Friday, July 12, 2013

Learning to Code

So, as many of you know, I am in the startup scene thus I constantly meet tech entrepreneurs and people who want to be tech entrepreneurs.  I constantly run into people who say "I'm learning how to code".  What? Then, I think to myself  "No, you're not".  Either you are a coder or you are not a coder.  Either you are working on a project or you're not working on a project.  Let me explain what I mean.

I am an old school coder.  Currently I dabble with javascript, PHP & CSS to build websites. I first started programming in BASIC (Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) in 1982 on my Commodore 64.  The day I got the computer and the day that I opened the BASIC programming guide and wrote a few lines of code, I became a coder.

PERIOD...

Most coders like myself are self taught.  When someone says "I'm learning how write code" this generally means that they are placing the responsibility of becoming a coder on someone else.

In summary, don't "Learn how to code" just code!  Pick a project and just the best coding language to get it done.

What do you think?

3 comments:

Ginak said...

Is there any benefit to going back to "Old School" and learning in Basic? Will it help the user to understand the current coding better?

Ginak said...

EHam,

Is there any benefit to going back to learn basic? Will doing so help the user to understand current coding better?

EHAM said...

BASIC is a dead language. Best to start learning HTML and build websites then learn javascript to enhance the website. Search for videos on Youtube.