jechen

There seems to be this perception that the startups who never get past seed-stage (or end up raising any money at all) are automatically labeled as "no-shot". I digress.

Nonetheless I find the post to be an interesting and insightful read and continue to find myself awestruck at just how much the startup ecosystem has grown and matured over the past few years.

I laughed so hard at this.

Exactly the point I was driving across. I've actually signed up and followed media coverage of your site for while- you guys are building an incredible product (I'm a real advocate of the whole gamification concept).

Actually heard about Eric Ries and his lean startup movement from a VC on a booze cruise. He has a lecture series up on Udemy which I watched in one sitting and damn was it a good investment of time. Definitely preodering this book.

One thing to point out in this specific case is that the demographic to which SocialSci directly benefits (i.e., survey participants) resonates with a (rather large) subset of Reddit users, contributing to their surge in sign-ups.

I'd even go as far as saying this kind of "organic" discovery by a more diverse community trumps the spike in traffic generated by being frontpaged on HN, whose user base is admittedly a little more technically minded and bourgeois in nature, and consequently reflects poorly on long term growth potential.

One of many things I admire MIT for is their hacker culture. I wish we have one at CMU- but the culture there is completely different. It's a damn shame.

One of the best ways to learn programming is to start a project and just follow through with it. Start with something small; I began making my own Pong clones in Java. Also, Stack Overflow should be your best friend.

If you want some solid beginner reference materials, I'd suggest Learning Python the Hard Way (http://learnpythonthehardway.org/). I'm a strong proponent of teaching introductory programming with Python. Others are just a Google query away.

It'll be a long and arduous (and ultimately rewarding) journey. Best of luck!

Definitely gonna try this as I browse the web. Should turn up interesting results/people. Nice work!

Got your app when you were handing out redeem codes. Good stuff. Maybe open sourcing would be a logical next step? :)

This guy's HTML5 tutorials are freaking amazing, honestly can't express how grateful I am to people who's willing to put in the extra effort to help others learn. The servers are being hammered, though.

Haven't finished your book yet (excellent work though!), but I've noticed that some of the startups interviewed no longer exist (Djangy and Blippy, specifically). Were there any indications during the interviews that the startups were going to tank? I'm asking because in your interviews, everything sounded fine. Then again, appearance can be deceiving.

Always been a fan of MailChimp. I've grown to really respect the culture (and ethos) they have.

This is exactly the kind of mentality that one should develop on HN (or if they want to get anywhere in the industry). It reminds me of a recent post I read that people aren't intrinsically separated into "technical" and "non-technical" people. If you have the patience and the will, you can become competent at either. :) Read/learn on!

I enjoyed reading the comments pointing out numerous flaws and errors in the article. :) Happy 4th of July!

I'm also wondering the same thing...?