KiwiCoder

All very well, though without a suitable social context it is difficult to attempt the Socratic method (or any other method that leads to critical thinking) without appearing patronizing or condescending.

Previous HN comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6437847

You don't have any contact info in your profile.

Question for the Baraza team: The framework looks good, and I expect the engineering behind the scenes is impressive. What are your thoughts about content curation and acquiring a critical mass of (for want of a better term) moderators?

See (for example) this question and its answers http://www.google.com/baraza/en/thread?tid=618ce3dee8dafc67

Nothing. I'm validating the idea.

I would be interested to read that thread!

Right now I'm on day 2 of promoting the idea. I have 5 bookings. If the idea is doomed I'm trying to fail fast.

Update: 6 bookings

onion2k's comment hit home - the last thing I want is to prey on anyone's desperation. I'm re-thinking the funding model and the question of who pays.

Steve, thanks for your thoughtful comments, I know you're talking from experience in this domain.

So "candidate A" needs to be told the truth and confront their limitations, else they will never improve. Candidates deserve honest and unbiased feedback from people who actually do the hiring, not their proxies, but at present there is precious little feedback given.

You make a good point about the size of the market, so I'm not about to sink life savings into a venture. I am however seriously considering spending a few days working up a MVP.

Currently watching the video of Alberto presenting his idea - love it, thanks.

Recruitment teams are, in my experience, and I'm not trying to be funny, uniquely unqualified to offer this kind of advice EXCEPT as a how-to guide for getting through their own filters so you can speak to the hiring manager.

Interesting point - I'd originally written "hiring manager" since that was my first thought. I went for "mentor" since (a) I wanted a bigger potential set of advice-givers and (b) it's less of a mouthful than "hiring manager" and (I thought, but now not so sure) that it had the same connotations.

University services tend to be, uh, academic.

A differentiator would be the quality of advice offered, and the fact that the mentors would also be actual hiring managers.

You might be right, though I still think it's worth doing a MVP or this 'pretotype' idea.

Great comment, thanks.

You know, your comment gives me an idea; I happen to know a good number of volunteer programmers who might want to help bootstrap a site like this, at least to the point where it could attract government funding or corporate sponsorship.

Cool idea, although I expect everyone who understands the English version would also have understood the C version.

"There are no compiler warnings to guide you through the human interaction of an interview."

I've done this twice for candidates with speech impediments. It works well.

Every bubble pops. It's a fact of life and a function of surface tension, internal pressure, and bubble diameter. Learn Java (or Python) and don't over inflate your bubble.

On the other hand I am baffled why anyone in possession of free will would write 20 lines of Java to "determine if an input string is a palindrome" when plainly this is bait for perl/ruby one-liners.

Oh wait, this is just a sampling of codeeval submissions? I have no idea what that means.

<META> Ironic juxtaposition of the day: https://twitter.com/KiwiCoder/status/278128964499804161

It has been about a month since the site went live and the first priority has been (and still is) to build up momentum with volunteers. Nonetheless I am actively seeking charities who could benefit from these kinds of projects but so far - to my frustration - I have lots of encouragement and interest but no projects started. It actually hurts to admit that in a public forum, but I can't see the point in pretending otherwise. I have met up with local charity reps who love the idea, but I guess it takes time for something like this to gain traction when charities are already invested financially and emotionally in existing programmes of work, plus funding bids, plus tenders for service provision, not to mention the ongoing stress of keeping organisations afloat in the midst of global financial problems. I've heard some awful stories about how hard it is to keep a charity or NPO afloat right now.

But that makes me even more determined. Charities and NPOs should not be (but are) the ones to suffer most when times are hard.

Regarding specific technologies; it all depends on projects and is somewhat volunteer driven. An organisation might want (just for example) to make a campaign for mobile devices but will not care about which platform (or they might care but not enough to say no to an available Android developer).

I'm also very conscious of how these projects are supported after delivery (when the volunteer finishes). It won't be good if the net result is an unsustainable support and maintenance burden, so up-front planning is needed to a) avoid that or b) plan for it if necessary.

So far all the costs have been covered out of my pocket, and when I have good month (I'm a freelancer) I will sink some more into a marketing campaign. I'm not a marketer, no sir, its a shame I'm not asking for volunteer marketers else I could tap one of them.

Thanks datr.

Six signups in the past hour, including our first volunteer from the Phillippines.

SEEKING FREELANCER (VOLUNTEERING) - http://socialcoder.org

SocialCoder is a non-profit that connects volunteer programmers and designers with charities for short-term voluntary projects.

We are based in the UK but volunteers have signed up from all over Europe and the US.

Signing up is obligation-free, it only means you will potentially be matched with a charity for a specific project. How much time you give is up to you - we have a library of projects so you can see the kind of time involved per project (http://socialcoder.org/Home/ProjectLibrary)

Reasons to sign up?

* Use your tech skills to directly support causes you care about

* Add real-world experience to your CV

* Get a professional recommendation from the charity (assuming all goes well!)

* Receive mentoring from a SocialCoder mentor (experienced leaders) as and when helpful

* Networking opportunities!

Stabbing at the screen with my sausage finger works fine for me, in fact it works so well that I hadn't thought about it until now. Of course, I don't code or write on my touch devices and when I do code/write I use a different machine (a laptop or desktop) and have no impulse to touch the screen. Different modes. I don't understand your comment about monospace font type.

I'm not sure this is a problem. Android supports precise text-selection via automatic zooming and start and end block markers, like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/grmlsgqgqc5qqs6/Screenshot_2012-11...

Great concept and nice execution, if I was looking for a job I would give this a try.

One thing to consider; I spent about a minute looking on your site (and on Laudits) for information about you and didn't find anything. So you seem kind of anonymous. You could be a bunch of sniggering recruiters, I don't know.

If you haven't already, it might be an idea to look into analytics for your site. It will give you clues based on visitor behaviour, e.g. which landing pages, content navigation and so on.

And just a minor thing, but something the SEO types recommend; if you want to be hired you should have an unmissable HIRE ME button on your site. Crass but effective, they say.

Ultimately I suspect the up-front cost of any non-trivial software project may be the tip of the iceberg. Yes, it's still a saving, but the risk (to the charity) is that they unwittingly take on a maintenance burden they would not have wanted with the benefit of hindsight.

Sounds like the only viable answer is to have a grown-up conversation with the charity, just to make sure they go into this kind of arrangement with their eyes wide open.

(Sorry, talking to myself, thinking out loud)

2 kids; 3y and 1y.

I pay for office space and treat my own work the same as if I was working for someone else.

I go to the office to work, and when I'm home my interrupt flag is set to 1.

This is the only way I can get things done. Anything else and someone is bound to be unhappy.

Naturally "the best" is subjective in many important ways, but its something I hear all the time. A pity that when I hear it, it's usually followed by "...and we're offering up to (M)" where (M) is below even the market average.

Yeah, I was thinking of the stuff on codeproject, dzone, stackoverflow. The places where code is dropped with the explicit purpose of sharing it.

++ for free time over pizza