📚 Are There Generational Differences In First Coding Languages and Learning Resources?

"Under the age of 39? Odds are that most of your peers learned to code in C. "Most Baby Boomers and Gen Xers — or, those between the ages of 40 and 74 in 2020 — learned to code in BASIC." That's just one of the interesting conclusions from HackerRank's third annual "Developer Skills Report," which this year compiled responses from over 116,000 developers (from 162 different countries). Developed for educational use in 1964, BASIC was a popular instructional language in college classrooms. But that began to change in 1972, when Bell Labs invented C, allowing portability of the Unix operating system. Though it wasn't an instant hit, the language rose to popularity in the late 70s and early 80s alongside the growth of Unix. Today, the language is celebrated for its longevity, flexibility, and ease of use — just some of the reasons it's still popular for Gen Zers learning to code today. Gen Z is more likely than any previous generation to utilize bootcamps. Nearly one in six say they've leveraged bootcamps to learn new skills. On the flip side, they're less likely to learn coding skills from older generations' go-tos, like books and on-the-job training. As Gen Z comes to rely more heavily on non-traditional education sources like bootcamps, they're poised to become a key talent pool. Jaxenter also summarizes another interesting finding from the survey. "72% of hiring managers reported that bootcamp grads were equally or better equipped for their job." The I-Programmer site even noted the top reasons managers gave the surveyors for why bootcamp grads exceed: Ability to learn new technologies & languages quickly (71%)Strong practical experience (61%)Eager to take on new responsibilities (52%) And they also summarizes another interesting result. "Almost of third of developers at small companies (1-49 employees) haven't obtained a Bachelor's degree -- a proportion that drops to only 9% in companies with 10,000 or more employees."

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