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This is the method that I have used to guide several friends to a basic level of competency. The keys are having the end in mind (get something running asap), focus on expert help (friends + stackoverflow), incremental improvements (progress will be very slow at the start), and removing things that does not matter (painful deployment process)
Summarizing, what you want to do in these sessions is to build confidence, and remove the typical fear of coding that non-engineers normally have. Coding is a set of blocks that you move around in order to achieve a certain result, and you need to realize that asap.
Once you know how basic things work, where to get help, and how to avoid tricky problems when deploying, you will realize that coding is a real joy that gives you a very real sense of creation.
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This is the method that I have used to guide several friends to a basic level of competency. The keys are having the end in mind (get something running asap), focus on expert help (friends + stackoverflow), incremental improvements (progress will be very slow at the start), and removing things that does not matter (painful deployment process)
- Commit a engineer friend to 5 evenings - promise him that you will do him back the favor, whether it is in terms of marketing or whatever your expertise is in. Plan for using services like heroku, which simplify the setup process
- First evening: Watch him create a simple rails application from scratch in an hour. Pester him at every single step of the process to understand how it works. Write down every single step, try to work on it yourself.
Then get used to the inevitable frustration of feeling stupid and useless. Write down every single thing you found confusing. Think of 2-3 features you would want to build. Post every question on stackoverflow - Second evening: Run through the problems you face with him - you will realize how simple, stupid things matter. Get your version of the application running. Implement one feature by yourself when he is around.
Repeat the process - try to implement 2-3 simple things, get very frustrated, ask questions on SO, etc - Repeat 5 times - you should have a decent application that you can use yourself at the end of the 5 times.
Summarizing, what you want to do in these sessions is to build confidence, and remove the typical fear of coding that non-engineers normally have. Coding is a set of blocks that you move around in order to achieve a certain result, and you need to realize that asap.
Once you know how basic things work, where to get help, and how to avoid tricky problems when deploying, you will realize that coding is a real joy that gives you a very real sense of creation.
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...
