Ask: HN Best book on programming for non technical founder? | Hacker News Reader

Ask: HN Best book on programming for non technical founder?

7 pointsPaulosborne10 comments

Best singular book for intro to programming and web applications. I know one book will never 'cover it all'. Yet best all round start to this.

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If you have no programming experience whatsoever and you're looking to do web development, I recommend starting with HTML. A good book is the Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML. HTML isn't a programming language on its own but it is used in conjunction with pretty much everything else and is pretty much the starting point. That book does a really good job explaining the very basics and why you'd do something a certain way. From there, you can expand into actual programming languages afterwards.

Thanks for the tip .

For me, the easiest way to start wasn't using a book. It was learning hands on to create a simple functional website right from the beginning, and researching the effects and functions you want to be able to do. Once you get the hang of it, it's relatively easy to understand and after a while, you'll get a hang of how to start programming.

Cool . Thanks

A good one would be Learn Python the Hard Way. Python is a good language for beginners, and widely used.

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index

There are probably similar books/resources for Ruby.

Checking out now . Thanks

Building web applications is just a small part of programming in general; I too would agree on learning HTML and CSS first. Once you can master static pages, you can start learning how to introduce dynamic components to build rich web apps.

Cool

I would suggest you read "Joel on Software". It can teach you how to better communicate with your technical founder and programmers and to understand the general technical challenges in undertaking a project.

Great source . Also love the style of how he communicates . Thanks for the tip .

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