[Schultzy]

I'm glad to be a piece of your evidence.

I have college degrees in Entrepreneurship and Marketing and have been just a "non-tech" guy for too long. I got tired of not being able to build anything myself, so I'm working my way through your book right now.

Of course I have a specific application in mind that I'd like to build, and perhaps this is evidence of my naivete, but it seems like if I were to just learn how to do that, I would be limiting my creativity. The difference between learning how to program only a specific type of application and learning to program in general seems like the difference between learning how to paint a bowl a fruit and studying the art of painting. What happens when you want to paint a bowl of fruit with a landscape behind it?

Again, I may just be one fool, but it is not the allure of being able to program a specific application that I am after, it is the pain of being ignorant that I am trying to assuage.

[stanleydrew]

You present a false dichotomy. You don't have to choose to just learn how to program one kind of program or how to program generally. You can do both. And in my experience, having an idea and executing on it is a great way to start. You get instant gratification in learning one small subset of programming and you move on from there.