Learning How to Code for the First Time

Well, I never thought I would be learning HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) code as a marketing major, but here I am. Last night and this morning, I played around with the introductory HTML coding courses from W3 Schools and Codecademy. This wasn't just playing around with building blocks like I did back in elementary and middle school, it was in a format like my cover picture (except way less complex).

Codecademy: A Clear Winner

Between the two online HTML coding courses I tried, the Learn HTML: Fundamentals course from Codecademy was a clear winner over the course I found from W3 Schools. The dealbreaker for me was how the material and lessons were delivered. Codecademy had more of an interactive format whereas W3 Schools was structured like "chapters" in a textbook with opportunities to add your own text with prewritten code. Not to mention, a new tab would open whenever I wanted to try whatever was being talked about on W3 Schools, and I don't like having a million tabs on a browser.

The Codecademy Experience

When I first started the course, it had a very similar interface as DataCamp, which was used in my Principles of Management Information Systems class taught by Christopher B. Califf and Jennifer Long, MBA at Western Washington University. Through DataCamp, we would have weekly labs that covered Microsoft Excel, SQL, and AWS. In terms of the SQL and AWS labs, Codecademy felt very familiar. Here is some code I wrote in Codecademy, and the final product I reached during the course.

Coding, in this example sort of reminded me of writing and structuring essays throughout middle and high school, since you had to insert code at the start and end of a paragraph (as shown in line 5 pictured above). I remembered having to follow a specific five paragraph format starting with the "intro" paragraph, then the "three body paragraphs," then the "conclusion" paragraph. Coding seemed like that except with a lot more freedom. Like I mentioned earlier, Codecademy was also very easy to use with clear examples and instructions given for a specific task as shown here:

Coding in Digital Marketing

At this point, you may be wondering why I was tasked with learning how to code as a marketing student. To my surprise, coding gives digital marketers more control over their strategies so they can drive better results. I found an article that listed five ways that coding can benefit digital marketers, and I'll focus on two that I found important.

With the help of coding, digital marketers can extract valuable insights from data. Programming languages can be used to manipulate and analyze large datasets to uncover trends, patterns, and customer behavior. I like to think of this as being able to view and analyze data in a way that works for you and your business objectives too.

Perhaps the most important benefit I came across is that basic coding knowledge can streamline collaboration between digital marketers and developers. When digital marketers understand coding language, they can effectively communicate their ideas and requirements to developers, resulting in a more efficient implementation process for digital marketing initiatives.

Final Thoughts

Overall, basic coding knowledge can serve digital marketers very well because it fosters relationships with developers, and optimizes data analysis on the marketing side of things. There are many great (and free) ways to learn the basics of code, and I highly recommend Codecademy for the interactive learning, hints for when you are stuck, and clear examples.