While this article is talking to writers, read it and change the word Writer to programmer.

I have one friend who has been talking about ‘programming’ for years without actually writing much code at all. Now I love him dearly, but if you don’t write code, you’re not a programmer.

Don’t wait for the code to be perfect, just write it and get it out in to the world. You’ll learn, and I’ll bet you’ll be surprised at the people to say they look up to what you do.

I know I’m continually amazed when people say they look up to/value my input in the WordPress community. All I’ve done is write some code that I felt was hacky.