Learning To Code - One Year In
The following is my story, along with lessons learned, of spending the past year learning how to code. It’s okay to disagree, your story may very well be different from mine.
Approximately one year ago from today, I was, like any missionary entrepreneur, ruthlessly pursuing the dream of building something that would “change the world.” Intense hours, lack of sunlight, and loads of stress defined my life. However, like many hopefuls I had one serious problem — I was in need of a technical co-founder. Drinking my own Kool-Aid led to becoming blind to my own shortcomings, and sooner than later this would come back to bite me where it mattered most.
Part of being an entrepreneur is the ability to take brutally honest feedback and evaluate it at face-value. This is something that every entrepreneur should be able to do from day one. Unfortunately enough for me this is something I was unable to do as a first-time founder. Like most entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley (and elsewhere), I sailed against the wind in pursuit of success. But my theories on starting a company were wrong. Every team member must be able to prove their value to potential recruits, and every team member has to provide equal or greater value than that of those before them. I foolishly chose to be ignorant to this.
What I’m trying to get at is, if you want to be a great leader, find your secret sauce. That skill that would make you a great addition to any team; the ying to your co-founders yang.
When it finally reached the point that my delusion would be overcome by real, logical thinking, my life changed forever. I dedicated most of the next year learning not only how to code, but how to provide tangible value. I began with baby steps, starting with HTML and eventually moving on to JavaScript MVCs like Backbone and Angular. Personally I’d say that if you’re not technical, you don’t even have to go this far. Start by learning web fundamentals like HTML and CSS, then if you become excited with possibilities of how much further you can go (like I did), move onto JavaScript. Practice by coding a personal site for yourself, maybe some sites for your friends — the possibilities are endless. Trust me when I say that this may seem like a lot of work, but it will totally be worth it in the long-run.
Learning even just a minuscule amount of web development comes with many benefits for founder/entrepreneurs. Here are a few, but the list goes on:
- You gain the ability to do rapid-prototyping.
- Gain respect from the developer community.
- Have an easier time interacting at developer meetups, which means easier time finding potential co-founders.
- Give away less of your company to outside investors.
I think I have rambled on long enough on the benefits of non-technical founders learning how to code. One last thing I’ll leave you with is a short list of the materials I used to get the basics down. Understand that once you reach a certain point it becomes easier/more comfortable to use resources like MDN and StackOverflow to solve your coding problems.
- Treehouse - Treehouse is an amazing web site with tons of materials to get you started on your path to becoming a front, back, or generalist programmer. It is subscription-based, but totally worth it.
- Codecademy - I’m sure most (if not all) of you know about this one. The style isn't my favorite, but I did learn a lot of basic JavaScript knowledge from the site.
- Code School - Lots of great content on language frameworks and libraries, like Backbone. I recommend this one once you get past the fundamentals.
- Eloquent JavaScript - Didn't read the whole book (which you really don’t have to with programming books), but it’s a great resource and pretty popular.
Now get back to making the world a better, more efficient place. If you got this far you should follow me on Twitter.
