Ask Slashdot: Stepping Sideways Into Programming? 152
thundertron writes "I'm a 28-year-old, non-technical, UX-focused Product Manager at a startup. Overall I'm very happy with my work, but I'm endlessly frustrated that I'm not committing code. I love the few occasions where I commit some front-end code or put together a fairly sophisticated query, but if the onus were on me to put together an entire site my hands would be tied. I've thought about going back to school (or even taking time off from my career to take courses) in CS to immerse myself in programming. The flip side is that I know I won't want to do that forever — I won't want to be employed primarily as an engineer because I like too many other aspects of the business. My best option seems to be to dive into Ruby on Rails and just pick up what I can in my spare time. Perhaps others in the Slashdot community have some suggestions/recommendations?"
Programming Fundamentals (Score:2, Informative)
I highly recommend this course. It's from stanford and has all the lectures online. It teaches you how to think about programming.
http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=824a47e1-135f-4508-a5aa-866adcae1111
Re:Backwards? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not Ruby (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, Ruby is not what I would do either. Ruby is dying fast. While I'm not a huge Python fan, it's not a bad language. If you're on the UX side you should look at learning HTML5 and javascript libraries like jQuery and javascriptMVC.
Funny, after attending RailsConf last month, I'd say that reports of Ruby's demise are greatly exaggerated. In fact, if your perspective comes from a UX-oriented side of things, I couldn't imagine a better language/framework for you to get started with than Ruby/Rails.
It's only moving more in that direction. Rails 3.1 will include jQuery as the default JS library, supports CoffeeScript and Sass by default, and the new asset pipeline makes it easier than ever to build out your app with a backend REST API and do the heavy lifting on the client with MVC frameworks like Backbone.js
What you should learn first depends on your goals. Are you just curious about programming? Or do you really want to make a shift in your career path? If you work in a Ruby/Rails environment, and really want to get into the coding where you work, then that's the obvious choice. If you're completely new to coding, Ruby is also a marvelous first language to learn. I started with C and Perl, and I WISH Ruby had existed then.
If you just want to understand the dev side of things better, you could start by learning the basics of web development from something like Code School. [codeschool.com] Their Rails for Zombies [codeschool.com] course is a great place to start, and better yet, it's free. If you want to get your Ruby up to snuff, try Edge Case's Ruby Koans [rubykoans.com].
IMHO, much of the Ruby-hating is jealousy. [github.com] If you're new to programming, you might be unfamiliar with holy wars. [catb.org] Coders develop religious issues over everything from languages, to tooling, to operating systems. You'll have to decide for yourself where you want to start. But Slashdot opinions are probably not the way to make that decision. My advice: Pragmatic Programmers has a very basic intro-to-Ruby book called Learn to Program. [pragprog.com] It might be too basic, it might not. But then you can check out Seven Languages in Seven Weeks [pragprog.com] and decide whether you prefer Ruby, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, etc.
I heartily encourage you to learn to code, whether you find it professionally or personally rewarding. Maybe you can contribute to some open source projects, even if you decide it's not right for your career. Either way, have fun with it.
In interest of full disclosure, I'm a committed Rubyist. We tend to be opinionated loudmouths. But also beware the Pythonistas. They tend to be disgruntled contrarian CS students.