Comments on: How I Learned How to Program

By: Benjamin Lee

Benjamin Lee — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:53:17 +0000

Once before, my younger brother mentioned that books are useless until you internalize them.

How true.

By: Adam McFarland

Adam McFarland — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:03:56 +0000

Nethy/Benjamin – you guys are totally right. “Learning by doing” is the best way. I find that I read books with a lot more enthusiasm if I’m using the knowledge immediately to try to improve our business. Then when you actually release something and over time see the errors exposed, you learn a whole bunch of things to look out for in the future. And you just repeat over and over. After time it adds up.

By: Benjamin Lee

Benjamin Lee — Mon, 11 May 2009 07:16:32 +0000

I think PHP with some knowledge on HTML/CSS is important.

But nothing beats learning by doing.

By: nethy

nethy — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:13:00 +0000

Adam, One more quick word.

I think your experience here is a great example of an abstract principle: “Learn by doing.”

By: Jared O'Toole

Jared O'Toole — Sun, 10 May 2009 18:38:02 +0000

Great stuff. WordPress definitely helped me learn. Its great to not start from scratch and have the chance to see how little things change other things.

I also had a lot of success playing around with joomla. Again for the basic html and css it was very easy to learn through trial and error.

By: nethy

nethy — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:22:33 +0000

Thanks Adam. Interesting post.

By: Adam McFarland

Adam McFarland — Sun, 10 May 2009 00:03:39 +0000

@Dan – glad it helped

@Dale – haha I almost put a sentence in the post about how people commonly referred to us as “imaginary engineers”. You’re a perfect example of why everyone should learn at least some programming – understanding what can and can’t be done and how difficult it is will save you a ton of money in the long run when working with a programmer. You’ll be able to sense BS a lot quicker and hire better, plus you’ll be a lot more realistic in your proposals.

By: Dale

Dale — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:08:27 +0000

As a Chem E, we called you IE’s “Imaginary Engineers.”

I can’t stand programming, but you’re right it really does help to at least have a background in programming. When I was in 1st grade I learned BASIC on my Apple II e.

After failing to find a partner who was good at programming to help me, I finally bit the bullet and learned some basic PHP. I was really close to giving up until a friend of mine gave me three lines of PHP code and that got me over the hump to launch NOTtheBookStore.com.

I still can’t stand programming, so I’ve hired someone to help me out. But it was only after my initial programming attempts proved out the concept, and now I can at least converse intelligently with the programmer I hired.

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:08:28 +0000

This was an amazingly informative link. Coincidentally I was looking for information just like this. Thanks!