So I'm curious...what programming language did he learn and use for instagram?
The way I parse it is he built something in html5, and showed it at a party.
Instagram’s founder, a marketer who learned to code at night
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Re: Instagram’s founder, a marketer who learned to code at night
#52Not entirely true though. He's been coding for a long time. He studied management science and engineering. It's not as if he wasn't technical before he started with instagram.
Today, nearly everyone has been coding for a long time. Everyone learns the basics in school. At college or university many will have a lot of further contact with many computer science concepts. It’s a lot like math, really: everyone knows the basics (or has at least heard them once and promptly forgotten them), but that doesn’t make everyone a mathatician. (My dad, a construction engineer, learnt programming at col…
I'm sorry but as a graduate trained social scientist (psychologist), this is simply not true (for the social sciences at least).
I do know how to program (R mostly, some python and java) but I am an extreme outlier with my field. In fact, people are ridiculously impressed at my use of awk and regex to extract relevant articles from a CSV file.
I would agree that everyone who studies the social sciences should have some familiarity with coding, but SPSS refutes your claim that it is a necessity. In addition, I had never coded a line before the age of 28 (I'm almost 31 now).
Re: Instagram’s founder, a marketer who learned to code at night
#53Not entirely true though. He's been coding for a long time. He studied management science and engineering. It's not as if he wasn't technical before he started with instagram.
Does the degree title refer to the "science and engineering of management" or "management, science and engineering" or "engineering and the science of management"? My limited reading indicates the first, but can anyone confirm?
Management Science is a subdiscipline of management. Also known as Operations Research:
Re: Instagram’s founder, a marketer who learned to code at night
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that a lot of HR departments won't consider people without degrees. A Stanford degree opens a lot of doors. This is one of the reasons I have a lot of hope in online education. When it becomes mainstream, HR departments won't be able to ignore it.
>>>The problem is that a lot of HR departments won't consider people without degrees. Aren't people who are motivated to teach themselves coding the very kind of people who would want to avoid dealing with Suit HR departments? Wouldn't they be more interested in working at a smaller firm, especially a startup, if they had to work for someone else at all?
Sure, but the fewer alternatives you have available to you the less control you have over your market rate. Ideally you'd like to be eminently qualified and command a bigco salary at a strong small firm.
Re: Instagram’s founder, a marketer who learned to code at night
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On, has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race." Calvin Coolidge "If you wa…
Is it still true? can you actually do much nowdays (in that scale) on a cheap PC? it seems like heavy machines/cloud access is crucial
In US Costco's, where i mostly buy non-apple they mostly stock HP, Toshiba and Dell laptops. 6G RAM, duo core I5 is typically $600-700.
Cloudwise EC2 is trending down, Heroku starts free with reasonable limits, and VPS with 500M memory at Linode is $20/mon.
http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2012/03/05/new-low...
Re: Instagram’s founder, a marketer who learned to code at night
#56So I'm curious...what programming language did he learn and use for instagram?
The way I parse it is he built something in html5, and showed it at a party.
Owen, this is clearly a situation in which your insight is more valuable than most other people's. Care to elaborate on the Digg parallels?
Re: Instagram’s founder, a marketer who learned to code at night
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I parse it is he built something in html5, and showed it at a party.
Owen, this is clearly a situation in which your insight is more valuable than most other people's. Care to elaborate on the Digg parallels?
I don't really want to draw parallels, because I don't know anyone at Instagram, but this really feels like a standard Silicon Valley puff piece to make the newly wealthy insiderish person look like a renaissance man. I'm going to guess that along with the $500k came the admonition to hire real engineers stat.
Re: Instagram’s founder, a marketer who learned to code at night
#58This just goes to show that the most critical ingredient to success is determination and focus, not any specific training. If you are committed to a goal, picking up any specific hands-on skills (coding included) is just the matter of sticking to it. Something to keep in mind when hiring.
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On, has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race." Calvin Coolidge "If you wa…
I'm finding it challenging to find indications of "persistence." He did some coding at night for what sounds like a few months (this is the baseline effort for 99% of the people who live in Silicon Valley). Then he went to a party, where he was handed $500k.
Re: Instagram’s founder, a marketer who learned to code at night
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Today, nearly everyone has been coding for a long time. Everyone learns the basics in school. At college or university many will have a lot of further contact with many computer science concepts. It’s a lot like math, really: everyone knows the basics (or has at least heard them once and promptly forgotten them), but that doesn’t make everyone a mathatician. (My dad, a construction engineer, learnt programming at col…
I'm sorry but as a graduate trained social scientist (psychologist), this is simply not true (for the social sciences at least). I do know how to program (R mostly, some python and java) but I am an extreme outlier with my field. In fact, people are ridiculously impressed at my use of awk and regex to extract relevant articles from a CSV file. I would agree that everyone who studies the social sciences should have so…
I'm 30 and I remember being taught the basics (in BASIC, no less) of programming in elementary school. My father talks about programming on punch cards when he was in high school. We both went to the same small rural schools, not even big city institutions.
Given that, I'm with the parent. It does seem kind of amazing that virtually anyone in the workforce today in North America didn't have at least some programming training. Whether they still remember is another matter, but I guess everyone comes from a different background.
Re: Instagram’s founder, a marketer who learned to code at night
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Today, nearly everyone has been coding for a long time. Everyone learns the basics in school. At college or university many will have a lot of further contact with many computer science concepts. It’s a lot like math, really: everyone knows the basics (or has at least heard them once and promptly forgotten them), but that doesn’t make everyone a mathatician. (My dad, a construction engineer, learnt programming at col…
I'm sorry but as a graduate trained social scientist (psychologist), this is simply not true (for the social sciences at least). I do know how to program (R mostly, some python and java) but I am an extreme outlier with my field. In fact, people are ridiculously impressed at my use of awk and regex to extract relevant articles from a CSV file. I would agree that everyone who studies the social sciences should have so…
Hm, ok, then I guess my university is the outlier here. I do agree, though, that coding skills are essential for effective statistical analysis and that it should be part of every social scientists' education.