Aside from playing around with visual basic over the years (I coded a configurable metronome in 1997 and a number of other simple windows-based apps), and learning just enough HTML and CSS to know which questions to Google to run a few websites, I can’t by any reasonable definition code. A colleague recently suggested that we take the One Month Rails class in our free time (of which I seem to have less and less), to learn some Ruby on Rails basics. It’s essentially a video and exercise online class.
I like the idea. I don’t have any far fetched illusions that I’ll become a competent coder in the near future (or likely ever). But as coding becomes increasingly important in the tech space, or maybe just increasingly glorified (probably both), I think it will be helpful and interesting to know more about how products are built. I’m not trying to build a car, but I’d like to learn how to change my oil (while I think that analogy works well, I’m not good at changing real oil, really not good).
The One Month Rails tagline: “Stop waiting for that perfect technical co-founder.” And the pitch from the website:
It’s $99, and I have a 25% off coupon code for anyone who wants to join us. I’ll follow up with some posts on how it goes, and will hopefully share whatever it is I end up building.