Everyone's gotta start somewhere. My advice to you is to stop worrying about how long it's going to take you to do what you want. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and working towards that (those?) goal(s) and you'll be there before you know it. If you've worked with startups before, just not the technical side, talk with some of the programmers you know and ask them to give you a lesson or two or even just direct you towards some good resources and cheat-sheets (these are a lifesaver for me). Just stop worrying about the time; you'll drive yourself crazy and it will feel like going nowhere fast.
Ask HN: Zero programming experience and badly want to learn. Where to start?
41–46 of 46 posts
Re: Ask HN: Zero programming experience and badly want to learn. Where to start?
#42Was it weeks/months/years until you felt comfortable writing an entire Web app with basic functionality?
Felt comfortable? Probably months.
Looking back -- was actually competent? I'm not sure that I am now but I'd wager 2-3 years before I knew enough to both code an app, debug said app, and secure the app.
Re: Ask HN: Zero programming experience and badly want to learn. Where to start?
#43I can also relate to this problem ? I want to learn programming from scratch. Should I start with C and then go for C++ and then to Python or which way ? For me difficulty of learning is of no concern, I can manage ? But how and where to start ?
Re: Ask HN: Zero programming experience and badly want to learn. Where to start?
#44Choose a programming language, and write an application where anyone can add links+titles, and people can leave comments on them. Doing something will make you learn a lot more than reading books.
Re: Ask HN: Zero programming experience and badly want to learn. Where to start?
#45I've been programming for probably 17 years, since high school, and just recently I appreciated JavaScript. For all its shortcomings, it's beautiful. If you'd just understand it, you would be able to easily understand other languages, dynamic or otherwise.
If you'd just understand it, you would be able to easily understand other languages, dynamic or otherwise. I am genuinely curious to know why you think so.
Sorry for delayed reply. I think so because JavaScript, with its prototype system, dynamic typing and closures, makes various famous language features and their implementations explicit, while other languages may hide their inner workings in the name of simplicity, safety, etc. Thus, by learning JavaScript first, one can bypass the reverence for OOishness espoused by Java or C#, and yet understand them better because "class", "type", "object" in JavaScript understood to be not atomic concepts, but constructable pieces of code. With JavaScript, one starts interacting with inner workings of the language very early in the learning process. Really, in which language one learns about events first? Remember "onClick"? Sure, interaction starts at level 0, but that's great because already the value of events is understood without writing a single "public static main voiid".
Re: Ask HN: Zero programming experience and badly want to learn. Where to start?
#46Was it weeks/months/years until you felt comfortable writing an entire Web app with basic functionality? Comfortable? I don't know. Capable? a few months. Starting to flesh out your ideas? Within 1 month of starting an EARNEST effort to learn what it takes to write web apps. I was in your shoes about 15 months ago (roughly). I had ideas and wanted to be at least "sort of" able to flesh them out on my own. I had more…
caveat emptor: Eric and I are co-founders, so I'm obviously biased.
I was the guy he emailed saying "want a free intern?" and I can safely say: listen to what he wrote above and execute on it. It is straight up good advice. For one, I've been writing code with Eric since he just wanted to hang out and watch me and another person write code, and he's made progress that I would've doubted was possible a-priori. Just having a resourceful predisposition is half the battle.
The reality is that it probably takes ~10 years to get to the level where you are proficient in all the relevant areas to make a scalable, robust, well-designed web application. Most projects you'll take on won't make it to the stage where those are relevant. The only way to get there is by doing and doing over again.