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Ask HN: Non-technical founder -- how do I become a better coder?

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Re: Ask HN: Non-technical founder -- how do I become a better coder?

#11

Post by blakerson »

sliksal02 wrote: post #5
makecheck wrote: post #4

Even if you've done C++ before and want to target mobile, I'd still recommend starting with a forgiving language such as Python. Python is simple so you can be immediately productive. It has lots of documentation, it's easy to search the web for examples and even if you won't use it for mobile it will remain a valuable skill. Mastering a simple language can also be like the first 50% of your goal. While Python is not…

Thank you. Can you recommend any books I should be reading on Python? I'm more inclined to just read the Beginner's Guide on the Python Wiki, but just in case I'd be missing out on a key resource, please let me know.

Also check out MIT's OpenCourseWare since they use Python in lower-level CS classes. Here's their non-major Intro to CS class, which comes with videos (YouTube or iTunes U), code, and a book or two in PDF form:

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

Re: Ask HN: Non-technical founder -- how do I become a better coder?

#12

Post by nhangen »

saiko-chriskun wrote: post #2

Mobile development (in my experience) is generally a bit harder to get into that just standard web development. You could try something like PhoneGap or just plain web-friendly mobile development first to see if that works out well enough, but if you go native you'll have to fully learn Java / Objective-C (for the android and iphone, respectively.) As for web development languages / frameworks that are beginner-frien…

I'm a front end guy trying to learn mobile, and my experience has been that iPhone programming has a steep learning curve. I bought every book on the market, and memberships to sites like Peepcode and Think Vitamin, and still barely feel competent.

I think what helped me most was paying for development, and then scouring over the code to see what I could learn, while playing with features and Interface builder until I was able to make progress.

As I said, I'm still far from productive, but it at least makes sense.

I once toyed with the idea of building a place for freelance dev's with extra time on their hands could fill their hour gaps by teaching people to code, but that's still on the back burner for now.

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