Posts for Tag: hack

Teaching myself to code

I am by training, a product person. I've spent the last 10+ years of my life conceiving of concepts and corralling enough cats to get a product from idea to reality. The one bottle-neck I always seem to encounter is that beyond rudimentary HTML/CSS (and Apple IIe BASIC), I can't code. It hasn't stopped me from getting products built but it seems to be the biggest lag as it relates to getting things out of my head and into production. I'll have an idea or a new feature for an existing one and then spend a fair amont of time conveying that to other people to get them to make it all work. It's in that conveying that most of the lag exists. As a problem solver, something needs to change.

Today I walk a path I should have taken 10 years ago when I was younger, had more energy and less responsibilities. I am teaching myself how to code. I don't expect any short cuts and probably won't produce anything worth diddly anytime soon. I'll lean on friends and colleagues who are actual real coders and hope I don't annoy them too much with my questions. One benefit of learning to code today is the wealth of resources out there from online books to tutorial websites like Codeacademy, Learnstreet, etc. Most of my time will be spent pouring over these but I've already started writing actual code. Mind, you it's stuff similar to this:

10 Print "Hello"
20 Goto 10

But hey we all have to start somewhere. I'm starting at the bottom and seeing how far I can get.