As a print journalist, I’d always thought programming was a task undertaken done by awkward guys in loose-fitting T-shirts who rarely saw the sun. (I wasn’t altogether wrong about that.)

With a little reluctance, I said yes.

In the time since, I’ve learnt a lot about programming. I’m not a great programmer, I’m almost certainly not even a good programmer, but I’m better than I was, and I hope, too, that I’m in some kind of position to advise people thinking about starting to learn to code.

This post is not a coding tutorial. There’s thousands of those. Nor is it a ‘which programming language should I learn?’ post. If you’re wondering whether you might want to explore the world of code, I’d say there are more important questions to ask first up, namely: what is programming? What does programming look like on the inside? Are programming and me going to ‘get on’? —Seven things you should know if you’re starting out programming | Info | guardian.co.uk.