My parents bought me a Macintosh in 1984 when I was 8 years old.

I was in sixth grade.

I learned to code in college.

Freshman year, first semester of intro to computer science.

I wrote a program to play tic-tac-toe.

And it was pretty humble beginnings I think. The first program I wrote asked things like what is your favorite color, or how old are you.

I first learned how to make a green circle and then a red square appear on the screen.

The first time I actually had something come up and say "Hello World".

And I made the computer do that, it was just astonishing.

Learning to program didn't start off as wanting to learn all of computer science or trying to master this discipline or anything like that.

I just started off because I wanted to do this one simple thing.

I wanted to make something that was fun for myself and my sisters.

And I wrote this little program then basically just added a little bit to it.

And then when I needed to learn something new, I looked it up, either in a book or on the Internet.

And added a little bit to it.

It's really not unlike kind of playing an instrument or something or playing sport.

It starts out being very intimidating but you kind of get the hang of it over time.

Coding is something that can be learned and I know it can be intimidating and a lot of things are intimidating. But you know, what isn't?

A lot of the coding that people do is actually fairly simple.

It's more about the process of breaking down problems then you know sort of coming up with complicated algorithms as people traditionally think about it.

You don't have to be a genius to know how to code. You need to be determined.

Additions, subtractions. That's about it.

You should probably know your multiplication tables.

You don't have to be a genius to code. Do you have to be a genius to read?

Even if you want to become a race car driver, or play baseball or you know, build a house, all of these things have been turned upside down by software.

What it is, you know, computers are everywhere. You want to work in agriculture? Do you want to work in entertainment?

Do you want to work in manufacturing? It's, it's just all over.

Here we are 2013. We all depend on technology to communicate, to bank. Information.

And none of us know how to read and write code.

When I was in school, I was in this after school group called "The Wiz Kids".

And when people found out they laughed at me, you know, these things.

And I'm like: man, I don't care. I think it's cool and I'm learning it a lot, and some of my friends have jobs.

Our policy is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find.

The whole limit in the system is just that there just aren't enough people who are trained and have these skills today.

To get the very best people, we try to make the offices as awesome as possible.

We have a fantastic chef.

Free food

Breakfast, lunch and dinner

Free laundry

Snacks

Even places to play video games and scooters.

There's all this kind of interesting things around the office, places where people can play or relax or go to think or play music or be creative.

Whether you're trying to make a lot of money or whether you just change the world, computer programming is an incredibly empowering skill to learn.

I think if someone had told me that software is really about humanity.

It's really about helping people by using computer technology, it would have changed my outlook a lot earlier.

To be able to actually come up with an idea and then see it in your hands and be able to press a button and have it be in millions of people's hands.

I mean, I think we're the first generation in the world that's really ever had that kind of experience.

Just think that you can start something in your college dorm room

and you can have a set of people that haven't built a big company before come together and build something that

a billion people use as part of their daily lives. It is just crazy if you think about it.

And it's really, it's humbling and it's amazing.

The programmers of tomorrow are the wizards of the future, you know, you're gonna look like you have magic powers compared to everybody else.

It's amazing. It's I think it's the closest thing we have to a super power.

Great coders are today's rockstars. That's it.