The Lesson to Unlearn • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#131

Post by jtbayly » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

friendlybus wrote: post #110

jtbayly wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every free (as in speech) program is written by somebody that said that. But they are generally not entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur is by definition somebody that cares about money.

Like Wozniak? Twitter launched without a business plan, Jack was on the Colbert Report in the 2000s saying he'll figure out how to monetize it eventually. I really question how much Uber cares about money recently...

An entrepreneur is somebody looking to start a company in my mind. I didn’t look up a definition, though.

Regardless, Jack knew he needed to make money eventually is what that shows. Uber may be foolish in its attempts to make money, but it absolutely is trying to in the long term.

There are other people that intend to swindle people (make money for themselves, not the company).

There are other reasons to start a company, but then you have an expensive hobby. If all you ever do is blow money you didn’t earn (your inheritance) starting businesses that fail, at best you are going to be called a failed entrepreneur.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#132

Post by namibj » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

appleflaxen wrote: post #95

ZeljkoS wrote: post #87

Yes, most tests are bad, but there is a quick advice that improves them immensely: never ask questions that are not at least Level 3 in Bloom's taxonomy of knowledge: https://blog.testdome.com/blooms-taxonomy/ I cofounded a technical screening startup, and despite our efforts to educate our customers that enter their questions on our platform, 95% of their custom questions are bad questions. They tend to ask trivia q…

can anybody comment on the difference between "understanding" and "applying" in that taxonomy. The examples provided don't seem very good to me. is it the difference between understanding a language and not speaking it, perhaps? following a conversation, but not being able to participate in it?

Understanding is being able to read python code with no reference book/manual.

Applying is writing python code with no reference book/manual.

In both cases doing it properly means you are reasonably fast while being confident about the correctness (either that you correctly predicted the program's behavior or that you wrote bug-free software).

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#133

Post by adwn » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

> The way you get lots of users is to make the product really great.

That is wrong – or, at the very least, incomplete. "Build it and they will come" is the dream and misconception of every programmer who's talented at software development but not at sales. Hell, this is the number one advice of every business how-to book ever: You can't rely on people finding out about your great product by chance, you need to put in the work and sell it!

> Then people will not only use it but recommend it to their friends [...]

That's not how it works for B2B software, and only rarely for B2C. Usually, if a product is successful, then as a result of good marketing (a good product ist somewhat necessary, but not sufficient).

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#134

Post by going_to_800 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

adwn wrote: post #133

> The way you get lots of users is to make the product really great. That is wrong – or, at the very least, incomplete. "Build it and they will come" is the dream and misconception of every programmer who's talented at software development but not at sales. Hell, this is the number one advice of every business how-to book ever: You can't rely on people finding out about your great product by chance, you need to put i…

If the product is great(not only the software, but support, vision, market fit, etc), you need a minimum base of users until it takes off, doesn't matter is B2C or B2B, people will talk.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#135

Post by kaymanb » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

daly wrote: post #66

I got into "computer science" before there was a CS degree. Our CS classes were taught in the math dept (fortran), business dept (cobol), or engineering (assembler). The profs were literally 1 chapter ahead of the students. I, however, was in love with the subject. I was the "student advisor" in our "machine room". We had 5 teletypes connected to a remote mainframe at Rutgers. I lived and breathed CS. I wrote tests f…

I think I fall into the "don't get it" category. Could you explain what I should be taking away from this?

I understand that being at the leading edge has benefits, but it's not feasible to understand the state-of-the-art across an entire CS curriculum.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#136

Post by buboard » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 3:05 PM UTC

avindroth wrote: post #18

buboard wrote: post #11

I can't find whose quote it is that "the most difficult thing is to teach people to think simply". Unfortunately education cannot test that, because tests are by definition testing only a fragment of a system. Knowing and understanding one thing end-to-end is meaningful knowledge, and qualitatively better than knowing fragments of 100 things. Perhaps you can assess the former by grading a diploma thesis on a very spe…

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Gordian_Knot

the gordian knot is more of a brutish non-solution to a hard problem. "thinking simply" is more about developing intuitive understanding to the point where you can also explain it simply

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#137

Post by eeZah7Ux » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

manmal wrote: post #20

My wife and I are contemplating unschooling our kids. The longer our son is in primary school, the more we see the deterioration of his willingness to learn anything school-related. He hates homework (as do most kids), and this is even more painful to see given that it has been shown that homework is essentially useless for learning performance. He still likes to write and do math, but as long as he is in school, we…

> The longer our son is in primary school, the more we see the deterioration of his willingness to learn anything school-related

Been there myself.

Most school systems have been developed to produce workers, not scholars and researchers.

Hence, rota memorization in prioritized.

Getting people to hate learning is not seen as a serious failure of the school system.

Also, students are never encouraged to question the information they receive or the decision around what is important to learn and what is not.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#138

Post by songzme » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

> I would explain that what makes a startup promising, not just in the eyes of investors but in fact, is growth.

Growth is like cancer. Eventually a company will get big enough to bully others for the sake of growth.

Last night I had dinner with a friend who is building a (yet another) language learning app. Simple fact about language learning, or learning in general: You must practice almost every single day. Even if it is only 5-10 minutes.

PG himself said, if you don't die (aka give up), you will eventually succeed: http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html

To me, the best, most sensical way for learning applications to measure success is to delete user accounts with > 3 days of inactivity. This way you can measure the absolute effectiveness of your program. Students who stick through with your application should 100% become fluent. Target the users who actually want to learn, and measure your success by how many users you made successful.

"NO no no", he says. You'll have no users if you do that.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#139

Post by eeZah7Ux » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

anonytrary wrote: post #44

manmal wrote: post #20

My wife and I are contemplating unschooling our kids. The longer our son is in primary school, the more we see the deterioration of his willingness to learn anything school-related. He hates homework (as do most kids), and this is even more painful to see given that it has been shown that homework is essentially useless for learning performance. He still likes to write and do math, but as long as he is in school, we…

> Btw, Gates, Page, Brin - all were not in a conventional school. This is Anecdata^3, you probably shouldn't make rash decisions about your children based on 3 successful technical entrepreneurs.

Plus, most "successful entrepreneurs" happen to come from wealthy and politically connected families.

https://fortune.com/2015/07/17/entrepreneurs-family-money/

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#140

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

adwn wrote: post #133

> The way you get lots of users is to make the product really great. That is wrong – or, at the very least, incomplete. "Build it and they will come" is the dream and misconception of every programmer who's talented at software development but not at sales. Hell, this is the number one advice of every business how-to book ever: You can't rely on people finding out about your great product by chance, you need to put i…

[deleted]