Ask HN: Should I learn to code first then cook up startup idea or vice versa?

I've had no big start-up yet, but I've found mini-start-ups a great motivation and learning experience. If you have something that you want to make you can learn while you make it, it will give you the motivation you need to learn (get your site done) and it will provide a great learning environment (building your product).

I'm in school for web development, since I got the basics of programming down in my second semester, I've learnt more from my own projects then school.

Just do both. Your early code will probably suck. Your early startup ideas will probably be quite flawed. But working on real project will make coding more fun, and all your "failed" startups should teach you something for the next one.

I've been coding for a long time, and sometimes my code still sucks but it's better than it used to be. I haven't been bootstrapping "startups" for quite as long but I've already made a ton of mistakes, and learned from them.

PS. Wouldn't call myself an HN "Elite" by any stretch, but my $0.02 nonetheless.

Do both, They will compliment each other.

You will gain programming skill far more quickly if you have an idea you're trying to implement as you learn. Read tutorials and change them to try suit your needs. It will probably be horribly broken and ugly but you will learn a lot faster.

Great to read from someone who has startup ideas and is prepared to learn to program. My two bits worth: It's like a bar stool, best to have three legs.

1. Choose the startup idea that you feel most passionate about. There will be others as you progress, but stick to the first one (unless your customers vote with their money to go for a different one).

2. Pick a widely used, well documented language. My suggestion would be Python as it supports most paradigms and comes with a comprehensive collection of standard and additional libraries. Buy at least strongly recommended book. I recommend the ones from the O'Reilly series.

3. Be prepared to go off and explore particular issues with the programming language as well as your idea. You will probably end up with a lot of small point solutions. I frequently end up with two or more solutions to specific problems before selecting the one to integrate into my key project.

Other considerations:

* It's a good idea to establish test driven approach and incorporate your tests from point 3 in your code libraries.

* Use version control, I prefer git, but others are good as well. It's not so much which one you choose, but to use it consistently.

* If your idea is very web centric, then you might have to seriously look at JavaScript and Node.JS. But JavaScript is a difficult first language.