Why You Should Learn to Run a Server Before You Learn to Code

To the disappointment of everyone who wants to learn to code so they can get rich or powerful, developer Dave Winer tells us that's probably not going to happen. He lists good reasons why you might want to learn to code, but recommends you learn to run a server first.

Learning to code is good if you have a calling, if you feel it's what you must do to express yourself. If you have ideas that you can implement in code that no one else is doing. Or if you just love the puzzles that programming is constantly presenting you with. You have to have a certain amount of self-hatred to love programming, between, because it's a grind. And to do it well you have to have a lot of all of these things.

You might think that by learning to code you get to be the Man Behind the Curtain, the all-powerful person who makes the digital world work. But that's not what coding is about. If you want power, and I've said this many times — rather than learn to code — first learn to run a server. That's real power. And it's far easier than programming.

Plus, running a server, Winer says is a gateway into programming. 

This advice echoes a previous perspective about learning to work with technology 

(only it's less dismissive of the benefits of learning to code).

Learning to code will not make you rich

 (or particularly powerful) | Scripting News

Photo by gruntzooki.