51–60 of 190 posts
Would you start a blog someplace and post a link here so we can be part of your adventure?
All the best. My advice to you would be to try and think how you can provide real value to people (which rules out 90% of "startups" in Silicon Valley) and make a positive change in their lives. This does not mean you have to solve world hunger, it can be as simple as having identified a loophole which allows for corruption in jails and you use technology to close that loophole.
Or fix that exploitative phone call system in jails.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3037785/innovation-agents/how-an-...
Hey Mohamed. I am interested in how someone who is not an engineer/investor/etc even came to hear about Hacker News?
Fast forward 5 years and i am in a much better place now and i never look back.
I never did this before because i always thought that all the people that work in IT are way smarter than me and have all sort of degrees that i could not handle. Thank you HN :)
MS Access - Learn it first! Why? The first few reasons that come to mind: 1) To quote a friend of mine, “If a 50 year old boilermaker can work it out, then anyone can.” 2) MS Access will more than likely be installed on your computer at work. 3) Almost all "startup" type programs will need databasing of some sort. 4) It has macros and modules (VBA - Visual Basic for Applications) 5) As you start to learn Visual Basic…
I knew that I would get this response on HN, which is why I knew I needed to post it as no one else would.
Don’t worry about the technology, learn how to code. Actually learn how to develop software and the fundamentals of follow control: IF ELSE WHILE FOR etc…
When I studied Software Engineering, our lecturer told us “Only 10% of the software development is coding.” I was initially shocked with that statement, but when you take into account requirements analysis, design, testing, support etc… it is about right. But a lot of programmers "do this on the fly", so they don't objectively think about it.
I would actually also recommend learning C# using Visual Studio Community as well, also learn Javascript and SQL. But not as your first languages.
VBA in MS Access is not as slick as Visual Basic 6 was, I will agree on that.
No, I’m not a Microsoft shill. I’ve just been around long enough and have worked with many different languages, stacks and within many different industries.
I’m just not a very social person (still not) and have kept a very small attributable presence on the internet. I was advised that I needed to be a bit more visible now because of my book (40in40book.com), but most of my software development work is under nicknames or in private industry and not publically attributable to me. :)
Note: I know the wordpress site for my book is not the best, but I have other more important things to spend my time and money on.
Hey Mohamed. I am interested in how someone who is not an engineer/investor/etc even came to hear about Hacker News?
"My name is Mohamed, and I am a jail guard!" G'day, Mohamed don't make the mistake of defining yourself by your job. You are much, much more than that. You work (and survive) in a Jail? That now makes you 10x better than most nerds on HN in understanding and handling people. Scan HN and the general press and you can see how badly Startups and their users are hurt by this and you'll realise this is a desirable skill.…
>G'day, Mohamed don't make the mistake of defining yourself by your job. Why not? A jail guard sounds very, very badass.
MS Access - Learn it first! Why? The first few reasons that come to mind: 1) To quote a friend of mine, “If a 50 year old boilermaker can work it out, then anyone can.” 2) MS Access will more than likely be installed on your computer at work. 3) Almost all "startup" type programs will need databasing of some sort. 4) It has macros and modules (VBA - Visual Basic for Applications) 5) As you start to learn Visual Basic…
This is... some pretty weird advice. Learn MS Access first? Really? First, it's just a database system coupled with macros. That's not the most important thing you'll want to learn if you want to build a startup. The frontend and/or backend logic are the most interesting, not "macros" to run on your database. Then, VBA is pretty horrible for a beginner and he's probably going to want to deploy his service at some poi…
Yes, really.
He needs to learn the fundamentals. Read my post again and see the points I made.
> Then, VBA is pretty horrible for a beginner and he's probably going to want to deploy his service at some point (and MS solutions are not exactly the easiest to deploy for a beginner)
I've was able to deploy an MS Access database on Sharepoint in about 5 minutes.
MS Access - Learn it first! Why? The first few reasons that come to mind: 1) To quote a friend of mine, “If a 50 year old boilermaker can work it out, then anyone can.” 2) MS Access will more than likely be installed on your computer at work. 3) Almost all "startup" type programs will need databasing of some sort. 4) It has macros and modules (VBA - Visual Basic for Applications) 5) As you start to learn Visual Basic…
If the other comment isn't enough, I say -1 to Access too. Please head straight to real technologies that will allow you to make things, e.g. HTML/CSS/JS, and whatever back-end you like (PHP, Java, Node...).
A BASIC language in any RAD would serve him best to LEARN.
Flow control is a fundamental, this can be learnt in any language.
Welcome, Mohamed.. A little word of advice that I hope will save you a lot of time and frustration: - Don't wait to complete your training to start your project. Start with the knowledge you have and tweak it over time. If you have no knowledge right now, start by sketching in English. It seems stupid but just the fact of abstracting human needs that seem obvious to us and formalizing them into logical steps will hel…
Wow, that's something I totally have as well. At the same time, I want to be (and am, many times) inspired by other people who are already more successful than me. After all, they did struggle, maybe with other things, but their success proves that it is possible to reach it / to achieve something awesome.
The struggle with a feeling of worthlessness is such a mystery. Why do I have it? Why so many people in general? What is the cause, what can be done? I try many things, fall flat on my nose, and then try to get up again. Sometimes, it's a hellish nightmare.