Business grad wanting to learn tech/coding/data — where do I start (especially with AI changing things)?

Posted by MEMONONA@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 4 comments

Hey everyone,

I have a degree in Business Management, but lately I’ve been really interested in learning something more tech-oriented — like coding, programming, or data analysis.

The problem is, there are so many different fields, topics, and buzzwords that it’s hard to tell what’s what and how they all connect. I don’t really know how to approach this journey — what to learn first, why it matters, and how to move forward step by step.

Also, with AI and large language models (LLMs) becoming such a big deal, I’m wondering if I should still start learning from the basics (like Python, SQL, etc.) or if the approach has changed now that AI tools can do so much.

If you’ve made a similar transition or work in tech, I’d love to hear your advice:
- How did you figure out what field or area to focus on?
- What’s a realistic way for a beginner to start learning in 2025?
- How do you balance learning fundamentals vs. using AI tools to assist your learning?

Any input, recommended resources, or even personal stories would mean a lot.

Thanks in advance 🙏

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coddswaddle@reddit

Are you interested in writing code and personally developing as an IC or are you just trying to upskill your technical understanding?

MEMONONA@reddit (OP)

That's also a tough question, to be honest. I think I am leaning more towards a career change, as an IC in that case. I'm just lost 😕

IC will be a bigger lift and competition will be stiff. I'd recommend staying in your industry since you'll have business logic background and that may help long term. I'd recommend to try looking at what kind of dev jobs your current/prev employers posts and look into their tech stacks.

AnswerInHuman@reddit

AI is no different than upgrading a rock as a tool to a hammer. A lot of principles are the same, just makes certain parts of the job easier. Imagine using a physical ledger and making computations with a calculator manually vs using Excel. It’s that type of productivity change work-wise in the field.

My advice is to start researching and learning the tech applied in the fields you already know because that combined with any technical skill you could acquire, like coding, would feel like it has a purpose and would ultimately determine your value as a programmer in the real world. Something important nowadays because of the over saturation of the field.

Languages like SQL are not going anywhere in a long time, specially as long as we have SQL databases which are the base of parts of many established businesses. We could build wrappers around it with other languages but at the end of the day, SQL is the language the most database use, even if they have their own flavor of it (like MySQL, MS SQLServer, Oracle, etc.). As data has grown we’ve also evolved data storage to other technologies like Big Data, Object Storage, or even Blockchain (for crypto), which will have their own query language as well.

So if you want to learn coding first figure out what you want to do with it, cause there’s endless possibilities and applications to any field you want. With research and an organized learning path, you could have smooth transition instead of just trying to jump in to blindly try to write code, especially, if you never have done it before and have no idea how to start.