Learning to Program is STUPID! (or SMART?!)

[Andy Black]

I wouldn't know what road to take until I actually packed my bags and hopped into the car.

Love this.

 

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[sija1]

I actually enjoyed learning to code and building things so it fell into the "do what you love" category, didn't mind it at all.

You know what they say: "Code is poetry"

 

[ClaytonAlbright]

It basically comes down to this.

There are those who will say "just outsource it" because that's the shortcut. They may have made a decent amount of money off this tactic. They didn't do nearly as well when they tried it themselves.

They outsourced it, which will bring outsourcing results. You can make good money off outsourcing, and since they made some good money off it pass this advice along. "Well shit I outsourced it and now I'm making better money than I ever did".

Then there are those who learned it themselves and brought their vision to life themselves. This takes a much longer road and is riskier. They risk their idea being rejected by the market after they've invested so much into it in their own time of learning themselves and creating exactly what they wanted.




I see this as Amazon.com selling vs. (your own website) selling.

You can make some good money if you position yourself on Amazon.com. You can make nothing if you don't, but if you create something yourself without their help you can make REAL MONEY.


People who "just hire" someone can make good money if they find some decent freelancers and can afford it off the bat. But since they made some good money off it, they will go by that, pass that advice along, and will ALWAYS restrict themselves to some "good money".

Those who do it themselves have full control. They will fail and make nothing, but the ones who persist will go on to make REAL MONEY. The 1%'s who went through it all without relying on these shit contractors who just make money on the side for the "good money".

 

[SenGracic]

You just made my night
Thank you very much, Sir !

SOME of the books recommended to me by a pro copywriter.

However if you want to accelerate you'll need to pay for a mentor

"Scientific Advertising" Claude Hopkins

"Tested Advertising" Caples (4th edition or earlier only)

"How I Raised Myself from a Failure to Success in Selling" Betger

"How to Write a Good Advertisement" Schwab.

"How to Write Sales Letters That Sell" Drayton Bird

"The Robert Collier Letter Book" - by Robert Collier

"Tested Advertising Methods" -by John Caples

"The Lazy Man's Way to Riches" - by Joe Karbo

"Break-Through Advertising" - by Eugene M. Schwartz

"Advertising Secrets of The Written Word" by Joe Sugarman

"Making Ads Pay" by John Caples

Web Copy That Sells by Maria Veloso

The Architecture of Persuasion by Michael Masterson

Influence The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook by Joe Sugarman

"The Elements of Copywriting" by Gary Blake and Robert Bly

"The Ultimate Sales Letter" by Dan Kennedy

Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whitman

"Write to sell " it is written by Andy Maslen

"Influencing Human Behaviour" by H.A.

"Tested Sentences That Sell" by Elmer Wheeler

"Unlimited Selling Power" by Moine and Lloyd.

Writing for Emotional Impact by Karl Iglesias

Bob Bly's "The Copywriter's Handbook"

How To Make Your Advertising Make Money - John Caples

The Copywriters Handbook - Bob Bly

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook - Joseph Sugarman

Sales Letters That Sizzle - Herschell Gordon Lewis

Cash Copy - Jeffrey Lant

Magic Words That Bring You Riches - Ted Nicholas

Ogilvy On Advertising

Method Marketing by Denny Hatch.

My First 50 Years in Advertising by Maxwell Sackheim.

The Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters of all Time " by Richard Hodgson.

How To Write Advertising That Sells by Clyde Bedell

Ads That Sell by Bob Bly

Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich-- David Garfinkle

Magic Words-- Ted Nicholas

Robert Collier Letter Book-- Robert Collier

My Life In Advertising -- Claude Hopkins

Bird - Commonsense

The First Hundred Million by E. Haldeman-Julius

David Ogilvy's "Blood, Brains and Beer"

"Confessions of an advertising man"

"Million Dollar Mailings" by Denison Hatch

"The Wizard of Ads" trilogy by Roy H. Williams

Making Ads Pay by John Caples

Method Marketing - Denison Hatch

"How to Write Sales Letters that Sell" by Drayton Bird.

Hypnotic Writing -- Joe Vitale

"The Lazy Man's Way to Riches" - by Joe Karbo

Denny Hatch's Million Dollar Mailings

 

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[ClaytonAlbright]

And the common factor in those transactions is YOU. If you have joined the INSIDERS you can listen to my podcast on how to hire good workers off Elance so you don't get screwed. I almost always have 3-4 active outsourcing projects going and have for the last 8-9 years and have built a really good business on it.

Quite frankly as I go along with the contractor process it seems more like the lazy way of throwing up some spaghetti and hoping something sticks.

 

[Roli]

To be honest, I'm not sure.

At the time, I did what needed to be done. There was no UpWork, no ELance, no real easy way to find talent. There also wasn't a mainstream push toward learning code, Udemy, CodeAcademy, etc. Newsgroups and forums where the go to place. At that time, I knew almost as much as anyone else because the tech was so emergent.

I think today I would take a stab at learning the new tech, see how much it's changed and if it is realistic for me to learn.

I actually enjoyed learning to code and building things so it fell into the "do what you love" category, didn't mind it at all. I then would try to weave professionals into the mix (assuming I was insistent on being a one man show). Guess what I'm saying is I wouldn't know what road to take until I actually packed my bags and hopped into the car.

In the end, do what you think will work for you.

Wow, thanks MJ, really appreciate the answer, it is basically what I'm doing having a stab at the tech, I'm using Udemy, I've found a kickass course and I'm getting into it.

It's hard but I do enjoy it, I like learning human languages, so let's see if that translates to computer language.

Once more, thanks for the reply and thanks for the book, I recommend it all the time and I can't wait to come back on here and tell you how I've used its principles and philosophies to join you in the fastlane.

 

[Roli]

It basically comes down to this.

There are those who will say "just outsource it" because that's the shortcut. They may have made a decent amount of money off this tactic. They didn't do nearly as well when they tried it themselves.

They outsourced it, which will bring outsourcing results. You can make good money off outsourcing, and since they made some good money off it pass this advice along. "Well shit I outsourced it and now I'm making better money than I ever did".

Quite frankly as I go along with the contractor process it seems more like the lazy way of throwing up some spaghetti and hoping something sticks.

I couldn't agree with you more, there is a time and a place for outsourcing and I'm pretty sure that for me that time and that place is not here or now. I could be wrong, but I'm prepared to take that risk.

 

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[Roli]

No, but when you head down a road that very knowledgeable people tell you is a dead end or vastly more difficult than you perceive it to be, don't be surprised when you hit a dead end.

If human endeavour was built on the model of avoiding other people's failures and frustrations then some of our greatest inventions would have never got of the ground, from the aeroplane to the computer, they all had people go down those roads before and hit brick walls and give up. Then someone else came along with a slightly different view. The people before them said "No! Don't bother you're wasting your time." Luckily people like the Wright brothers, Alan Turing, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and many more less famous pioneers ignored them.

I am not an insanely talented inventor, but what I am is someone with a whole bunch of ideas and the only way to realise these ideas is to learn how to code. Maybe you're right and I'm wrong and I'm wasting my time trying to learn. But I'm going to find out by doing it, in fact after this post I'm logging into Udemy taking the next part of the course and off I go, maybe I'll fail, but as Mj says failure is the sweat of success.

 

[Roli]

The speed of advancement is hard to grasp. If you go back 2-3 years in time, responsive frameworks were either very new or unheard of, big data, hadoop, and cloud based architectures didn't really exist. Go find a post that is 3 years old on designing for mobile devices and compare that to best practices now.

So what? Go to any technical industry that involves computers and you can say that, shit, you could say that about sales; I sold advertising in 2001 and made a shitload; guess what? It's harder now.

I don't see an industry being harder to get into as a bad thing, I see it as a good thing, because it will get rid of people who are on my level, but are willing to listen to advice like yours and give up. The law of entry; it's my friend, I love it, I embrace it.

 

[healthstatus]

So what? Go to any technical industry that involves computers and you can say that, shit, you could say that about sales; I sold advertising in 2001 and made a shitload; guess what? It's harder now.

WTF??? You think that process of selling has gotten more complicated since 2001?

This is clearly a situation of you don't know what you don't know.

I don't see an industry being harder to get into as a bad thing, I see it as a good thing, because it will get rid of people who are on my level, but are willing to listen to advice like yours and give up. The law of entry; it's my friend, I love it, I embrace it.

I have not given anyone the advice to give up. What I have been saying all along is do it smarter. There is no law of entry here, go on Elance and there are THOUSANDS of programmers ready to write code. All you are doing is delaying getting your product to market.

If you start learning to code today in your spare time, you are three years away from completing an app or software with any level of complexity. If you are still in school or don't have a job and you can do this full time you might be able to cut that down to 2 years. If you do what I suggest, you can have your app done in 8-14 months.

 

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[tafy]

My app I nearly finished, its taken a senior dev nearly 9 months to complete. I would hate to think how long this would have taken me if I learned code myself.

 

[Roli]

WTF??? You think that process of selling has gotten more complicated since 2001?

This is clearly a situation of you don't know what you don't know.

That quite literally made me Laugh Out Loud, you DON'T think the process of selling is evolving? Wow OK, so let's see you sell using methods from the 50s then or why not go back to the ham kind of 30s advertising then; when slogans such as Buy This! worked?

My point was it's getting harder and it is, consumers whether they are b2b or b2c customers are bombarded almost every waking minute with marketing on a continually growing number of platforms if you don't think that makes the selling process more complicated; well I won't insult you by saying you don't know the situation, but I would suggest that perhaps you haven't thought that statement through.

I have not given anyone the advice to give up....

If you do what I suggest, you can have your app done in 8-14 months.

The problem with that is it take's money and more importantly trial and error with that money; also it requires selling a concept before it is proofed to an investor. So clearly there are ideas that will have investors chomping at the bit at the concept stage, and there will be ones that won't.

In both situations the app may go on to make or lose money, so in other words I believe I have an idea that won't have investors chomping at the bit before they see some kind of proof of concept and even if I did, that's not the point (even Facebook was an established working site before Zuckerberg got any investors interested). 0.
I could go down the route of hiring developers and maybe I'll luck out and get the right people straight away and get a working prototype for a few thousand pounds in 8-14 months.

But what then? What if it's a crap idea? What if by that time someone has beaten me to the punch?

Of course that scenario is possible whatever route I decide to take, however one way I'm a few grand down and all I'm facing is spending more money on an idea that may work or may not.

The other way I'm a few years down, however I now have a new skill which I can evolve, hone and eventually monetise in some way shape or aform. I take your point that you can spend 3 years making an app that someone with experience can take 1 to do, but then I'll be able to do it and whilst I might not ever make it in app development, it's a skill worth having and I don't see it as a waste. My 20s and 30s were a waste, a fun waste, but a waste; learning to program is the exact opposite of that.

Anyway back to the Java! Just getting my head around getters, setters and types.

 

[GIlman]

Nothing is stupid. Learning anything has value.

I have a freelancer programming for me nearly full time, knowing how to program means I understand what he is doing and can guide changes that are relevant to the long term goals of the project.

There is no wrong method, anything that creates progress is good.

@tafy is doing it a completely different route. As far as I'm aware we are the few here doing epic size SAAS projects. But the only thing that matters to each of us is that we are doing, not the how but the is doing part.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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[Roli]

My app I nearly finished, its taken a senior dev nearly 9 months to complete. I would hate to think how long this would have taken me if I learned code myself.

That's very interesting Tafy, but just so I can work out if your situation is similar and therefore relevant to mine; can I ask you a few questions about that?

1. Without giving away too much what type of app is it? i.e. game, organiser, social network?

2. What's your situation? - Do you work, run your own business, student?

3. How much lead time was there to your idea or did you have it and hire the developer straight away?
a) Did you hire the first developer you found?
b) What was the selection process?

4. How much did it cost?

5. Is the app ready to go live? If it has already gone live is it/will it sell?
a) Do you have a marketing budget?

6. What's your contingency if it doesn't sell?


Thanks

 

[tafy]

Don't wanna give too much away on the outside, but if you look at the inside I have a full progress thread that answers all your questions and more

pm me if you want some advice (after reading the thread as I dont wanna answer the same questions again)

 

[Steve W]

At the risk of flogging a dead horse I thought I'd pass on something I recently observed that might make learning to program seem not such a bad idea...

The highest selling Wordpress theme on a well known theme marketplace website has sold over 146,000 copies at a (current) price of $58 per copy.

For those that don't have a calculator handy, this is a total sales value of just under $8.5 million if the theme has always sold for that price. The marketplace site will be taking a commission & the authors will be paying royalties for the 3rd party components used in the theme but at a conservative guestimate of 10% per sale (I have no idea of the actual figures involved) this is an income for the authors of $850,000 for a single product.

Might be time to dust off that old copy of PHP For Dummies. Or start a marketplace site for that matter...

 

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[Kingmaker]

The underlying idea of this thread is GREAT. Focus on sales/marketing & speed is everything.

Ex: I needed 2 fairly complicated banners made for my new site, looked up the tutorials for each element and it looked like I need to spend the whole weekend on just learning them, with no idea how the final product will come out since I'm new at it.

I said F*ck this with this thread in mind, went to trusty UpWork and a dude with 6 years experience made me awesome banners in a couple hours for a grand total of $5.65, saving me hours upon hours of time in which I can sell many orders for way more than that amount. F*ck.Yeah.Outsourcing.

 

[healthstatus]

went to trusty UpWork and a dude with 6 years experience made me awesome banners in a couple hours for a grand total of $5.65, saving me hours upon hours of time in which I can sell many orders for way more than that amount.

There are a lot more results like this, than those that argue they can learn a new programming language in a few months and create a professional result. rep++

 

[Greyson F]

There are a lot more results like this, than those that argue they can learn a new programming language in a few months and create a professional result. rep++

I've been experiencing this over the last 6 months. I have been doing a lot of research around the technologies required for the app functionality I am shooting for, and anybody that can learn the majesty that is ACTUAL Programming within a couple of months should be put on the news. I've been discussing this app idea with a mentor of mine, who has years and years of experience with coding, and even he doesn't have grasp of everything that is required of most app development teams.

Now, while this may be true, I would still recommend understanding the basics of what you're looking for. I did this with my app, because without it I'd be shooting off imaginary tangents, expecting the programmer to have the ability to read my mind and have exceptionally world-class programming skills, which most developers on Upwork do not. As a personal experience, I've found that finding app developers "through the grapevine" of your personal network is much more SECURE, SMOOTH, and most definitely CHEAPER than trusting the work of someone on a freelance website.

Anybody who tells me they can't find a programmer in their network either isn't looking hard enough, or doesn't truly have a network at all, and you probably shouldn't be trying to go Fastlane. It's incredible how I will get fed up with the freelancing bullshit, pull out my phone, and call and catch up with friends in my network, and while perusing the question of programmers and app developers, I will either find one, or find the trail to find one.

What does everyone think about finding programmers this way? I'd like to hear input about it, since everyone has been centralizing their outsourcing on specifically freelance websites, instead of personal recommendations.

 

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[James Thornton]

Good thread, and perhaps no definitive answer.

It could simply come down to natural talent. If you tend to get above average results at certain types of things, learning how to do something in that area yourself could be smart. It may be what separates your product from the rest, creating scarce quality.

At the very least, outsource your weaknesses.

 

[IrishSpring600]

I'm a freelance programmer and so far so good. Maybe OP doesn't want it.

 

[healthstatus]

I'm a freelance programmer and so far so good.

@IrishSpring600
a) what languages? b) how long did it take you to learn it (them) to be good enough to get paid doing it and get good reviews on your work?

 

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[IrishSpring600]

@IrishSpring600
a) what languages? b) how long did it take you to learn it (them) to be good enough to get paid doing it and get good reviews on your work?

Thanks for the great questions, healthstatus. Currently I've been doing Java but I'm also looking for a C++ job. 6 months of intense dedication to the language is a good start. C++ and Java are similar so the transition isn't difficult. It's only the beginning and a good goal to aim for at the beginning is $200/week.

 

[GIlman]

Might I suggest JavaScript. It is quickly becoming the defacto language for a lot of people because all the cloud is based on it, and more and more stuff is going from installed to cloud based services.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[IrishSpring600]

Might I suggest JavaScript. It is quickly becoming the defacto language for a lot of people because all the cloud is based on it, and more and more stuff is going from installed to cloud based services.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not too passionate about JS. As creative as it can get you need to learn HTML, CSS, jQuery, etc. for it. I'm not a web designer/developer.

 

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[Bobby-H]

Read from page 1 to 24, fiance got pissed at me for staying up late!

Thank you guys for all your opinions.

I was about to continue taking a $9000 24 week course on developing Ruby/Rails & HTML/CSS/Javascript for the wrong reasons.

I'd basically spend 40 hours a week for 24 weeks to lose $9,000 and over $30,000 in profit (and much more in passive income) to learn junior skills and be qualified for a job. I am not saying coding is the wrong way to go, it just doesn't make sense to learn it from scratch just to learn it at this point when I already have skills to build a fastlane business.

The main job of entrepreneurs and business owners is the eliminate distractions

I'll stick to my fastlane business and keep building out the automated sales funnels and generating traffic to it. I'll keep building new offers and servicing clients in my digital marketing agency.

I plan to spend 1 hour a day coding to SOLVE problems (like creating scripts for adwords, or creating an MVP to start selling and hand off to senior devs to expand further) and because I generally like to learn new skills (the basics because it takes 20% time to learn the important 80% of it generally). I know how to see the patterns in most things so I can learn something quickly.

 

[IrishSpring600]

Read from page 1 to 24, fiance got pissed at me for staying up late!

Thank you guys for all your opinions.

I was about to continue taking a $9000 24 week course on developing Ruby/Rails & HTML/CSS/Javascript for the wrong reasons.

I'd basically spend 40 hours a week for 24 weeks to lose $9,000 and over $30,000 in profit (and much more in passive income) to learn junior skills and be qualified for a job. I am not saying coding is the wrong way to go, it just doesn't make sense to learn it from scratch just to learn it at this point when I already have skills to build a fastlane business.

The main job of entrepreneurs and business owners is the eliminate distractions

I'll stick to my fastlane business and keep building out the automated sales funnels and generating traffic to it. I'll keep building new offers and servicing clients in my digital marketing agency.

I plan to spend 1 hour a day coding to SOLVE problems (like creating scripts for adwords, or creating an MVP to start selling and hand off to senior devs to expand further) and because I generally like to learn new skills (the basics because it takes 20% time to learn the important 80% of it generally). I know how to see the patterns in most things so I can learn something quickly.

A $9000 course? Are you mad?

Heads up: You can learn that for free over 6 months, which is *just* a little over 24 weeks.

 

[Bobby-H]

Question: Do you have any resources to learn how to hack together tools/scripts for automation on google adwords?

Even broader, what languages/resources are good to learn if we want to build automated scripts that find something on the internet, put the information in a CSV/google sheets? I know this a broad question, I'd just like to know where to start so I can build those cool valuable scripts that will make automation easier, I want to build that necessary skill set.

 

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[Bobby-H]

A $9000 course? Are you mad?

Heads up: You can learn that for free over 6 months, which is *just* a little over 24 weeks.

Yea, there was mentoring in there and at the end of the 6 months we'd have 6-8 projects in our portfolio. Was basically a full time job to switch jobs, which was just the wrong mindset.

 

[Pachem]

Hi everybody,

first all, sorry for my english. I am from Spain.

I read all the post through this discussion and is just amazing all the information you can get here. Thank you all the members, specially Healthstatus.

In my opinion learn to code is NOT stupid. Learn programming can be a powerful skill and a tool that you can use in the future. Everything today and the next years will work with programming. So know how it works, although a little bit can be very useful.

I can compare this with learn english language. I lived in Japan during 1 year and half, and I learned english there. Not so much, but enough for read the Millionarie Fastlane, read this forum, read all the stuff in Internet that is in english, communicate with other people in english, see videos and understand almost 70-80% (depending of the video, of course), etc...

This skill give me the tool for access much more information. The more valuable stuff actually is in english. So learn english is a powerful skill.

I think programming is similar. Maybe you don't need to be a great programmer. Just the basis for start and keep learning.

Also sales is a powerful skill. But you don't need to be the best salesman in the world. Just the basis and try/test, try/test... Then, learn and improve your ability in sales.

Learn how Internet works and how the machines works never will be stupid. Knowing the basis you can start your project. Knowing the basis you can ask better to the Indian programmer. Of course this take more of your time, but I think this is a good way to spend your time to improve this skill. Like english language, sales and financials...