
Founders who can't code - rokhayakebe
An advise to founders who can't code<p>If you are a business/idea guy and looking for a technical co founder, stop. Stop right now. Take 6 months off and go learn how to code (day and night, weekends including).<p>Most web apps do little besides save, show and update data. No, You will NOT become an engineer, programmer, or web developer, but you will be able to put a prototype of your idea together and maybe get one or two beta users for feedback. At this moment it will be much easier to recruit a technical cofounder.<p>The reason why most technical cofounders can create great products is not because they have a deep domain knowledge or they are great hackers. The reason is (beside passion for the problem) their cost is time. Your cost is money. They can spend one year working after hours to create a product. Can you pay someone for one year to create a product? They can fail 23 times and still find time to build their next idea. Can you convince your best friend to work on your 4th idea, when the previous 3 failed?<p>Here is the thing, 1 year from now, you will still have plenty ideas. But are you going to have ideas and the ability to implement them (or parts of the solution), or are you going to post one of those "Revolutionary Disrupting Idea  with potential to make millions. Need Someone to build. Will give 15 % of revenue".<p>Stop and go learn. Worst case scenario, your future technical founder will respect you for trying, and you in return will truly appreciate their skills.<p>Note 1: If your idea is to build something truly technically challenging, then scratch my advice.<p>Note 2: Off course all the above would mean little if I wasn't the marketer/business/idea/support/whatever guy who spent the past few months learning. Email me if you are learning, maybe we can keep each other motivated.
======
edw519
_You will NOT become an engineer, programmer, or web developer, but you will
be able to put a prototype of your idea together and maybe get one or two beta
users for feedback..._

You will also be able to have an intelligent conversation with a developer.

I get sad whenever I encounter a business person with no technical bullshit
filter. Not because I'm judging them, but because if I can bullshit them, any
other developer can. Which probably means there's a problem somewhere that
will hurt all of us.

I'll make a point to have a cursory understanding of financial statements,
market segmentation, and project management if you do the same for the basic
building blocks of software applications. Then the two of us will be able to
talk about almost anything. OK?

~~~
wpeterson
+1 on this.

If you learn enough to do a bad job building your prototype, you will learn
what you don't know. Right now you don't even know what you don't know.

Also, you can't hire someone for a job you know nothing about. Doing (even a
poor) job on your prototype will teach you to evaluate a technical co-founder.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
That's one scenario.

The other is you muddle through, learn a bit and do an OK job pulling together
the prototype. Sure it doesn't look exactly right but you can log in, see some
records, make some updates and it's all fine in demos and pitches - hell
you've even stuck it on the web for friends to poke and prod.

You now think it's all straight forward and you're nearly there. The whole
this isn't secure, is held together with sticky tape, updates aren't
transactional so when something does go wrong the data is left in a mess, it
has no error handling or referential integrity and won't scale beyond half a
dozen users which is all it's ever had to put up with as a prototype but
you've only been coding for six months so you hardly understand that these
problems even exist let alone understand what's involved in solving them.

Personally I really really don't want to be the tech lead who has to then deal
with someone who knows way less than they think and is being told that the
thing needs to be rewritten and by doing so is not only delivering bad news
but is also having to criticise the persons own personal work.

Some CEOs will benefit from this sort of knowledge, others will be damaged by
it - there is no simple rule.

~~~
TWAndrews
<i>Some CEOs will benefit from this sort of knowledge, others will be damaged
by it - there is no simple rule.</i>

Sure, but that's a pretty good test as to whether or not you should work for
them.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I see that as an startlingly programmer-centric view of the world. I've worked
with some great CEOs and not one of them could code or had any interest in
coding. In no instance I have ever experienced have I looked at a CEO, good or
bad and thought, the best thing you could do for this company would be to
spend six months learning to code.

A good CEO shouldn't have to have every skill used by their organisation and I
don't see how coding is any different to accounting, legal, sales or any other
skills in this respect.

The mark of a good CEO is to be able to build good teams, be trusting enough
to let them do the work they need to and smart enough to see when the wool is
being pulled over their eyes.

If you need to be able to code to trust your developers, you've either got the
wrong developers or a trust problem, neither of which are likely to be solved
by programming.

~~~
jtheory
You're missing the point here, I think, which is that _if_ a founder (not the
same thing as a CEO necessarily...) puts a few months into learning the basics
of coding and attempting to build a rough prototype, they may end up:

1) with a greater appreciation of the talent/experience required for good
development, a better BS detector arond technical issues, and a stronger
understanding of what they don't know OR

2) a false impression that proof-of-concept = product and an over-inflated
idea of what they've learned.

I definitely agree that founder #2 here is someone to be avoided. Not because
either one of them would be expected to contribute to the actual development,
but because founder #2 is showing flaws of perception, ego, etc. that are
serious red flags, and will affect their execution of non-development tasks.

------
nickpinkston
There's a big difference between the HN stereotype and "real" business people.
REAL non-technical co-founders:

\- Can raise funding and know funders well

\- Have a massive network of people to tap into

\- Can cold-call like no-one's business

\- Know how to negotiate a deal to the point of paranoia

\- Have deep domain experience and connections

\- Make plans for the future, but can pivot on a dime

\- Can talk enough tech to understand well beyond buzzwords

\- Know how to keep themselves and the tech side accountable

\- Let the tech side concentrate on what they do best

~~~
mathgladiator
All those things are awesome after you have a product and or money to hire.

The people the comment was targeting were "idea people" who I must conclude
are useless without any muscle/blood/sweat to turn an idea into a product.

~~~
joshklein
This claim is the reason so many developers work their asses off to make
something, only to realize that no one wants to buy it. You do customer
development before you build the product, not after. Step 1: find need, step
2: find out if people will pay $ for it, step 3: make it.

"Real" business people are very good at steps 1 & 2\. It's not fair to call
them "idea people" if they have useful executional skills to make those things
happen.

------
jbarham
FWIW Jason Fried, one of the original founders of 37signals, still doesn't
know how to program ([http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2540-no-more-drive-by-
teachin...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2540-no-more-drive-by-teaching))
but that obviously hasn't prevented the company from being a success. But then
37signals started off as a web design firm, and he had the good fortune to
hire DHH.

~~~
alnayyir
I think Fried is sharp enough to identify talent and bullshit anyway, so he
overcame the necessity of this advice through that and the fact that the above
advice isn't entirely applicable to his case.

~~~
shadowsun7
Nope this isn't accurate. It's true, but it's not accurate. You have to
remember Fried is a web designer. So while he can't design, he _has_ had
experience working on things, launching things, talking to developers. And
he's willing to put his money where his mouth is - he hired DHH to work on
Basecamp, but only after he asked around, looking for help in learning to try
to code it himself.

~~~
wtn
I saw Fried speak at Chicago CocoaHeads, a very technically skilled audience,
about two years ago. His presentation was almost entirely a sales pitch for
37signals products, which I thought was very condescending and a missed
opportunity.

~~~
jasonfried
I think you have me confused with someone else. I haven't spoken at a Chicago
CocoaHeads conference.

~~~
wtn
MEETING: Chicago CocoaHeads / CAWUG Tuesday Jan. 13th, 2009 Agenda: - Special
Apple Store Presentation: Jason Fried, founder of 37 Signals - adjournment to
O'Toole's When: Tuesday, January 13th, 7:00 PM Where: Apple Store Michigan
Avenue 679 North Michigan Ave. (at the corner of Huron & Michigan Ave.)

(Everyone in the audience was a developer.)

------
gigantor
I was working with a business partner on a startup a while back, and what
really impressed me was their prototype, consisting of a 'database' of static
pages, and updates done manually using the forms-to-email system.

The fact that they had a functional prototype, regardless of how horrible the
technical implementation was, showed me that they were serious and I'd be able
to communicate technical aspects to them much easier.

The takeaway is that you don't even need to learn to code to get that far,
even WordPress with the right plugins can build a convincing prototype and
quickly show a proof of concept to a technical developer that can take it from
there.

~~~
lachyg
Exactly! Idea guys are pretty good at getting mockups and stuff done, showing
off the ideas. They can pitch it and make it impressive.

~~~
marknutter
Y'know, us developers are also "ideas guys" in addition to being developers.

~~~
moxiemk1
It seems like the pervailing thought is that developers are not the same as
the idea guys, but I can't for the life of me understand why not.

marknutter is 100% correct. I can't imagine founding a startup that had a non-
developer "idea guy."

------
zavulon
I know this is a popular opinion here, but I couldn't disagree more. You're
saying that it's good for everyone to try to learn to code. Far from it. Some
people are just not cut out to be coders, they suck at it, they hate doing it,
and they don't WANT to do it. More than half of my intro CS class was just
like that, and they dropped out.

If you're a non-technical founder, and have money, it's perfectly ok for you
to hire a developer or a team to implement your idea (full disclosure - I run
a company that does that, link in profile) instead of learning how to program
yourself. Here's a very good article by Derek Sivers on steps you could take
to make that happen: <http://sivers.org/how2hire>

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I agree.

I'd almost argue that it can be a bad thing - I've lost count of the number of
times I've been stitched up by someone with a small level of knowledge who
extrapolated incorrectly from it. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing
as often as it can be useful and in 6 months that's all you're going to get
(actually in six months coming from nothing you're going to know way less than
most graduates and how many people consider that a decent skill level?).

Good founders should bring intelligence and an ability to learn quickly to the
table, they should be willing to trust the experts they hire, but I think
saying that they should be able to program is a very programmer centric view
and no more valid than the sales guy saying you should go sell for 6 months,
or the account saying you should be a book keeper for 6 months.

Sure these things are useful but it's perfectly possible to be successful
without it and I'd suggest that it wouldn't be close to the best use of 6
months.

------
shadowsun7
This isn't accurate. Most of this is true, but not for the reasons the thread
author gave in his piece.

Why should a business/non-technical founder learn to code? The answer to this
is simple: so that you have better ideas. Or, put another way: learning to
code gives you the ability to _implement_ your ideas. And implementing your
ideas forces you to recognize, after some time, what works and what doesn't.

Hackers who start their own projects tend to have a framework in their heads
for figuring out which ideas are good/may work, and which ideas won't. And
they know this because they've failed enough times to figure out what isn't
good for a project. Whereas most business 'wantrepreneurs' I know don't have
that. They don't have that because they've never implemented anything, and so
how do they know if their idea's a good one or not?

It's interesting to note that you don't have to learn to program to get this
framework in your head. Learning to program is simply the most efficient (and
cheapest!) way of doing it. Prominent counter-examples come to mind: Steve
Jobs never really learned to code, but he grew up in the valley, and chose to
mix around with hackers (Malcolm Gladwell, in his book _Outliers_ points out
that as a teenager Jobs approached the CEO of HP to ask for parts). So it's
probably safe to assume Jobs absorbed such a framework by osmosis - spend
enough time around people who make product and you begin to see for yourself
what works, and what doesn't.

Jason Fried has also been brought up in this HN thread. And I suspect that
it's no different for him: Fried is no programmer (though he's a web
designer). But he was willing to pay people to implement his ideas. He paid
DHH, after all, to build Basecamp. And that's another hack - you don't need
programming ability to learn the framework - in this particular case all you
need is implementation (which you can pay for). And if the project fails, you
learn from it. Either way you gain things to add to your internal framework.
(Derek Sivers also springs to mind - he hired contract programmers to build
CDBaby, if I'm not mistaken).

Gaining that framework for sussing out ideas is likely to be the most
important reason a non-technical founder should learn to code. Because it's
going to help in so many little ways - you learn to detect technical bullshit,
you gain a feel for what features to implement when and why, you attract
better programming talent - because how else are you able to attract co-
founders if you reek of incompetence and/or naivety?

~~~
Pobe
Nop, the less you know of a system the more you can think out of it. Which is
a big part of innovation.

~~~
shadowsun7
Justify your assertion. Because otherwise this would the most ridiculous
defense of ignorance that I have ever seen.

~~~
hamilcarbarca
Groupthink + confirmation bias = arrogance and selective blindness

------
bherms
I wrote a blog post related to this yesterday. I agree with the author 100%. I
can't remember how many times some business guy tried to pitch me on some
stupid idea without an inkling of knowledge about programming or how the web
works. The worst part is that they generally have no money either. If you have
a good idea with some idea of how to implement it and a clear vision, you may
be able to sell me. If you have a half-assed idea and are just trying to jump
on the internet millions bandwagon because you think it doesn't involve real
work, go to hell.

~~~
ABrandt
Could you update your profile with contact information (the email address
field is not public). I'd love to read the post you described. It sounds like
I've recently came to the exact same conclusion, except I'm actually the
business guy who used to pitch stupid ideas (ah the naivety).

~~~
bherms
Updated profile with a link to my blog. It's less of a fully thought out post
and more of a rant/anecdote. Enjoy regardless :)

~~~
ABrandt
Thanks, a rant indeed. I remember seeing this blog posted somewhere a few days
ago, best of luck! I can definitely relate to your "F __* it, I'm just going
to do it" attitude.

------
QuantumGood
So the reason is to 1\. Create a prototype, and 2\. Get respect from
developers.

Re: #2—Let's reverse this, specifically for marketing.

Developers (and pretty much anyone) who know a little marketing can be
_harder_ to work with than those that believe they don't understand it. They
over-rely on cliches and stereotypes without realizing it.

And what about the scenario where you end up with a person with limited
technical knowledge micro-managing a tech worker? Not a good thing.

Re: #1—I find creating mock-ups shows functionality more accurately and in
much, much less time than creating working prototypes.

I'm a business/marketing guy who loves coding. I usually avoid it because it's
incredibly time-consuming to do even half-assed well, and you can re-use
little of what you learn when it's just a one-off experience to creating
something to show. (I realize that if you are always learning and creating
things, your experience builds in more reusable ways.)

------
jonbishop
"Can you convince your best friend to work on your 4th idea, when the previous
3 failed?"

Any business/idea guy worth his/her salt will have more than one great idea.
This is why I am learning how to code; so I don't have to go through all the
trouble to get a technical cofounder every time I come up with an idea I
really like. This way I can build a prototype and be a lot more credible when
I approach people to work with me.

------
speby
I think this is a very common problem in any business. If I want to start a
restaurant, and I'm a "business guy" I could maybe try to find a "chef" co-
founder, which many people obviously do when they start restaurants, however
if I know little to nothing about the culinary arts, food preparation, and
what kind of cuisines matter to people in a specific area, my "skills" as a
business person are of limited utility and give me no competitive advantage
over the dozens of other restaurants in the area I'm trying to start one in.

This very same pattern is the same in many other industries, not just
software. But I couldn't agree more. Know your domain knowledge.

------
shadowmatter
Peter Theil, co-founder of Paypal, would probably disagree. In the book
Founders at Work, you'll find that many co-founders of large, valuable
companies claim that having another co-founder understand the business side
was invaluable. (Note: I'm not trying to stick up for them because I'm a
business guy; I'm a coder guy.)

~~~
ryanwaggoner
That's true, but it's not like learning to code a little makes all your
business knowledge fall out of your head. And the point of learning to code
isn't that you'll now be the CTO, it's because founding a successful tech
company is hard, let alone founding one when you don't know the difference
between Java and Javascript. You can still be the business guy, but now you
understand at least a little of the core of your business. Not to mention that
if you're just a business guy with an idea and no money, few good developers
will be interested.

------
ericsilver
I did this as well - I quit my job, started reading Ruby books and wrote the
Alpha version of Pikimal.com. I did this because I'd been the CMO at another
start-up where I'd really not understood the dev process well enough and had
thought that it had real costs so I have a pretty good sense of the benefits.

We're pretty busy, so let me cut to the chase:

The good: I'm credible to our tech folks. I understand when to slow down to
integrate a library, and I'm more than willing to find time to re-factor. I
learned that pair programming can be awesome, that bringing on new people
slows you down, and a lot of other things that probably seem obvious to
technical folks but are non-intuitive when you imagine software as assembling
widgets.

The bad: Ultimately, we gave up 3-5 months that we could have been hiring,
fund-raising, and building software. On balance, I think that this was good
for me and bad for this start-up.

The ugly: As soon as I'd hired people, I think that we should have thrown out
most of the code I'd written. We kept it because it worked and was fairly
fast, but I'd made A LOT of newbie mistakes that have slowed things down.

So, tl;dr? I'd suggest learning to code but I'm not sure that you should do it
for your current start-up. At the very least launch something more
sophisticated than a CRUD app and THEN get started on your small biz.

------
lachyg
I've gotta say I really do disagree, the reason we do business/idea/marketing
is because that's what we ENJOY and are PASSIONATE about. I believe that
that's what's most important, being passionate, and enjoying what you're
doing.

And frankly, I can only code for so long before getting bored, and losing
interest. But when I'm marketing, brainstorming partnerships, and discussing
potential leads with a company -- i'm in my element, and loving it. I never
get tired of it.

~~~
alex_c
I don't want to sound harsh, but that's at least in part because talk is cheap
- everyone enjoys talking and brainstorming, but at some point you have to put
your head down, get your hands dirty, and get through that last 10% of work
that invariably takes 90% of the time.

There's nothing wrong with what you enjoy doing - it's very valuable to have
someone good at it - but there is a difference between a good sales/marketing
guy and a good founder, just like there's a difference between a good
programmer and a good founder.

~~~
lachyg
So you're saying that doing hardcore marketing and biz-dev isn't 'putting your
head down'? If a fantastic technical founder programs a fantastic app, but no
one finds out about it, what value is it? It needs to be in the hands of
users!

I believe that it's just as valuable (i'm not going to say 'if not more')

~~~
forkandwait
I think true sales _is_ 'putting your head down'; cold calling is at least as
manly as debugging Ruby. But I think "biz-dev" is often, well, spinning
bullshit fantasies, putting them into powerpoints with nice colors, and
calling it work. Not always, but often.

I guess that's why proven coders and proven commission salespeople (and proven
accountants) can always find jobs, while "big picture" folks are left
unemployed, wondering why companies can't see their brilliance. Or, if they're
lucky, they sue Zuckerberg because he was able to do make an actual product
which never got past the great-idea-over-beer phase for them.

(Ducks...)

~~~
adw
What you say isn't _wrong_ here, but it's one-eyed.

Specifically, it's much more true in consumer than B2B. In B2B, biz dev is
building partnerships, channels, distribution, obtaining resources you need at
prices you can afford, all that good stuff. It's the absolute engine of your
business.

If you're writing a B2C app, doesn't matter about the platform, then what biz
is there to dev? In a similar sense, you need marketers, not salesmen, because
your problem is getting a call-to-action out to your potential market as
effectively and efficiently as possible. You can't do that door-to-door at
scale.

But if you're doing enterprise software, the converse is true. You need biz
dev to shape your proposition, and you need a sales force to go and hammer
down doors and melt the copper in the phonelines.

Different problems, different solutions, different solvers, that's all.

------
damoncali
Note 3: Don't do this if, after a week, you don't _like_ coding. You'll go
insane.

------
eLod
I strongly disagree. Learn code if you are interested, but what ill advice is
that you have to learn code?! Consider your advice from a designer
perspective, should founders/coders learn design because "worst case scenario,
your future designer partner will respect you for trying, ...". The same goes
for scaling, you should stop and learn how to scale if you're a front-end
developer because the reasons you gave?

------
markkat
Honestly, I can't see what the fuss is about. There are plenty of examples of
successful companies with founders who could all code, or a mix, and even a
couple instances where no founders could code.

Do these sweeping generalizations do any good? No doubt, it helps to know at
least some coding in this business, but isn't that just common sense? And even
if someone disagreed with that sentiment, would they take this to heart
anyway?

This is one thing that bothers me about HN. There is a lot of advice here that
seems to be just that. I love checking out people's work, the sharing of
actual trials and tribulations, and learning about developments in the
industry; but you know what they say about opinions and assholes... everybody
has them.

------
Tichy
I don't think the standard CRUD web app is necessarily what will make an
exciting startup. That would more likely be some new twist.

Also, I can feel with business types who say it doesn't make sense for them to
learn coding. In a way I am in a similar situation, as I am constantly
extremely hampered by my lack of design skills. Should I try to become a
designer? I admit to trying now and them (decided today to go through the
inkscape tutorials, bought the occasional book on design), but honestly, odds
are very low that I'll be able to compete with real designers. And the
graphics design takes away much needed time from coding.

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
When you strip away the scalability infrastructure, isn't Twitter just a CRUD
app? For some people they would seem to epitomize an "exciting startup".

~~~
Tichy
The problem is that without the scalability infrastructure, it doesn't work.
Although to be fair, the Twitter people probably didn't know that in the
beginning, either.

So you could have built a crappy prototype, true. However, while Twitter is an
exciting startup, a Twitter clone is not (anymore).

Granted, you might be able to build the occasional CRUD prototype for
something that could become an interesting startup. I doubt it is true for all
kinds of startups, though.

------
techbelle
Thanks for posting this. As a entrepreneur I couldn't agree more with your
opinion. Previously although I work in a technology field, I was pretty
functional. That is, my knowledge of coding began and ended at SQL and HTML.
But on the same note, years of doing custom applications with developer teams
educated me on the 'lingo' and what could and could not be done (at least, not
easily).

Over the past year, we had many 'business' persons who offered to help out,
and while that was awesome, what we really needed was qualified technical
people. For a 'business' person, one can usually get an unpaid college intern
and not have to sacrifice any shares in the company.

Also, I think as functional person you are somewhat "over the barrel" if your
developers dont perform, and can do nothing except complain. I do believe it's
better overall if you can build your own product. At the end of the day, we
decided to educate our own team in Ruby/Rails rather than bring in outside
developers. I think this was a smart decision, and also a more cost effective
solution.

I definitely suggest other start ups do the same.

------
Travis
Interesting that the threads in here actually are more vocal than I expected
behind the non-tech guys. Helps that jasonfried, a prime counter-example to
this post, weighed in himself.

My take on it is simple: I passed this article along to my co-founder as a
token of appreciation. See, he started along the way without any coding
experience. He taught himself (with some pushes in the right direction) how to
program, design, and even do some database stuff. He's decent at it, but that
isn't necessarily what matters. What matters is now I have someone to discuss
things with, someone who understands at least the basics (and has basic
experience) with different design stuff. That's not only helpful for
productivity, but morale as well.

So, yeah, maybe learning to code isn't a requirement for a guy who can do
everything nickpinkston listed. But, as the technical guy, it sure as hell
makes my life better. So here's to you, jonesy!

------
ndl
I disagree with, "Note 1: If your idea is to build something truly technically
challenging, then scratch my advice." If you want to build something
technically challenging, you absolutely must learn the basics of whatever
field it's in. You will not make a prototype this way, but you will be able to
talk to someone who can without sounding like an idiot. You should study until
you can prove that your idea is "challenging" rather than infeasible.

As a corollary, be weary of AI. If you are solving a problem with AI that you
don't understand, assume the AI won't work.

On another note, maybe the real advice should just be "pick an easier
project." I have a technical background but consider myself a hybrid
business/hacker going forward. My current project is highly technical; I don't
think I'd consider taking on a co-founder who didn't have some tech
background.

------
jsherry
Instead of taking time off to do this, I'm doing it on the fly while my
startup is up and running. I fought this fight for just about 2 years,
outsourcing much of our web development during that time. And I don't regret
outsourcing - it can get you up and running faster than learning, especially
if you're building something that borders on complex. But in the end, we
really needed to start bringing things in-house, from both the standpoints of
protecting our IP as well as enabling us to become more nimble in terms of
making changes on the fly etc.

We haven't completely weened off outsourced web development, but I can now see
a path to get there, and it all started by learning how to become more self-
sufficient.

------
grantlmiller
I've been doing web marketing for about 8 years now (SEO, PR, product, SEM,
viral etc) and I'm currently the CMO of a great small internet company... and
I completely agree with you. Even if you're not going to strike off and start
a company within the next year, you'll still be able to understand basic
structure and constraints of programming. I've done this myself (with decent,
yet limited success) by taking advantage of the free Harvard course offered at
CS75.tv Watch the lectures (they're entertaining), do the projects and if you
catch up now you can even participate & interact with the class...
democratization of knowledge at its best.

------
Detrus
Note 1 is pretty important. If you're non-technical how do you know if your
idea is technically challenging or not? In many cases you don't, even
technical people often misjudge how challenging and idea can get.

If it is challenging, you get too deep into code, things take too long, get
discouraged, etc.. Or settle for some gimmick that you can execute within a
reasonable timeframe.

It's a good theory, but it assumes that non-technical people will try ideas
that are minor improvements over existing ideas, like twitter, groupon clones.
But they may also read up on magic new tech and come up with ideas based on
that, not knowing how hard they'll be to prototype.

------
gmichnikov
I also got sick of feeling like just an ideas person, so I've been trying to
follow this advice for the last 2 months. Any feedback would be much
appreciated.

I started with Python, using a combo of MIT OCW, Learn Python the Hard Way,
and How to Think Like a Computer Scientist. I then started going through an
online course on dynamic websites that touches on HTML, CSS, PHP, XML, MySQL,
Ajax, and Javascript. I've been using w3schools.com and the online manuals to
learn more about these.

Does this make any sense? Should I try to learn more Python? If so, which
resources should I use? Are these all worth my time? Am I missing anything?

~~~
MarinaMartin
I'm in the same boat, a little further down the river. Also started with MIT
OCW and How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (in addition to the O'Reilly
Python book).

Best thing for me was to escape the textbook-like examples (quadratic
equations, rock paper scissors) and actually [attempt to] build real things.
Once you have cursory Python knowledge, pick up "Practicel Django Projects" --
you'll build a working CMS by page 28 and feel really good about yourself. By
the end of that book I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable I was
writing other programs, even if I am slow as hell and have a reference book
open in my lap.

------
chipocabra
I don't know any developers so I have to learn to code myself. I also have not
business related experience so that's a double whammy. But I can generate good
ideas like a mofo.

While building my prototype I mostly feel like I have no idea what I'm doing
but slowly and surely my site's starting to function, grow and work. Its
amazing what persistence can accomplish.

I realize I'll have to find a technical co-founder eventually though. I won't
be able to hack together a smoothly running and awesome site on my own. I also
have no idea where to look for a technical co-founder and how to approach
them. Interesting times ahead.

------
SeanEClark
I agree with this so much. Taking the time to learn, just the basics, will
save you so much money. Even if you never implement the final project it will
leave you in a much better place to negotiate. And if your a coder, take the
time to learn about online marketing, same principals apply.

Whatever other skill set you have above all learn to write, if you can write
you can express yourself, you can create a business plan, write a blog and
write marketing copy and grow your idea on the cheap.

Sean <http://seanclark.com>

------
justyn
Ughh. I really wish topics like this didn't exist. Every situation is
different.

I haven't touched code in 15 years, but I understand web technologies,
constraints, possibilities, etc. People love our product and UI. I own the
product roadmap and UI direction - have since the beginning. I write the
specs, I do the wireframes, I refine UI, etc.

Why would I learn to code? What impact does it have on my business? I have 10
engineers who are extraordinary.

Every time I see this argument, I cringe.

------
malandrew
I'm that founder learning how to code right now and I couldn't agree more with
you.

Been hacking away for a 1-2 months so far with a friend who is a developer.
It's totally worth it.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Great, Malandrew. It always helps to have someone to help you go through it.
Email me sometimes, we can update each other every now and then on our
progress. Cheers,

------
cagenut
Its a really fascinating tell, when programmers think that the solution to a
given problem is that everyone become programmers.

------
cies
I think in general it is far easier for a programmer to quite productively
spend a day on web design (steal/copy), building a nice user interface, some
copywriting or attracting funding; then it is for the non-programmer to spend
a day on making software.

------
Pobe
It's sad you can't team up with people to create a greater product while you
do your business work/innovation/generalistic work/legal/accounting etc. etc.
you know the stuff a business man should do.

I'm in the same situation as you. Maybe you lack the business man part?

------
kingsidharth
True! Usually people run around looking for co-founders and they look like
people saying, "Build this for me, and hey you are a co-founder that means I
don't pay you. Your time is at risk not mine."

And there is no way they can get a co-fonder that way, anyways.

------
initlaunch
Yes, as others mentioned, there are good tools to rapidly prototype things,
and using them shows you are resourceful and committed.

If you really can't do that, at least put in the time to create a detailed
spec.

------
vincell1
I disagree with the above post. Engineering offshore resources are cheap. If
anything learn elements of good UI design. Design elements will cause you
failure more often then coding.

------
armandososa
I think that's inline with Derek Sivers history (as told on TechZing)
<http://techzinglive.com/?p=443>

------
tumpak
Great points. Thank you.

It is better to learn the task yourself, before hiring the person on that
task. I believe this mantra works in most situations in a start up.

------
TWAndrews
So what would your advice be to someone who could, once upon a time, code
(COBOL, C) but hasn't written anything in ~15 years?

------
JoeAltmaier
Turn it around: if you only know how to code, stop right now. Take 6 months
and learn how to market/deal/plan.

------
known
If I were to start a clinic, do I need to learn medicine?

------
catshirt
advice for coders who can't found: have an idea, learn to talk to people.

now we can all be single founders.

------
techbelle
cofounder learning to code! agree absolutely!

------
jw84
I disagree. Time is money. But which opportunity cost is greater? Do you have
access to more time or do you have access to more money?

If your primary skillset is in business, marketing, or sales, stick with that.
Don't deviate from your specialization.

~~~
davidcann
If you're applying for a job, then I agree.

If you're founding a startup, then a business guy needs to be able to clearly
and quickly communicate with the developer(s).

~~~
jw84
One needs to clearly and quickly communicate requirements.

~~~
noverloop
just a list of requirements doesn't cut it. There are a lot of ways to fill in
requirements, a lot of bad ones and very few good ones. When you ask an author
to write a 500 page roman about some dramatic lovestory you have written down
in a 5 page requirement document, there are still a lot of things that will be
unclear when he is writing it. When the author hits an unknown he can send you
an email, make an assumption or call a meeting. 1 and 3 breaks his workflow, 2
doesn't.

now speed this proces up a 100 times faster and you've got a programmer in the
'zone' with a 5 page requirement list for a fairly complex project. It won't
end very well unless you have very short communication lines for the entire
duration of the project (or the programmer is reading your mind)

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Here's another idea. Instead of saying that the only way someone could
possibly communicate with a developer is on the developer's terms by learning
to program, why not employ developers who can communicate with non-developers?

Yes it's important to create the best possible working environment for a
programmer and give them the best information, but in this example the founder
/ CEO / visionary is actually the scarce resource and the aim should be to get
him working as effectively as possible. Six months of his time to learn to
program is a huge and expensive (in opportunity terms) commitment when part of
that should be picked up by the programmer spending time filling in the gaps.

It's not how you get the most out of the programmer that matters, it's how you
get the most out of the whole team and sometimes that's going to involve
individuals having to work in ways which are to them non-optimal.

~~~
noverloop
I suppose it depends on the main expenses of the companies, optimizing
programmer workflow is a very good idea in a tech-centric environment because
its a major part of your operational costs. However, if the quality of the
technology is not an important business driver then I suppose you can afford
to be average about it.

------
derrida
If your a hack what are you doing reading hacker news? jj :-)

