When I Went to Italy I Bought A Phrase Book, Do They Have That For Talking to Developers?

I often wonder about new businesses when it comes to this wild west show we call the Internet. It seems that so often these giant Internet brands were started by computer geeks (sorry, dudes) in their basements or garages. Brilliant, creative people just went with an idea and said screw the rules and went with it...

Now, I've spent a lot of time and a lot money (well, my parents spent a lot of money) on learning "the rules." And now I can't help but wonder if I've wasted a bit of my time. Don't get me wrong; I find the things I've learned over the years at USC to be invaluable in so many ways, but does it take a computer scientist with a eureka moment to make the next big thing on the Internet. Should I be looking into supplementing all of my content oriented education with a little JavaScript and Rudy on Rails?

I guess my gut instinct is that I do not envision myself ever programming any software, basically ever. Though, having gone through about half a semester of Andrew's class I find myself more and more tempted to take a class or eight on website building from a programming perspective. There is obviously value in not only learning how to speak to/with programmers but actually knowing what they are doing.

So maybe I won't take eight classes about PHP but every trip to Borders includes me browsing the "computer" section and flipping through "programming language of my fancy that moment for dummies." Honestly, it is intimidating. The books are huge and seem to have infinite tiny details that must be memorized. A far cry from leisure reading of late (road tripping across the US btw). And languages have never really been my strong suit (years of Spanish training have left me with little nothing more than a decent accent and a strong vocabulary of curse words), so what makes me think I can master computer programming?

I suppose my final answer on all of this is that I envision myself being the person that says "I want the site to do this." But to go beyond just saying what I want, I am finding it increasingly important to at least understand the basics of what all this programming code jibberish is. Though I don't think I will or want to be a programmer, I would like to be someone that knows more than just how to list out my demands/specifications for my hired developers. I'd like to have a working knowledge of code (it is law, as Lessig teaches us) so that I am at least working with a phrase book while I am visiting their foreign country.

To tie this back into venture capital and starting an online business/community, my real point is that I do not see myself as the person coding the website but I don't want to be the person chilling on the couch in the garage/basement rattling off epic ideas to change the Internet forever without some idea of how the code works. I guess this means that I will need to actually buy one of those computer programming guides, take a class or eight, or internet research things other than lolcats in my spare time... maybe.

-e
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