year degree programs.
If code still looks like Greek to you, there are plenty of cost-effective online options to help you get your feet wet. Sites like Codecademy and Code School offer free lessons to help you get the basics, while massive open online courses from Udacity, edX and Coursera give you free access to courses taught by Harvard and MIT instructors.
For a nominal fee - between $25 and $30 per month - you can upgrade to paid online sites such as Lynda.com or Treehouse, which offer curriculum-based tutorials aimed specifically at non-coders.
More recently, so-called coding "bootcamps" have emerged that turn non-programmers into employable website developers in eight extremely intensive weeks. Modeled after the likes of Toronto's BitMaker Labs, these courses boast a hands-on, practical focus on cutting-edge skills that the industry demands.
"The main thing is learning by doing," says Jay Holtslander, co-founder of CoreCode, a Vancouver coding school that offers bootcamps in Ruby on Rails and iOS.
A few blocks away at Launch Academy, coding school Lighthouse Labs sends its graduates on paid internships to help them put those practical skills to work. The results speak for themselves: every single graduate has been hired.
"Our biggest competition right now is perception," says Jeremy Shaki, co-founder at Lighthouse Labs. The perceived complexity of tech skills, he says, means that people are skeptical that they can learn so much in so little time.
"Changing your career is a huge risk," says Shaki, "but some of the jobs are so interesting that it's worth it."
Long the gold standard of techeducation, computer science degrees offer rigorous focus on the theoretical side of programming, though the languages taught are not always aligned with industry.
- University of British Columbia
- Simon Fraser University
- Vancouver Island University
With years of experience, partnerships and industry credibility, technical diplomas bridge the theoretical with the practical.
- BCIT's Computer Science Technology Diploma*
- BCIT's Business Information Systems Technology Management Diploma
- Langara College
- Kwantlen Polytechnic University
* Also available part-time, up to 7 years
An emerging alternative to traditional degrees and diplomas, these bootcamps offers eight-week, hyper-immersive courses on cutting-edge programming languages.
- CodeCore
- Lighthouse Labs
For non-coders and professionals alike, online education offers plenty of self-paced computer programming courses for free or a small monthly subscription.
- Codecademy
- Code School
- Lynda.com
- Treehouse
- Udacity
- edX
- Coursera
