Ask HN: Non-technical entrepreneurs, why don't you learn to code? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Non-technical entrepreneurs, why don't you learn to code?

4 pointsfezzl3 comments

It seems like the best-case scenario (as opposed to finding a technical co-founder on whom you will perpetually be dependent). What is so overwhelming or infeasible about learning to code that quite a number of "business people" avoid it like the plague?

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This is an only slightly related observation, but coding is something you generally have a knack for. Half the kids in my CS classes don't qualify as coders in my book. If you get to your fourth semester in a CS program, and you've never programmed in anything but Java, you obviously don't have the drive to teach yourself something just because you find it interesting.

Back to the topic at hand. With some exceptions, if you haven't taken the plunge and taught yourself how to code by now you probably don't have the interest and drive to get good at it. As I said, there are exceptions. Some people catch the coding bug and off they go. But otherwise, it's just not their thing.

In my experience as a self taught coder and also as a teacher of many coders, learning to code is easy but learning how to code efficiently and effectively is hard and takes many years of practice.

Every now and then (just for fun) I look back at the code I wrote 10 years ago and just think 'Ugh ... did I really write this' ?

More to the point, building a robust product (think: bug free) requires a significant amount of coding skill - I seriously doubt that anyone would be able to achieve this from scratch (at least, not within a reasonable time period).

Actually, my current plan is to learn to code. I dreamed that plan up at least a year ago. So far, I haven't learned a thing. I'm apparently a "patient" person...well, not really. I'm probably actually one of the most impatient people you will ever meet. But my impatience means I will often stick it out to do something in a way that makes sense t me rather than try to take some short-cut if it is clear to me that the short-cut is a case of "you can't get there from here". Since I don't think getting someone else to write my code will get there, why bother? I'll either figure out how to code or come up with some other solution for accomplishing my goal. But most people don't think in the long time frames I seem to think in.

Still, I have hopes someone will accidentally inject coding into my brain, like the programs they downloaded to Neo's brain in The Matrix. :-D (Yes, it's possible for the right person/right approach/right situation to make a huge difference in that regard and mentoring is part of how I learned HTML and CSS. So while I am being whimsical, I am not merely joking.)

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