Ask HN: Zero programming experience and badly want to learn. Where to start?

I have zero programming experience, since I work mostly on the nontechnical side of start-ups. Ruby and other languages are extremely interesting to me and I am definitely interested in learning how to use them, but I want to have a basic idea of the time involved. Was it weeks/months/years until you felt comfortable writing an entire Web app with basic functionality?

The problem I have is that I have at least one idea that I'm really interested in fleshing out, and I'm wondering whether I'm going to have to sit on it for a year if I want to code the web app myself. Like I said, I'm usually on the non-technical end of start-ups.

I started learning python in March of this year. I couldn't tell you how much time I've put into it - it's hard to keep track of.

Within two months I had my first rudimentary web app up and running. I used Django for the app itself and used linode for the hosting.

Now it's not a great app by any means. It doesn't make a real contribution to the world. But the experience was enormously satisfying and genuinely life changing.

One thing that astonished me was that I had to learn a whole lot less than I thought I would in order to actually get something done. One of my best mates has been coding in PHP for years and years and watching him made me think that the process of deploying a webapp was monumental. I thought - wow, I have to learn html, mysql, css, before I can even make use of my pythony backend.

But it's just not true anymore. There is so much free code out there - enormous amounts. It's a wonder to me now why everyone isn't coding. It's really only one level of effort removed beyond learning to deal with the shitty interface on over hyped product X you just blew your hard earned on.

Just over six months on from the time I started - I certainly don't count myself particularly skilled as a coder - not by any means. But no matter what I think up to do next, within a few days I've figured out how to do it. I kinda feel like there just isn't anything I can't do if I put my mind to it. As my confidence grows I come up with ever more ambitious ideas. It's a wonderful feeling.

So stop worrying about how much time it's gonna take you to get to your (probably myopically) perceived endpoint - and just get on with putting code to screen to see what you can do right now. It's a lot more than you think.

A must read before starting the journey.. http://norvig.com/21-days.html

If Ruby intrigues you, there's no better place to start than with the Poignant Guide:

http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/

If you've never programmed before, the effort would be comparable to becoming fluent in another language or becoming proficient with a musical instrument.

When learning programming for the first time, you'll be able to do some basic things pretty quickly, similarly to how you can learn basic phrases/words in another language or learn how to do scales/simple songs with a new instrument. But to get to the point to be able to code any idea you have into reality it takes much more time. As in years, not months.