New to HN, where to start?

I'm looking for a technical co-founder for a new business. While I'm not trying to find someone from this post, I am curious as to what would be a good path to take to begin to establish myself as a good person to go into business with. It seems that one of the most important things, beside from being generally qualified, motivated, etc. is to begin trying to learn as much about the technical side of things as possible.

Do you guys agree with this? If so, where is a good place to start learning to code on a basic level?

Also, to answer a couple questions you will inevitably have while browsing through their comments or old posts:

1) There is a karma threshold for down-voting (currently 500).

2) The "expired link" page you see is a known issue and is unlikely to be fixed any time soon.

As for guidelines:

Always try to add to the discussion. Be nice. This isn't reddit (humor is fine, but stupid jokes are not). Upvote on quality of content, not appeal of content.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive

Also if you want to search with more control than Google provides, check out:

http://www.hnsearch.com