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I am kind of surprised by this, especially given all of the positive comments. It took Audrey's post to make me realize that if I were reading HN, a lot of thos

I am kind of surprised by this, especially given all of the positive comments. It took Audrey's post to make me realize that if I were reading HN, a lot of those positive comments would be, well..technical people. So now I'm torn. My girlfriend is a graphic designer who wants to learn to code, and I'll probably have her give CodeAcademy a shot. And then maybe CodeSchool, since I have a subscription. How have the non-CS/programmers of HN learned to code? I learned programming in a CS context, so I don't really know how to tell people where to start.

ralphsaunders 15y ago
I taught myself to code (HTML, CSS, and a small amount of PHP — Wordpress) while I was doing a Graphic Design ND. I think the hardest part for me, like Audrey, was trying to understand what a lot of the terms mean and also the concepts behind them. I distinctly remember following a basic HTML & CSS tutorial and not being able to work out how to get the CSS to style the HTML. The example code worked fine, but the relationship between the two wasn't explained so when I wrote my own it didn't work. I only learned of semantics 12 months after starting with HTML + CSS. It would have made a massive difference if someone had pointed me to a beginners guide (online & free, of course) that explained the way the web was born and how HTML is a way of assigning meaning to a document. I think a lot of the problem is the people writing the tutorials and resources for this kind of stuff want to teach people something, while the people looking for this stuff want to learn it. Perhaps this is why a lot of Google's results for these kind of things are forum threads and other discussions (usually filled with outdated or plain wrong information, I might add).
- willpower101 15y ago
  I find myself saying this a lot and I mean no offense but HTML and CSS aren't code. If you can't build a binary search and sort then it doesn't count ;)
  - willpower101 15y ago
    I will never understand why some things are downvoted. Anyone with the power to do so knows that HTML is not a programming language and not indicative of hacker prowess.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- sgerrand 15y ago
  Perhaps visiting the W3C website (http://w3.org/ http://w3.org/) is a good place to start if you are looking to understand how the Web works. Learning to "code" is not a short journey for the uninitiated, but the journey can be a valuable and rewarding one.
tricolon 15y ago
Did you mean Codecademy or CodeAcademy? They are very different things.
sid6376 15y ago
I am not a non-CS programmer but when i wanted to take a look at python I just went through Zed Shaw's Learn Python the Hard Way. I would recommend that to anyone who wants to start learning programming. Its a no bs approach to programming and emphasizes focus on the right things.
klaut 15y ago
I thought myself to progrman in the Flash 5 days, because i really wanted to make interestign things with Actionscript. Javascript was easy after that, and after came PHP, and then Python and Java and Ruby and ... and after i knew programming well, I enrolled to the university to take my CS degree. But i have to say that it is easier to learn something (on your own or with help) if you have a context to apply it to. I already knew web design and doing html/css at the time so when i decided that maybe learning actionscript and javascript can be more useful, i already had ideas i wanted to make with it. I think the author's idea to "learn some javascript because later maybe i can take some node.js jobs" will turn out not that easy, because she/he doesn't have a context to apply it to, or better, he/she should have an idea/problem that javascript would solve, and THEN try to learn bits around it.

ralphsaunders 15y ago

I taught myself to code (HTML, CSS, and a small amount of PHP — Wordpress) while I was doing a Graphic Design ND. I think the hardest part for me, like Audrey, was trying to understand what a lot of the terms mean and also the concepts behind them. I distinctly remember following a basic HTML & CSS tutorial and not being able to work out how to get the CSS to style the HTML. The example code worked fine, but the relationship between the two wasn't explained so when I wrote my own it didn't work. I only learned of semantics 12 months after starting with HTML + CSS. It would have made a massive difference if someone had pointed me to a beginners guide (online & free, of course) that explained the way the web was born and how HTML is a way of assigning meaning to a document. I think a lot of the problem is the people writing the tutorials and resources for this kind of stuff want to teach people something, while the people looking for this stuff want to learn it. Perhaps this is why a lot of Google's results for these kind of things are forum threads and other discussions (usually filled with outdated or plain wrong information, I might add).

willpower101 15y ago
I find myself saying this a lot and I mean no offense but HTML and CSS aren't code. If you can't build a binary search and sort then it doesn't count ;)
- willpower101 15y ago
  I will never understand why some things are downvoted. Anyone with the power to do so knows that HTML is not a programming language and not indicative of hacker prowess.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
sgerrand 15y ago
Perhaps visiting the W3C website (http://w3.org/ http://w3.org/) is a good place to start if you are looking to understand how the Web works. Learning to "code" is not a short journey for the uninitiated, but the journey can be a valuable and rewarding one.

tricolon 15y ago

Did you mean Codecademy or CodeAcademy? They are very different things.

sid6376 15y ago

I am not a non-CS programmer but when i wanted to take a look at python I just went through Zed Shaw's Learn Python the Hard Way. I would recommend that to anyone who wants to start learning programming. Its a no bs approach to programming and emphasizes focus on the right things.

klaut 15y ago

I thought myself to progrman in the Flash 5 days, because i really wanted to make interestign things with Actionscript. Javascript was easy after that, and after came PHP, and then Python and Java and Ruby and ... and after i knew programming well, I enrolled to the university to take my CS degree. But i have to say that it is easier to learn something (on your own or with help) if you have a context to apply it to. I already knew web design and doing html/css at the time so when i decided that maybe learning actionscript and javascript can be more useful, i already had ideas i wanted to make with it. I think the author's idea to "learn some javascript because later maybe i can take some node.js jobs" will turn out not that easy, because she/he doesn't have a context to apply it to, or better, he/she should have an idea/problem that javascript would solve, and THEN try to learn bits around it.