Questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Questions

#491

Post by jjeaff » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

robfitz wrote: post #437

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely missing his third point. For people without wealth (or a social safety-net which provides you the resources you need to survive), it isn't optional to work for free. You have to eat and have a roof over your head, which means taking a salary if you are working full-time on your startup. Its not a strategic decision.

I must have poorly explained. The strategic decision happens earlier, when you decide which idea to commit to. Certain ideas are both a) incapable of generating early profits and b) dependent on reaching uncertain milestones to unlock the next stage of crucial funding. So if you don't have the personal finances to deal with that situation, then you make a different decision further upstream, in the past, by choosing…

I think you make my point. Which is that unless you have some wealth already, family wealth or otherwise, your options for a startup are much more limited than those who do not have money.

Re: Questions

#492

Post by eigenloss » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 6:13 AM UTC

tomhoward wrote: post #397

_wzsf wrote: post #36

Not to be critical, but I pose this question in response: Why do billionaires so often love to muse about interesting things outside of their field, get attention and praise for their thoughts, and then publicly allocate only tiny portions of their wealth and time to these projects so ineffectually while passing down the majority of their wealth to disinterested heirs? e.g. Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Edgar Prince, Stev…

You list examples but don’t cite any references to prove that these people didn’t make substantial philanthropic contributions. Nor do you cite counter-examples like those other commenters have mentioned. Andrew Carnegie, the richest person of his era, donated 90% of his wealth to philanthropic causes, most notably to local libraries, universities and scientific reasearch. He implored his fellow wealthy people to to…

The list is far from exhaustive and far from perfect, but there's a reason Carnegie isn't on it.

Re: Questions

#493

Post by nikki93 » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

leoedin wrote: post #332

nikki93 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ IDEs and Smalltalk / Lisp visual environments are in very different leagues. It’s worth giving, eg. Pharo Smalltalk, a shot.

I've heard great things about the productivity of Smalltalk. Is Pharo the best way to explore the language?

Sorry for the late response. Yeah I mostly played w/ it in 2015 but I think Pharo was the most modern option then and there were good resources like "Updated Pharo by Example" (a free book).