timruffles

It's a good point - I am planning to be result oriented, for anything complex it'd be impossible to think of all the ways you could sensibly achieve it.

I wish I could, but Kickstarter is US only. The alternative, invested.in doesn't look that strong.

I think you're right that it's a model that would work well - if I could raise the money to code it I'd happily make it open source after that (running costs means it'd have to cost something to use on someone's server).

I agree, but command-line skills were something I didn't consider learning explicitly - not really knowing how useful it'd be. I know a lot of developers with just a sketchy understanding of a tiny part of them!

Good spot, you're in the git log now :)

That's a cool idea, especially as lots of people wouldn't need the basics, just the advanced stuff.

About me page now up (isn't it awkward writing about yourself :D). I'll pop more stuff in as it happens!

Thanks! Good point, I'll pop some more stuff up!

Thanks very much for your support wyclif, any suggestions?

I'd love to but I'm not really at a point in my life where I can do a whole project full time for fun :) Since it'd be cloud based (as you'd be doing things which would be dangerous to do on your home system, under time pressure) it'd have running costs, and I expect the security aspect to be tricky.

Thanks, that's good advice, Mac users (I use Mac) are definitely happier to pay for productivity stuff - OmniFocus etc. I'll add that :)

I'd say the rate of worth-while books being published is so low it's best served by a list - and thanks again for that list!

Congrats - inverted in PS and my HTC Hero got it! Nexus couldn't though

I really like Rails - for all the CRUDish apps of the world there's nothing better: you'll avoid reinventing a lot of boring wheels.

Perhaps the reason some HNers are Rails-phobic is that Rails is rightly designed to be precisely the opposite of tool you want for hacks: convention over configuration, config opaquely doing as much as possible for you, and development being as far as possible snapping together canonical bricks (Devise, WillPaginate et al).

If it didn't get in your way for hacks with very different requirements to the apps Rails was designed for, it wouldn't be doing its job. Right tool for the job, as ever!

Seems a very valid article, and some of the non-science it debunks is absurd!

That said, the line "we could eat meat ... (albeit much less) with a clean conscience" is a little glib, surely most people know that the ethics of killing things just to eat them is at least an open question for reasons beyond environmentalism?

The article makes me quite worried for Quora.

First it's the same old 'users first, monetize later', a distinct problem from monetization strategy: it's a failed mindset where every day you're not charging people is a day you're not learning what you can actually get people to pay for, that is, what constitutes your business.

Secondly he doesn't event start addressing the hard problems of Q&A sites:

1) How to keep the quality of answers high. As soon as more people get on the site, the quality will drop unless there is a smart mechanic to prevent it. All he has is assertion that 'You’re answering questions because ...' as if he knew the answer to that question for the next 100k users who aren't early adopters!

2) How to monetize a Q&A site in the face of approaching commoditization, on a scale that warrants investment. Ads? Really?

Great starting point even if it's not all the way to Lisp :) Shouldn't be too hard to add the rest - read the SICP on the meta-circular evaluator and translate http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/sicp/book/node76.html

"these people commited suicide at work" - they live at work, in dormitories.

Fascinating. Since it seems from the article that smaller companies are less worker friendly, and people are literally desperate to work for Foxconn, it's hard not to see Gou as a good thing for China & the Chinese.

A business epic...

'The Idler' has some great stuff (http://idler.co.uk/); apart from that Alaine de Botton is my favourite.

Culture and Anarchy, or the others? What's it like reading from a US perspective (I'm UK)?

Solid article. This problem is painfully evident in the UK, where we're aiming at 50% university attendance, when we have quality courses available for about 10% of students. The result: 3 more years of high-school quality education - quantitatively more education, but qualitatively these 'graduates' have just crammed, parroted and forgotten a little more.

The most important skill to take from HE is the ability and desire to continue to learn: the only skill that'll never be obsolete (I'd better keep telling myself that, since I'm a history graduate :) ).

I think you have to ask yourself the difficult question: if VCs and angels with lots of money to spend aren't willing to fund it, why would developers etc fund it with their time?

If you don't have any cash, you can't have employees :) Find some co-founders!

If they're average, not terrible, I'd agree with 37signals - there is no such thing as rockstar people, just rockstar environments.

If you're not sure you've built an inspiring, learning environment where everybody feels driven to do their best, are you sure a) it's them, not you? b) anyone you'll hire will do any better?

The way you've worded it though, it sounds like they are a bit rubbish. Maybe it's the kindest thing, it's painful all round if they're trying and failing.

I still can't get anything out of the Tao, finding it totally inscrutable :|

1984 has a lot to teach, and you could argue we've not learned them as history is rewritten, thoughts outlawed and truth redefined by our politicians and media.

But I'd agree that BNW has more to teach us about today - lots of us are losing/have lost the ability to think much beyond our next pleasurable experience.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2PAuup/www.recombinantrecords....

Great book. I took from it that life is all FUBAR'd, you'll have to make it work for yourself :)

Great game, great lessons to take from it. Being willing to admit you could be wrong, and admitting it when it's proven to you, are two things that should be easy but often aren't. Your ego will trip you up like that.

Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, R Pirsig

Recently each of Alain de Botton's books (Status Anxiety, Pleasures and Sorrows of Work and Essays on Love) had a valuable lesson to teach.

Alexander Pope's 'Essay on Criticism' (poem, not a book) was one the first poems that I gleaned something from, and that opened up a whole new library of potential reads.

I never do enough of paper prototyping, and always regret it. This looks a great technique for communicating a UI, especially a non-standard one, in motion.

Great advice. Additionally, for me, the most important thing (from painful experience) is to give candidates a test run to see if they fit in and measure up.

Too easy to hire someone because they're likeable, and/or be taken in by past experience, and then realise the horrible truth: they're awful at their job!