[tweiss]

Another business guy turned programmer here. It's good to see that there are more of us out there and that I'm not the only crazy one. Some advice I would give to anybody who wants to learn to code from scratch:

- Focus. Don't do it on the side, it would take too long. Treat learning to code as if it was your regular job(I tried to do 40-60hrs per week, I did about 2000hrs of coding in my first year)

- Don't hurry. Don't obsess about efficiency and how you use your time. You will waste tons of time on stupid bugs and knowledge you don't really need, that's just part of the learning process. Focus on putting in those hours week after week and you will see results.

- Work on a project. The only way to truely understand how things work is to actually use them. Don't hide yourself behind books, try to apply everything you learn asap.

- Give yourself permission to suck. This is really hard if you're older (I was 30 when I started to code). If you already have a career, you're not accustomed to be utterly clueless anymore. I had already forgotten how slow and painful it is to learn something from scratch. So give yourself a break and judge yourself the same way you would judge a stranger. Don't expect to become stellar in a matter of months just because you're smart. Hint: so is everybody else who is coding for a living.