At the EBSpreneurship (founder’s conference at the European Business School in Oestrich-Winkel [D]) in the last October I’ve picked up from many sites how helpful or even necessary it is as the managing part in a tech startup to understand the logic of website/app programming.

After several workshops and conversations afterwards I’m sure that I want to comprehend the basics of coding. Because of three reasons:

1.       Classifying the doability
If you have a vision, you often throw it away, because you guess it’s impossible. Otherwise you dream about concepts from time to time which are unmarketable as matters stand. Today ideas very often concern about online models in our generation. I think that knowing the essentials of the technical structure of such a concept strongly helps to assess the feasibility of an idea or let you build a model around your vision easier.
–> The plan can be established more realistically and a concept is created faster

1.       Assessing the effort
Purely and simply, every coder could mess around with you if you’re not getting anything about programming. But that’s not the point since it’s all about mutual trust in a startup. It’s rather about giving your team members enough time, figuring out how the process should be structured and what is going to take which time.
–> The plan can be structured and improvements/innovations can be implemented more systematically

3.       Communicating vision/concepts
Now again from the economic perspective: What are the benefits of an idea if you can’t sell it right to investors/partners/customers? In my opinion it’s important that you can communicate your workings and projects understandable. Others should understand your visions with greatest ease and get the logic as simple as possible.
–> The plan can be transmitted easily and executed according to this

Additionally, techies are pleased if you cope with their coding subjects just the same as if someone comprehends your graphic or managing subjects.
Elementary comprehension: Coding

Which basics have I learned in programming websites so far?
To simplify it for myself I visualized the functionality of a website as I got it until now:
(Coding languages are marked with watercolor)

There are many different programming languages out there and each of them has its own usage. Like at a big gala event – every party got its tasks. To build a complex structure you need a little bit of everything and therefore preferably a team who got a specialist for each of the workings.
Approximately you can cut website programming in two: Backend and frontend programming.

These two parts are assembled through all the various languages. The most important, in my current understanding, are integrated in the picture above. I’ll try to explain them with the example of a party organization team:

Because different languages which have various specialties interact with each other you need more than one of them for a complex website. Only with CSS or MySQL you can’t do much if you want great features and a pretty design.
The most effective method to get a deeper insight in each of the languages is a mix out of learning-by-doing, tutorials and conversations with developers, experts and so forth in my opinion.