Hacker News Reader

timruffleson Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (August 2011)

Picklive - Real-time fantasy sports gambling, London, UK, in White Bear Yard, funded. Looking for anyone interested in writing Javascript with all the toys (Backbone, Coffee-script, JsTestDriver etc). We use Ruby for our simulation and Rails for our web stuff.

Not worried about experience/pieces of paper - come in and we'll write some code together.

http://picklive.com or get in touch via my profile.

timruffleson Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons

I'm doing this right now - MST121 and MS221. I'm finding it a pleasant challenge without having done anything more than GCSE maths. It's finding the time to do the study that's tricky. Say hi if you've got any questions about the course - doing the revision you've mentioned sounds a great idea.

timruffleson Real Blogging for Hackers Written in C

Because of course, 'real' hackers write everything in C ! The right tool for the... huh.

timruffleson Agility.js - Javascript MVC for the "write less, do more" programmer

Looks like a nice mix of concepts you've seen in dojo/Backbone (very similar #set #get ersatz message passing etc) with those in Knockout (two-way model/view binding). The combined JS/CSS widget definitions make sense for people writing components.

timruffleson EBay Patents 10-Click Checkout

His last three posts have been satire. I'm hoping he gets back to content as good as http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pat....

timruffleson Ask HN: Small and good Ruby and Javascript Source to study?

I'd suggest Backbone.js for Javascript; it's well written, compact (~1k with comments) and well explained.

timruffleson Github is Your New Resume

If that was to become true, it'd be great to be able to curate your profile. At the moment your repos appear in order of newness, and an unchanged fork of someone's repo could be the first thing potential employers see.

timruffleson Show HN: gotypecast.com - be interviewed by anyone

That's a great little app. I'm sure lots of podcasters etc would be interested in a scalable way of interacting with subscribers. Maybe try to pitch it to someone making money from ebooks/podcasts?

timruffleson 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

NP! It was a little scary, but it's been a very positive experience. I've got a lot from reading people's comments here, and it's crystallised a lot of the thinking in the article.

I hope you're right re prevention of loss, that'd be fantastic!

timruffleson 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

Have you got a blog? Always interested to read about the process.

timruffleson 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

It's certainly something I wish the Open University (http://open.ac.uk) would use - I'm studying maths there at the mo and have to post my coursework in.

I'd guess parents would be keen on seeing how their children are doing too.

timruffleson 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

It's a good point. What's interesting is that the academics I surveyed think students do need help with writing and expression. However, if students don't think so, as you point out, no perceived need to meet and therefore no sales...

timruffleson 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

Interesting. Looking at the demo now you're right: the first bit of feedback on screen is trite, and the rest is a bit wishy-washy.

I had a look at the analytics, and most people went for more info rather than the demo. However, those pages are really, really bad and sparse. Should have worked on those a lot - I remember I was planning to add tutor profiles.

Software myopia again. BTW if anyone wants to look at the analytics let me know and I'll give them access.

timruffleson 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

Sure - in the repo I've specified the MIT license for the code, and CC license for the docs etc. That said, I'm very happy to give you whatever license you'd like - just let me know.

timruffleson 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

Very true. I've been thinking that although I started coding to make a business (tho I used to write QBasic games when I was 10 too), I developed a coder's value system.

I can't seem to keep in mind that code is a means to an end!

timruffleson 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

Could be right there :) Inference from either failure or success is tricky.

That said, I think "not knowing my customer" is still a sound lesson. If you know your customer, you'll know whether there is or isn't a market.

Re post-mortems, should keep you going:

http://www.chubbybrain.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-25-best-startup-fail-stor...

timruffleson 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

Not sure why, but they removed the feature a while back - http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/04/facebook-quietly-pulls-poll....

It was really slick when I used it, though it did get small samples (100 max I believe) and perhaps people just clicked randomly to get rid of it.

timruffleson Ask HN: I need a friend but I'm having trouble

If you're ever in London, feel free to drop by Picklive in White Bear Yard for a hack and a coffee :)

timruffleson Experimental UK Gov site: alpha.gov.uk

That is absolutely the best government site I've ever seen. It looks like a person designed it, rather than one hundred committees.

timruffleson Euler's Identity (and other maths) explained in 5 minutes

Good job sir! Wonder if he does tuition? :)

timruffleson There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

Criticism isn't often worth anything, just demonstrating a sterile person trying to find other things to do than make. Until we see some world class design from the anon behind FTFHIG, their opinion is worth 0.

Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism -

'Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well; Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not Critics to their judgment too?'

timruffleson Ask HN: Suggested software /design/ books?

Try reading a non-programming design book too. I'm reading 'Notes on the Synthesis of Form' by Christopher Alexander at the moment, and it has some interesting stuff on tackling problems elegantly.

I find myself taking the first solution that appears to me, which is not great. I'm trying to adopt more of a sketching approach, writing a few bits of code to see how things would interact, and working out where the complexity would bite me in a design.

timruffleson Ask HN: Best books, blogs, podcasts on shipping more/being more prolific?

I second Steve Blank for the very useful checklists. You can always open it to the back to find a whole task list in bite sized chunks.

timruffleson Ask HN: Best books, blogs, podcasts on shipping more/being more prolific?

Less with the extremely unhelpful 'just ship more' messages....

I'm sure you've read getting real, but anyway: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php

I've always liked Emerson's 'Self Reliance': http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

Otherwise just pick any random productivity technique. I don't think it matters which one, they're all just codifying the things you already know, and stick with that for a while. If it doesn't work, maybe something else is preventing you from shipping things? I find I'm too quick to swap what I'm doing in my personal projects, and thus have lots of prototypes.

timruffleson Ask PG: Have you ever been to India or planning to?

I'm heading out there in January, couldn't be more excited :) Any HN folks out there?

Edit: Just found out there's a BarCamp there - http://groups.google.com/group/barcampkerala?pli=1 - maybe I'll head along!

timruffleson Trap Rooms: Deliberate errors to catch copyright infringement

I can't really resist saying, because it's such a coincidence, that I _live_ in this picture and walk up Lavender Sweep. The trap street wasn't there in Google maps last time I looked, I assume they must move them around.

timruffleson Ask HN: Would a game to teach Bash & *nix be worth-while?

Okay thanks for all the suggestions re Crowdsourcing etc. I've just put up a page on http://www.indiegogo.com/Banzai-Bash to do exactly that.

Re free - if I raise the money to cover my living costs, I'll make the game open source. You'll easily be able to spin it up on a VM/cloud server (or your home comp if you're brave/foolish) for free! What's better, is that you'd be able to modify to teach your own language/project.