[ibagrak]

I am hands-on founder, and I've have done quite a bit of coding myself for the project, although I haven't actively coded since college and never made a living as a programmer. As a mediocre programmer, I can tell you: no matter how much you know exactly what you need to do, you will be shocked to find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes. That has been my experience, but I think it's true for a lot of non-coders.

The building blocks all seem to make sense. All information and tools you need to get started are out there. You think you are picking it up pretty fast going through all the tutorials online, but when it comes to actually fleshing out a feature or design, you get bogged down in minutia. Keeping the coding skills fresh takes constant practice. I started out erring by as much as 300% on the time estimates for some of the tasks I had to complete. I am now down to underestimating by about 50%, which is a huge improvement in 6 months, and as clear evidence as any that the ramp up is long and the learning curve is steep.