The Debate
The debate about whether or not designers need to learn to code is essentially about knowing enough HTML and CSS, and maybe some Javascript to be able to prototype web views.
Mastery and the ability to produce production code is not something most interaction designers and information architects will have the opportunity to achieve, but being capable enough to communicate design on web products requires some basic skills that you can learn in a few days or months to start. Here are some resources for designers looking to get started with basic markup and light scripting.
Start
Great places for beginners to learn basic web markup, stylesheets and programming.
- A Beginner's Guide to HTML and CSS - Shaye Howe's guide for beginners outlines the fundamentals of front-end design and development with HTML and CSS.
- Code Academy - Free. Start with HTML Fundamentals and Javscript intros. Move on to Jquery to add interaction.
- LearnStreet - Free. JavaScript for beginners is a good start. Ruby and Python are also offered.
Go further
- Read some articles on good practices and habits to get into as you to start.
- SASS, Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets - Stylesheet language with some scripting capabilities that compiles into CSS. There are even light PHP SASS compilers that work with WordPress if you go that route.