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As an aspiring entrepreneur, how important is learning to code and what are some of the best websites, programs, or online schools for learning the skill?

I am interested in entrepreneurship but time and time again I put an idea aside because I dont know how to code, and have not yet fleshed out my idea enough to begin a seed round for funding for a coder. #computer-software #programming #coding #program-development

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abhi’s Answer

There many different options to learn to code online. A good place to start is by trying out Codeacademy, joining the GitHub community and regularly reading coding related posts on Hacker News. You’ll be surprised that coding isn’t nearly as difficult as you think and you can start creating and executing your own programs on your laptop or smartphone in a matter of weeks.
1. CodeAcademy
2. Code.org
3. Introduction to Computer Science
etc
Thank you comment icon Ok, thanks! Going to check out these sources and get started. Aukai
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John’s Answer

In my opinion, the best skills an entrepreneur could have is 1) marketing - you must be able to sell your idea and 2) recruiting - gathering the right people to do the work. If you can sell people on your idea/product and get good developers, engineers, and/or manufacturers doing what they do best, you have a good chance of success.


To learn some things yourself, sites I personally use are https://www.w3schools.com/, http://javascriptkit.com/, https://www.smashingmagazine.com/, http://www.php.net/, https://dev.mysql.com/


Above all, learn SQL and understand databases.
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Leon’s Answer

Learning to code is important for anyone. Below is a quote from Jeff Immelt General Electric CEO.

“If you are joining the company in your 20s, unlike when I joined, you’re going to learn to code, “GE CEO Jeff Immelt wrote in a LinkedIn post on Thursday. “It doesn’t matter whether you are in sales, finance or operations. You may not end up being a programmer, but you will know how to code. We are also changing the plumbing inside the company to connect everyone and make the culture change possible. This is existential and we’re committed to this.”


There are so many FREE ways to learn coding on the Internet. I would go to Google.com and ask the question: Which is the best free Internet way to learn coding. A page full of the best places to learning coding will be displayed. Google.com is a great website to get information you just have to ask the right question.


I think more important is the coding language you select and the skill level you achieve; Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and Master. To sell your coding skills, you would have to be at a high skill level with a lot of practice, etc.


This Internet website lists the programming languages used for different activities:

https://skillcrush.com/2016/03/17/how-to-decide-which-programming-language-to-learn/


I agree with the article that Python is the best language to learn first. I have been using the Perl language for many years which is the predecessor to Python. The regular expression module is great for large data searches.

Leon recommends the following next steps:

Learn a programming language and improve your skill level in that language.
Learn another programming language.
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Pieter’s Answer

Coding in and of itself is not necessary or even important to being an entrepreneur.

There are many many successful businesses that bring useful solutions to important problems to market that have little to do with code.
Your job as the entrepreneur is to find the problem, the solution, the team, the funding, and not least, the customers.

Your job as the entrepreneur is everything but the code. Being able to code can even be a crippling distraction. Especially if you can code well. It can be way more tempting to code than to articulate the problem, recruit a team, find funding, and talk to customers.

If your goal is to build a successful software startup, that could change things.
If your goal is to land a job at a software startup as a coder, that would change things even more.
But the premise of the question is that you aspire to be an entrepreneur, which is a completely different thing.

I think the most important first thing you can do is absorb as many stories as you can from people who have founded firms, successful and otherwise. For instance, this kid looked around in college and noticed that cool kids wore hats, and founded a retail store to sell them. https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2012/08/08/ben-fischman

Every business person you run into, ask them how they started it. They'll be happy to tell it, give you their advice, and possibly tell an associate of theirs, "Hey, I met this smart kid you should meet related to that thing you're working on..."

One thing not to do? Approach a coder and say "I have an idea for an app. Can you build it for free? I'll give you 2% equity."

Pieter recommends the following next steps:

Listen to podcasts like "How I built this" and "Planet Money". E.g. one kid discovered in college that you can buy bad debt super cheap, and that most debt collectors are rude, pushy ... and very ineffective. He started buying bad debt when he was in college and discovered that just by listening and not being a jerk he could buy old debt cheap and turn a reliable profit. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/01/podcast_youre_friendly_neighbo.html
A great source of those stories is obits. That might sound odd, but totally the opposite, obits are written about people who did cool things. Like the guy who invented the weed whacker. A fun read. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/business/02ballas.html.
Don't think you need a business degree to start. Many colleagues of mine started business school with the intention of being entrepreneurs, but once you've put yourself $100k+ in debt to pay for B-school, it's really tempting to just get a corporate job afterward. Entrepreneurs hire B-school grads.
Do actively seek to meet people. Join a networking organization around startups. Every city has them, a great national one is TiE (https://tie.org/). It is mainly successful business people who want to share their success by passing on what they've learned to the next generation of aspiring entrepreneurs, and the middle 'i' is lower cased because it's truly diverse now.
Another thing is to look at buying a business. You may not be able to afford it yet, but just looking at businesses for sale is fascinating. Sign up for https://biznexus.com as a buyer and search what's available. Every thing there was built by an entrepreneur who built something and the ad itself tells part of their interesting story. Only a few of them have anything to do with code. All of them focus on EBITDA.
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Sonya’s Answer

Look at https://www.freecodecamp.org/
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