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Learning to program can make you more independent and more valuable.
To program or not to program - that is the CAD management question. I'd like to give you some solid reasons as to why programming is a valuable skill for you, point you toward some resources, and give you a strategy for building your knowledge, whether you're a beginner or seasoned veteran. I think everyone will be able to gain something from this discussion.
Why Program At All?
This question is reasonable, especially for CAD managers who face the project pressures of staying billable and managing CAD production tasks. The main reasons I see for CAD managers to become programmers are as follows:
Making things easier for users. Programming allows you to collapse complex processes into automated processes that require little or no time on users' parts. And when you make things easier for users, they get more work done with less chance of error, all of which is good for your company.
Becoming more independent. If you can do your own programming, you won't be dependent on somebody else. As you gain more comfort, you'll jump at the chance to automate tasks or create custom interfaces for specific projects or tasks without having to worry about support resources.
Becoming more marketable. During the past several years of my CAD manager's survey, the importance of programming skills have become more pronounced. More companies want CAD managers with programming skills and, most importantly, are willing to pay more for CAD managers with those skills. Want to be more marketable and better compensated? Programming helps you achieve both goals.
Getting Started
Now that you're pumped up about programming, you need to take concrete action to start or expand your learning curve in the right place. Part of this first task is assessing honestly what you know and don't know, so you can begin educating yourself with the right sources.
To help you assess your skill set, I'll present a short list of programming technologies, their benefits, and some diagnostics so you can figure out where you stack up. I'll present my list starting from the most basic and get more advanced as I go. Along the way I may refer to some...