21–30 of 106 posts
"Just Do It" -Nike
The trouble with thinking "I have magic beans, I just need water!" is that you don't understand water. You don't know good water from bad. You don't really know how much water to use and when. You can't watch the beans grow and adjust your watering schedule because you think it's all about the beans. You don't get water. That's my problem with "I just need a programmer" entrepreneurs. I can work out how to get paid,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people are good at what they're good at, so it makes no sense for them to learn something they have little interest or skill in. The typical request from a non-tech guy is not in implementing a hard engineering problem like database management or search query structure, but in putting together what is typically a glorified e-commerce site or social site (digg etc).
Just happened to read Forbes write up on Reed Hastings (Netflix) as their CEO of the year. Turns out he has an M.S. C.S. from Stanford. Jobs did some programming and soldering logic boards. Gates wrote a BASIC interpreter with Paul Allen. Zuckerberg was in Harvard C.S., I believe, and wrote the first implementation of Facebook himself. Bezos has a B.S. in C.S. and Electrical Engineering. Larry, Sergey, Jerry Yang all…
that was me 2 years ago. I considered elance (couldn't afford it), recruited 1 cs buddy I went to high school with (he was busy doing his own things), so I figured I had no choice but to learn to program. I found HN, which introduced me to Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial, and I just launched my first app: http://www.fanscription.com Oh, and I'm an Econ/Business Major. "Just Do It" -Nike
I'm one of these guys. Why didn't I learn to program? I had maybe an hour/day in between my job and my side hustle, and I just didn't have enough time to get through the problems in order to be a good programmer. Since then, I've found that watching projects come to life, while learning on the side, has made it much easier to pick up Objective C, Javascript, Ruby, etc. Of course, I didn't expect programmers to work f…
Except for MUMPS. Fuck that shit.
Invariably, there is more to both programming and design than meets the eye. While learning can help obviate this problem it's not a cure-all; it is also important to learn how to a.) prioritize and simplify when your reach exceeds your grasp and b.) have realistic expectations for outcomes vs. budget.
It's a good idea to learn both, but again, the execution is more problematic.
Ideas are important (although the usually mutate in the process of implementation.) The ability to implement is important (although the tendency to go after low hanging fruit rather than what is actually needed is strong.)
The last ingredient, though, is the ability to communicate the idea and the implementation to customers/investors/users/etc. Marketing, UI/Human Factors, and Sales are often as important.
So when you freely share your idea before launching the product you already consider the value of the idea alone basically zero, while you think the value resides all in your execution.
That's why I believe that if you have an idea you'd better be an exacutor or a sales person, otherwise there no or little value in your contribution. There's no shortage of ideas.
He also makes a good point about discouraging people ...it seems we need to do more of pointing people down the path of learning, implementation and discovery.
Yoh ho ho.
Be good and make money at what you do so you can afford to pay good programmers what their time is worth, so they can make your idea happen without too much hassle.
(Disclaimer - I run a company that does just that)