Parlez-vous francais?

Never learning to play a musical instrument or speak a foreign language are two of the most common regrets cited by people with first-world problems. Increasingly, however, 21st century denizens regret never learning to code. This is escalated every time there are stories about nine-year-olds making a fortune on Apple's app store, or garage developers delivering an IPO in less than a decade. Computer code is the French of the modern world. People either speak it, or wish they did.

Code has been democratised.

Simon Dingle, contributor, ITWeb

One person who really desires coding abilities is New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said learning to program is on his agenda for 2012, as part of a plan to make New York the new innovation centre of... well, the world. For his own education, he has signed up with an initiative called Code Year, launched by New York start-up Codeacademy.

Code Year is an ingenious initiative. You simply sign up at codeyear.com and receive a short JavaScript tutorial in your e-mail for every week of 2012. Those of us enrolled in the system are currently on week seven.

The bite-sized tutorials have been very thoughtfully developed, presenting concepts in JavaScript with easy-to-follow lessons. While there are many initiatives that teach people to code online, Code Year is the first to develop this for the layman who only has a few minutes to spare every week.

I only discovered Code Year recently via my friend Stafford Masie, but catching up with the programme hasn't been a problem, thanks to its thoughtful presentation. JavaScript is also a great language to learn and is supplementing my - admittedly shallow - knowledge of PHP and other languages nicely.

In 2009, there were an estimated 26 130 computer scientists in the USA with a median wage of almost $100 000 per year, according to WolframAlpha. The population of computer professionals has been decreasing since 2007, but interest in the field is increasing, say some analysts, as more and more people are exposed to apps via their smartphones and tablets.

A revolution is under way as individuals take charge of their own technology. Code has been democratised and you can now also design and deploy your own hardware with relative ease.

Arduino, the open source hardware initiative, is just one example of this.

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine in the USA, is vocal about the movement represented by Arduino and others. He believes we're on the cusp of a new industrial revolution.

With affordable design software, the rise of 3D printing and small-order Chinese manufacturing, anyone can be a vendor. Crowd-funding platforms like Kickstarter unlock funding for these ventures too, allowing anyone to contribute to projects they would like to see progressed.

One can also distribute the process of developing software and hardware thanks to the current state of the Internet. Anderson has developed an unmanned flying drone with the help of online collaborators, via his Web site diydrones.com.

This reality also relieves the sentiments expressed by science fiction author and online activist Cory Doctorow, shortly after the launch of Apple's iPad. Doctorow lamented the control mechanisms that Apple places on users of and developers for its tablet computer. He said that he grew up in a world in which things could be ripped apart and reassembled to one's liking, and he wants the same for his children.

Those of us who grew up building our own computers and hacking away at them until the early hours of the morning know what he's talking about. In my case, many hours committed to rolling my own Linux kernels, was a liberating experience. It taught me a hell of a lot about computing in general and allowed me to specify an operating system platform exactly suited to my own needs.

The era being described by Anderson and his peers certainly doesn't suggest a dystopian world in which our every thought and expression is controlled by a corporation. It does spell good things for China, however - which should be a separate discussion.

In the current scenario presented to people lucky enough to have access to personal computers and the Internet, the world certainly can be disassembled and rearranged. Our children will have a choice, however - to embrace technology, learn to develop it and become the moguls of the next revolution, or to ignore all of that and happily engage with products that don't stretch their imaginations too far, while still allowing them to get on with things.

I know what I want for my children. And if they were old enough, I'd be enrolling them in Code Year. Alas, the mites aren't quite literate yet. Until they are, dad will start with basic concepts and spatial awareness drills. My hope is that they'll be fluent in the new French one day, should they so wish. I look forward to using their products.