8 IT and Languages

Information is stored in the form of languages. This is true for information in your head. It is also true for information stored in computer systems. To master IT, you have to practice moving information back and forth from one language to another. Computer scientists invent new computer languages all the time. Human languages do not change so quickly – but they do change. As technology evolves, human languages invent new terms to keep up with the technology. To be effective at IT, you need to learn how people talk about IT. You also need to translate human ideas into computer code and back again. When you can program a computer to communicate effectively with people, you are on the way to mastering IT!

Remember, just like a computer has a “stack” of different softwares to do its work, your mind also has its own “stack” of different things you have learned over the years. Consider the case of a student who is born in a different country and now studies IT in the United States. To learn a new computer language, that student will need to master a language stack like the one below.

Before the student can really get started on the new computer language, he or she will need to learn enough English to live and work in the U.S. Beyond just basic things like finding a place to live and getting food to eat, the student will also need to learn specialized words used only for going to college. These words are not common knowledge. Even native English speakers who are the first generation in their families to attend college need to learn quite a bit about how college works! There is nothing automatic about it. Unless someone shows you how college works, you may not figure it out. Then, for taking IT classes, you also have to learn about how computers in general work too. You need to be able to pick out an operating system. You need to know who much RAM you need. You need to understand how to get an Internet connection and how one Internet provider compares to another. Just having a cell phone or a tablet is not enough! You are going to be installing software – or even writing your own software – so you will need deeper knowledge of computers than an average computer user has. After all that – now you can begin to study an actual computer language! The new computer language sits on top of your entire language “stack”. Weakness at the levels of any of those lower languages will make it hard to study in your IT classes.