[true_religion]

I don't think its always a matter of unwilling as at times being unable.

When I was in university, I was a TA/Tutor and found that even upper level CS students have trouble coding. There are many cases where the students understood the upper-level concepts behind say networking, or DFA minimization but couldn't produce simple Fizzbizz level code.

The problem wasn't apparantly with their intelligence (as they could annunciate and expand on the concepts they were taught in class), or their rationality (they made it through the Discrete Math weedout), or even their determination (they worked hours upon hours outside of class)....

So now I'm one of those who believes that sometimes no matter how hard you try, there's a switch that won't go off to make one a 'coder'.

That said, I think a business guy should at least try to learn coding if his idea demands doing a lot of it to start with.

[Travis]

I don't believe that someone who is capable of founding a business cannot learn web programming. Flat out don't believe it. Much of the time, you hardly need to write code as much as think logically and build a product.

In fact, if it turned out that someone wasn't able to code, I probably don't want them as a co-founder because I don't think they are smart/determined/focused enough to run a business.

[falcolas]

Personally, I'd rather work with someone who knows their limits over someone who does a half-assed job (through lack of talent or ability). If only because I'd have to then later clean up said code.

I'll back this up with an anecdote. At a relatively small company I used to work for, the CEO was someone who used to code, some 17 years ago. However, he recently decided that he knows enough about coding to act as the lead developer for that company's flagship product. He then proceeded to drive development into the ground, arguing over the merits of using malloc instead of calloc, globals over locals, and the beauty of goto's.

He successfully runs several multi-million dollar companies, yet his smartest move was stepping back out of the development lead position, and back to that of managing the company.

Did knowing how to code get him where he is today? Ultimately, no. His business savy and contacts did that.

[Travis]

In a startup, if you "know your limits", you almost certainly aren't going to accomplish as much as you can.

In an office environment, different roles are much more important.

It also means that he was able to learn to code, but not to the standard that your product required.