Why Are There Not More Coders?

In trying to answer the question “why are there not more coders?” I started to look for data. As someone who enjoys coding I always presumed most folks that tried to learn would also like it and there was simply a challenge of spreading the word. However the data tells a bleaker story.

By the Numbers

• Out of 500 people who joined Reddit’s /r/learnprogramming community 12 became software engineers and found a job.
  • Most popular reason to stop: “I realized I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would” - 191 out of 226 people (84%)
• Only 1% of the people who intend to get a certificate from Harvard’s CS50x course, their most popular MOOC, obtain it.
• BLS notes there is a growth of a 162,000 software jobs a year, and many of the openings are from people exiting the field.