

Yes, learn basic programming - spindritf
https://sivers.org/prog

======
jiggy2011
While I personally like the DIY ethic I would be somewhat hesitant to
recommend a novice starts developing production web apps.

For example , someone has a great idea for a site, picks up a basic PHP book,
reads all of the "advice" on PHP.net and hacks it all together with a few copy
and pastes from various coding forums.

Let's say they get some traction and pick up a few hundred users who start
putting personal info in there , reusing their bank password and linking it to
all of their social media accounts.

Problem is that the app is a mess of md5 or plaintext passwords and
unsanitised input and when that thing gets owned by some hacker it can have
real consequences to those users who trusted it.

This might be slightly hypocritical though, since this is basically how I
learned to code in my early days but now people have so much of their life
online that the stakes are a little higher.

~~~
nnq
...not to be mean, but if you reuse passwords without at least having 2 of
them (one for secure, money related stuff and another for everything else),
you deserve having your account cleaned and identity stolen.

Considering the world we leave in, I think that _"basic personal informational
security", like not reusing passwords, not executing email attachments and not
falling for basic social engineering scams should be mandatory thought in
schools starting from 10 year olds_ , and have something like "medium personal
information security" (with knowledge of what a secued connection - green
browser bar is, what a digital signature and key based authentication or
multi-factor auth are) mandatory for all people handling other's personal
information, even for the lowest public functionaries. These things should be
drilled down into peoples' heads not matter they want to learn it or not, just
as you don't ask your 7 year old whether he _wants_ to learn to read and
write, you just tell him he has to. _It shouldn't matter whether you're a
literature major or maybe you haven't even graduated high school, but if you
have anything to do with handling others information - and 90% of people do
have - you should know basic infosec just as you need to know to read and
write! It's ugly, but we're living in an ugly world and in the middle of a
war, even if it's invisible, and we should adapt to it!_

~~~
jiggy2011
Even people who follow a sensible password policy could fall victim if a site
that they trust is compromised and their personal information is used against
them in part of a bigger scam.

The problem with providing Infosec education is that the threats change faster
than we could reasonably hope to keep people up to date with them and even
programmers struggle to truly understand it all.

------
andrewcross
As another anecdote, despite having two technical co-founders for my first
startup, I taught myself how to code. I consider it the best move I've made in
the last 5 years.

Now on my 2nd startup, my highly technical co-founder recently left. If I
hadn't learned how to code, I'd be in full panic mode right now. Going from
"the business guy" a couple years ago to being able to build an MVP is huge.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Good on you. It baffles me that so many people seem simply _unwilling_ to
learn how to do the things they want to do.

~~~
nnq
> un _willing_ to learn how to do the things they want to do

Translating what you just said: they just don't really want to learn it!
(yeah, they feel good when they _say they want to lean it_ , but they don't
really want that - they want _just some of the benefits of knowing a certain
thing_ \- like coding - but they are not willing to invest the required effort
to reap those benefits)

------
ebertx
I have a friend who has a Master's in Entertainment Arts & Engineering (with
and emphasis on the _arts_ ) and is going back to get a bachelor's in computer
science for this very reason. Maybe it's overkill, but he's definitely tired
of depending on other people to build his stuff for him.

------
apl002
This could not be more true. Forever, i said the same shit. I have amazing
ideas but I know nothing about programming. I started learning html and css
and love it. Cant wait to master it before moving on to another language. It
truly is rewarding and I certainly look at websites differently.

~~~
hardik988
Congratulations! It's always great to read about new programmers.

------
nthnclrk
I have no issue with HTML/CSS and a bit of Javascript. But still find it
surprisingly hard to get my head around native development languages (C,
Obj-C, Python etc)

As someone who is also learning to program, I think the most difficult things
are not the actual languages and using the right syntax etc. It's the meta
information and terms that are used, as well as a lot of tutorials making
assumptions ie. I had to find out what a 'gem' was.

Recently starting to look at Ruby, I had to work out the different between a
live environment like irb and just having code written into a text editor such
as Sublime.

I have a feeling that these kinds of things throw people off, and I'm yet to
find a great resource that really explains these things clearly all in one
place.

~~~
schiang
Ruby is a good language to learn. There are a massive amount of resources out
there for people trying to learn. Check out codecademy or codeschool for their
tutorials. They can really help you learn the basics.

Another tip is try to actually build some basic programs. You can learn so
much more from building something than reading about it.

~~~
sdoering
I couldn't get my head around ruby, when I tried. Python stuck.

So in my opinion, it is something, that has to fit to oneself. So my
recommendation would be to try some things on codeacademy (or anything like
this) and see what fits.

And no, I will not wander into the "this language is better territory" ;-)

------
schiang
I was in the same boat nearly a year ago. I had knowledge of HTML and CSS and
not much else. Since then, I've learned Ruby, Rails, and a little of
Objective-C. I feel so much better now that I have the confidence to build
anything I want.

I definitely recommend anyone that wants to learn programming to go all in and
pick up a few languages.

------
IheartApplesDix
Learn BASIC programming?

~~~
stesch
I read the article just because I thought someone will explain why I should
learn BASIC.

I gave up on BASIC in the 1980s. Maybe something cool has happened and I'm
missing out?

~~~
jonsen
I didn't give up on BASIC in the 1980s. Nothing wrong with BASIC per se. Back
then I wrote an assembler in BASIC for this processor
<http://www.cpushack.com/tag/8x305/> We were imbedding an 8X305 in a
communications adapter and needed to extend it with some special instructions.

