I recently saw a tweet by Mark Harris that pointed out GitHut, a small site that visually presents the popular programming languages used on Github. The programming languages towards the top of that list tend to be the most useful to learn.
One of my favorite things to tell young people is to start learning to program. The world of opportunity opens when someone knows how to program. (The other thing I say to people is to get a job in sales. Sales skills are always useful, always.)
Most tech entrepreneurs should know some programming skills, even those with non-engineering backgrounds. It is powerful when engineers see non-tech people pitching in to do things like website development, such as easy tweaking of HTML, CSS, or Javascript, documentation writing, demo creation, video and graphic editing, and anything else that contributes towards building product.
I have written before how saying “I’m not technical” is not a cool excuse to sit on the product building sidelines as a tech entrepreneur. I have also written about non-engineers managing engineers.
Knowing some programming skills is especially needed in the early days of a startup, before people become specialized. In the early days, there is no such thing as specialization. Everyone needs to contribute.
What are your thoughts on learning programming languages?
Comments on this entry are closed.