Plenty of Places to Learn Programming Online. So Why Should You Start?

If you’ve been on Twitter over the past few days, you might have seen more than a few people declaring that in 2012 they will learn code with Code Academy. This Code Year initiative looks to be a popular one, but why should we even bother learning to code at all?

While many of our readers are entrepreneurs here in Asia set on creating the next new app, many others might be marketers, managers, or in a position that doesn’t really demand a knowledge of programming. As someone whose own coding skills are very, very basic [1], I can think of a few reasons why.

If you have programmers in your organization, having a knowledge of their vocabulary will help you break down some walls and communicate with them a bit better. You don’t even have to know how to program solutions all on your own, but having some idea of what’s possible will certainly help your company or startup move in interesting directions. Even here on PO, while none of us are programmers, we try to make an effort to eliminate redundant effort in our daily workflow as much as possible.

Here in Asia, there are a number of initiatives that you might make use of to learn programming. In China there is SegmentFault, a Stack Overflow clone that serves as a social Q&A services. Our Japanese readers might check out Dot Install, a recently-launched website that offers video tutorials for aspiring programmers. Other Asia-based options include Programr and Learnmemy. Personally, I just signed up for O’Reilly’s Beginning Python, and their selection of courses might be of interest to some of you. There’s also P2PU, which offers many different courses including some on programming.

If there are any other similar initiatives, particularly ones based here in Asia, please let us know in the comments.

[Photo: Code from Literate Programs]