Let github be your mentor and try to find someone to write/share/debug/review code with.
Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?
31–40 of 64 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great suggestion. Ask yourself "as a pilot, what annoys me or what are tasks that I have to spend my time on". Maybe a site for matching up people up to fly together to events? Or logging your flight hours. (I am not a pilot - I have no idea what I'm talking about.)
Thank you. The logbook idea is brilliant. That was the most annoying thing about flying. Brilliant.
What do you have to do with the information? Do you have to give it to various 3rd parties or fill out forms with it?
Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?
#33Let github be your mentor and try to find someone to write/share/debug/review code with.
I have an account but just have no idea what I am doing. I am taking a Linux class right now to try and figure it all out.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. The logbook idea is brilliant. That was the most annoying thing about flying. Brilliant.
What do you have to do with the information? Do you have to give it to various 3rd parties or fill out forms with it?
It is a personal record. Very much on the honor system. It is used during interviews as a culling criterion. Must meet certain minimum hours and so on.
Would you care to help me build an app as j* suggests?
Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?
#35Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?
#36If you want some help getting started with Java, I'm willing to give you some pointers so you can feel confident developing web applications. I can be found on gary-rowe.com.
Very kind. Thank you.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smartphone app ?
I now have a goal. Thank you. ...Now what?
The quickest path to some income would seem to be to find a co-founder that has the exact skills that you need, together you should be able to go from concept to working prototype in a couple of weeks.
Sound out your pilot buddies if they want to be your 'pilot' ;) customers.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?
#38Let github be your mentor and try to find someone to write/share/debug/review code with.
I have an account but just have no idea what I am doing. I am taking a Linux class right now to try and figure it all out.
Github hosts open source software. You can browse through all kind of projects written in a wide variety of languages.
One way of approaching this, would be to pick one language, read about it, and then look for other projects on Github written in that language. That'll teach you a lot.
Let's say for instance, that you've heard about Python, and would like to learn a bit about that language. You can start by Google's Python class [1] Once you've grasped how python works, and written a few scripts on your own to get familiar with the language, you can learn about Google App Engine, which is a platform for running python scripts on Google's infrastructure. They have a very nice introduction to App Engine. [2]
Then once you've played with it, and deployed your first 'hello world' program, you can search github for small projects which run on App Engine. [3] Clone them and run them on your local server, read the code, tweak it, break it, fix it.
Within a week, you should be able to write a simple and fun little service. Then go learn about Ruby [4]. And see how it compares to python. Write a bunch of ruby scripts, install sinatra [5], deploy to Heroku [6]. Now, try to write the same simple and fun service you've previously written in Python in Ruby. Then go read about other scripting languages (javascript, PHP) and once you've made your mind about which one you prefer, stick with it for a few months.
You can learn and deploy sites/apps without spending a cent.
[1] http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/
[2] http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/
[3] http://github.com/search?langOverride=&language=python&#...
[4] http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-3.htm...
[5] http://www.sinatrarb.com/intro
[6] http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2009/3/5/32_deploy_merb_sina...
Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?
#39If I were you I'd try to use my cross domain knowledge (a pilot!) to position myself in a niche where there are few competitors, I have a hard time imagining there would be a lot of people that can call themselves programmer/pilot (though on HN for sure we have a few). That seems to be your unique selling point, so try to get as much traction there by recycling your old skills for as much as they're worth. As for men…
Safety critical software is absolutely not the thing to get involved with (especially off the bat)... That and security critical software have mountains of approval to get through before they can be used. The FAA is notoriously old fashioned.
Also, I'd personally hate to be responsible for some crash because my flight planning assistance SaaS had a minor, off-by-one bug in it somewhere, or misinterpreted "thar be tornadoes" for "light and variable winds".
(I am an embedded software engineer. I was also a private/instrument pilot.)