thetrumanshow

The kids who start playing at a young age don't generally start out dreaming of selling out for slightly better odds at some point later in life. They have their eyes set on their heros and they go as hard as they can. Its only later that they become realistic in their expectations.

I am trying to weakly correlate this concept to startups. You have to start out dreamy-eyed enough to start. You can deal with reality later.

When Scott Mace and I started CalendarHub and applied to YCombinator in the same year as Justin Khans Kiko, we weren't shooting for lifestyle business. We were shooting for Get-Bought-By-Google or bust. Reality set in later. That was my start, at least I started :).

I don't exactly disagree, but I would say there are enough things outside of your control that luck does play a part. However, to your point I believe that (with great skill, appropriately applied) you can bend the odds in your favor.

What I really wanted to do in that comment was espouse what the article is selling... positivity/hope.

If that were true, there would never be any entrepreneurs. Employment is safer than a startup, for example.

Now weighing your comment against really long odds like the lottery, its definitely more correct.

The point I wanted to make is that its fine to hope in things that are seemingly unattainable, and to be somewhat ignorant of the realities. Imagine, for example, how bad college basketball would become if players started realizing just how long the odds are in the path to wealth through the NBA.

It turns out, a lot of our economy runs on hope.

Most people don't win the lottery. Statistically speaking, you almost always lose. So why play, right?

Sometimes, its okay to ignore the statistics and hope for the best. Sometimes, its okay to stop hoping and start believing, even if the odds are grim.

Selection bias does teach us one useful thing. That you don't win if you give up.

Due diligence.

I think they are strong names based on either the language devices they employ or based on the existing brands they are carefully aligning themselves with, which I believe makes them memorable.

Here is a simple formula for one kind language device used in naming: 1) Find a key term: house 2) Find a word that rhymes with the key term: mouse 3) Find an idiom or common phrase that includes the rhymed term: mouse trap 4) Substitute the original keyword in place of the rhyming word ... result: house trap

Due to all kinds of fuzzy reasons that will never be arguably as good as testing names with real people (kudos for testing your names!), I prefer this method.

I see 4 very strong, smartly chosen brand names in this list: wevorce, fivetran, simplyinsured, errplane. But, wevorce wins this round.

I worked in a consultancy that primarily deals in websites and small apps for clients. Projects were generally underbid and handed to designers and engineers with the impetus to hurry your ass up so we can make money on this. As such, we were constantly throwing stuff together, duplicating code used elsewhere, no DRY, mounting technical debt. Don't get me wrong, this worked for us, so I couldn't complain much...

However, what irked me is that this mindset flowed into the SaaS and native mobile app-development side of the house as well. Fully or partly-spec'd native development is expected to result in something pretty and take no time at all, just like the web-design side. Very little interest in engineering things properly.

Fear of over-engineering absolutely should be ever-present as part of your efforts. But, I think we're taking this to extremes sometimes.

And do not underestimate how important this piece is: "...and keep us posted." As edw said, it sounds like you may need people to hold you accountable on your journey (and one of the key ingredients you may lack) ... use us in this capacity. By the way, that's me to a T as well. I need people around that keep me focused on moving forward.

Now go, and to great things worthy of honor.

Correct, and that is "exactly what [I would] think". So, title was wrong, ironically.

And Rob Walling delivers.

Not only is his book awesome, not only is his podcast awesome, not only are his conference presentations awesome... He's also a apparently a really great guy. Thanks for being a good sport and showing up Rob! :)

So, my question is... to be forward compatible do I keep developing Android apps in Java, or Chrome apps in C++, or ...

Something like "Get back to work!", actually.

This post right here is my MVP.

I'm working on a startup-life-broadcasting idea. Basically, you follow me through the process of building my company. Hopefully you're building yours too at the same time. Maybe this is much more transparent than anything you've paid attention to before. So, not just blog posts about how things are going down (ala patio11 or Nathan Barry), but videos, audio recording, actual code, bank statements... like, lots of details, very open. Lots of live-broadcasting. Kinda like the way Justin.tv started.

It would be even better if it displayed the no-procrast message!

Geez kyro, logout every now and then. :)

I think you and I just might disagree on how recognizable this is, but its beside my point.

I get some utility out of the thing, and I get to contribute to something that the community would like to see become successful. I don't normally donate at the drop of a hat, but pg has thus far very carefully tended this community without asking much directly from it. Its a no-brainer.

If HN becomes a Kickstarter for non-profits, eh, I become much less interested then.

Oh, and if someone happens to ask me what the shirt is about, I probably would say "Ah, its a novelty shirt I bought from this geeky website you probably wouldn't care much about." Because I tend to think the community benefits from being careful who gets involved in it. {sigh} I typed that, and its probably flame-war inducing, but I do feel that way.

For me its solidarity. That, and I just want to be a part of it, regardless of who else knows about it.

I wish the Beetlejuice thing worked here on HN like it seems to work on that-news-aggregator-that-shall-not-be-named. :)

rwalling, rwalling, rwalling!

In other terms: "Damn, the hallways in this building are getting too crowded, lets add some more hallways and shit and lets add new rooms... Later: damn, this is getting complicated. Peopke are piling up in doorways, theyre losing patience and leaving (or being forced to leave to ease the congestion)... Wish there was something we could do!"

Wmf: "Build another building, geeez!"

Dear Heroku, slice off a piece of your offering that shows some love to the Ruby community again. Lets call it the Maple stack. Have this stack use the old routing infrastructure.

Edit: To be clear, I do not support this legal action. I do want Heroku to hear the community, but I don't want it to go this far.

In case OP returns... what probably would have worked better: "I know there are regular stories here about how to build businesses and such, but boy, there is so much to learn! Has anyone compiled a Greatest Hits compilation of how to build a business online that I can read to get started off right?"

Ah "here and there" is easier to work with. You, sir, simply need to execute some kind of arbitrage.

In college, I would buy trivets and wallpaper borders from Dollar General and sell them on EBay. If you just want money here and there, then selling physical things is not a bad racket.

Whatever you choose to sell, there must exist an uninformed market ready to buy. Turns out, this isn't hard to find.

Sorta-cynical answer: Yes, convince other people that they can make money on the web and tell them to pay you to help them... then use their money to go learn how to make money on the web... and BOOM, you both benefit.

This is called consulting.

Edit: For clarity, I'm not trolling. I assume you mean passive income and the delta between where you are now and having something that can pay you passive income is large, IMO. If you can get into a paying gig that helps you learn skills to move you toward your passive-income-earning-thingy... its win-win.

Godspeed you pioneers who are venturing forth and coming back to report on your successes and failures. Many of us ObjC/XCode types that love Ruby are carefully watching... But feel its still too early to take those chances.

I wish that I had watched PhoneGap more carefully. Had I paid attention, I definitely wouldn't have chosen that route. I make that comparison because the gotchas aren't apparent until you've fully invested. I think that same might be true for RubyMotion. I'm happy to be wrong!

Would love your comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5344037

First: What an amazing opportunity! If he is working in near-isolation and he is very focused, he can come out of that experience with some serious skills.

The answer you seek is iTunesU, IMO.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/hands-on-python-tutoria...

I learned to build iOS apps from Standford's Paul Hegarty in iTunesU. Now, I'm going back through the material because he talks about some master-level things that I probably couldn't parse on the first go-round.

I'd like to get a sense of how often the PHP community tends to upgrade languages and frameworks for legacy products. Always/Never? Anyone care to provide some anecdote?

For example, I have two Rails apps that are running on Rails 2.2.x, so yeah, they're way behind, and I feel some sense of urgency to upgrade them soon... but I believe I am an outlier in the Ruby/Rails community in the sense that I am not upgrading all the time.

Specifically, why not open with a question that addresses the problem that people want solved?

"Are you certain that your SQL/TomcatInstance/RailsApp is secure?"

Then you can either branch off into teaching them how bad the problem is (e.g. "YOUR STUFF WILL EVENTUALLY BE HACKED FOR CERTAIN!") ala patio11, or tell them how you're going to help them.

Edit: Nvm, they don't tokenize with the data. How did I miss that...

The first place I saw this code pattern was of course at Stripe, but I would be happy to learn that it predates them.

I also have a little service that attaches to web forms and does interesting things with the data in a similar way. It also scrapes the form at submission time just like Stripe and Braintree do. Nothing malicious in case you were thinking it.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will" --Frederick Douglass

Don't expect vague goodwill and intention to manifest itself as a mandate without being willing to take steps to ensure it happens.