Ask HN: Should I learn how to program, or come up with an idea first?

If you're only interested in programming because of entrepreneurial ideas, you will be a crap programmer.

> I'm only interested in programming as a tool to execute and make tangible my entrepreneurial ideas.

In that case, you need to have a specific entrepreneurial idea before you can advocate whether learning programming is a useful course for you to execute on it and make it tangible. Depending on what your entrepreneurial idea is, that may or may not be the case.

if (!idea) no necessity to learn a methode to execute non-existent idea; else rethink utilitaristic attitude;

I would do both simultaneously and partner with someone that has experience programming and give you feedback on the idea and your programming.

Starting to learn programming from scratch would be a little bit difficult since there are so much to learn. Having an idea in mind would be your compass. Given that big picture idea, having someone to guide you to learn the area to help solve piece of the puzzle would save you lots of time. Depending on your idea, what you learn in programming might be quite different.

I agree that having something you want to create helps to speed up the learning process, but also you will most likely not create something very good. So the right answer probably is learn programming by doing some rather basic ideas until you feel comfortable enough to create something big, until then just collect your ideas.