I remember reading a thread on Hacker News a while back about non-technical co-founders and whether they should learn to program.

As I remember it, everyone here recommended the co-founder learn coding. That made sense to me, and now having worked under leaders at a start-up who lacked even a basic technical understanding, I can fully appreciate everyones recommendations.

But coding is hard.

I've learned some HTML/CSS over the past few months through books and online tutorials, but no matter how hard I try, it really isn't for me. I'm not made to be a coder, and it's hard to push myself to learn more.

Any recommendations on books or online tutorials I should check out? How many languages should I learn?

Most importantly, what languages should I learn? I was planning on learning PHP but the guys I work with kept arguing with me about the inferiority of PHP to Ruby & Rails... I know that's a packed discussion, but for a broad-based understanding what's best?

I'm trying to get a pretty broad-based understanding of coding so I can have competent conversations about it... Though if I could get good enough to build prototypes of what I want that would be amazing

Moreover, any further pointers on what coders appreciate in a non-technical co-founder?

(All advice is much appreciated)