I have no experience in programming, nor do I have delusions about becoming an elite programmer. I just would like to learn enough to have a better filter to notice/process ideas as mentioned here: http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
I have decided to commit to learn programming at a base level, enough to possibly make prototypes/potential to find co-founder.
I left a previous job that paid well for many years because 1.I wasn't talented and 2.I did not see my life as being fulfilled down that path.
A couple points for your consideration
1. I have over 1mm liquid, and I have no debt, don't own a house or car. This may be tacky to mention, but since I am anonymous, I just wanted to put it out there out of desperation in hopes someone can give me some solution (wishful thinking).
2. No one depends on me, I have as many hours as there are in a day to work on this.
I started doing some html work on code academy, it seemed a bit slow and thorough for what I'm trying to do. I looked at Zed Shaw's courses, and they seem like a good idea, but I'm not sure if it's overkill (or underkill?) for what my goals are.
If any of this makes sense, you would SIGNIFICANTLY help me by giving me guidance to help achieve my goal. I don't want to waste time learning things that I really won't need to know (near term).
I have searched much, but not knowing what I need to know, it is hard to discern what is and isn't necessary. (In terms of the base goal).
Maybe I am not cut out to be a founder. But I do know that reading pg's essays make my mind run wild, and I find instant inspiration and excitement in his writings. I have spent 276 days trying to figure out something else, and nothing is jumping out at me. So it's about time to make some sort of a commitment. For better or for worse.
This can be a frightening moment -- but it is also a liberating moment, viewed correctly. At this point the self's ego-image -- the set of core beliefs about who you are, what you are destined for, how 'intelligence' and 'success' are defined -- come into conflict with the reality principle. This is naturally a very painful moment (drawn across months and even years). It is also an opportunity to redefine these core beliefs -- to reexamine them -- to ask yourself what are your fundamental assumptions about intelligence, creativity, success.
In my own experience, and watching similar-minded friends, this crisis point is a fundamental conflict between what we THINK intelligence, creativity, and genius is -- and what we actually see in ourselves. On the one hand we "know" that we are smart, imaginative -- on the other, the reality principle demands proof and evidence. But here is the paradox: this very belief in intelligence creates its own contradictions. For example, if you believe that smart people are smart because they do clever things easily -- then your brain can start to believe that if you find something hard to do, it is proof of your stupidity. The brain then finds ways to avoid this painful conflict between ego-image and reality -- by dreaming up great ambitions and projects, but then shying away from realising them. Or, you can develop an aversion to "lesser work" -- which reinforces a belief that you are innately special and "above that".
The problem is in the core assumptions one makes about worth -- examining these assumptions deeply, being open to see the paradoxes in them, the hypocrisies even, can reveal avenues out of the situation. You can find practical things to do -- this in turn can build real confidence, not ego-confidence. Work seems then less like 'drudgery' and more like the slow and steady strengthening of your powers.
Just some thoughts...
This is me. It seems very complicated to overcome such a thing, as some of the assumptions seem rational. What do you deem as 'practical things to do'? (Or do you have any examples of this?)
Also thanks for this. I don't know what to say, but this hits home rather hard.
I've tried to do what you, and after about 6 months of trying to get myself to fully code, I fell flat. But I still really wanted to build a business and have slowly realized what I enjoy most - finding the easiest route to acquiring customers by building a MVP.
I now have a team of 3 (biz dev, web dev, and UI) could build you an MVP for around $15-20k. It will help you validate a lot of your assumptions and help flesh out any idea you may have.
More importantly, I believe it will help you jump start the journey of what you want to focus on. You will get exposure and advice to the 3 core elements of starting an internet business - web development, business development, and user experience. Which, if all done properly mean acquiring customers.
Contact details in profile if you're interested! Good luck either way!
Instead went to a firm in SV that wanted $54k. They had worked on a large prior project so I thought they could get it done. They couldn't even get the first milestone complete after giving then two times the allotted time. Fired them.
Finally found my own people and launched 5 months ago and going great. I would suggest finding some good people on HN.
In my mind, you obviously don't want to a put a lot of research into it -- as if you did, you'd just read everything you could, and get an MVP going -- instead of posting this. Don't worry, I'm often the same way. I suppose it's a sense of urgency.
So you might look into DevBootCamp (http://devbootcamp.com/). It doesn't mean you have to be an RoR programmer forever, but you gain coding skills and contacts in a relatively short amount of time. You have the cash and time.
Upon reflecting on my professional life, I found that most of my problems were caused by trying to run before I could walk. I needed to learn patience in order to make myself into the person that I desperately wanted to become (These days, I'm still working at it, but I'm making great progress). The crux of the matter is that it's easy to think of awesome things to make, but hard to put in the time to learn how to make them. Take the time to learn, and although you may find that what you wanted to make is not achievable, you will see other possibilities and opportunities open up for you.
With regard to beginner-level resources, I have had some great success with oreilly's headfirst series (http://shop.oreilly.com/category/series/head-first.do) They provide an excellent, quick, entry point into a subject, and enough base knowledge that you can expand on your own (and you will have to - they're beginner books). Combine these books and your future learning with diligent note-taking (via Evernote) and you will have a searchable and very useable database that will serve you well.
Good luck, and I hope it works out for you.
Sounds like you're in a great spot to pursue a goal, as soon as you've settled on what you'd like to do.
How did the programming go over the past 276 days? (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3964837) How did your prototype come out?
I somewhat agree with cjbenedikt about investing. The issue though is that without actually experiencing startup or being in the trenches with technology it is harder to filter/process ideas that people talk to you about.
You're cut out to be a founder if you are consistently applying effort to improving yourself as an entrepreneur/in business. Persistence is key, because that way you can eventually navigate all the obstacles to building a successful company, something I've managed only to a minor degree.
I won't presume to give you any advice besides that. What I can help you out with though is getting a solid start to learning how to program. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions, especially related to programming (front-end, back-end, software, architecture, mobile, games... anything) at kevin.stubbs at therubyhouse dot com.
P.S.
With apparently all the time in the world, don't worry about learning too much programming. Just work your ass off at it and you'll be a fair enough programmer for your needs soon enough. (I prefer overkill courses too.)
I never committed to it. I spent time questioning whether this was right for me, wavering between this and that, giving up, almost going back to work at what I was doing before. There have been some very dark days between then and now. I know nothing more about programming now than I did then. Every time I would sit down to start, I became overwhelmed and then didn't do anything. The recurring thought is 'there is just too much to learn'. 'The people getting into Ycombinator are Harvard/etc.. grads, why do I think I can compete'. These are illusions to some degree, but definitely kept me from making a move up to this point.
Thanks for this advice, I'll definitely follow up.
Part 1:
1) Create a database
2) Manually input test data
3) Make a page to list all of your posts
4) Paginate your posts
5) Give your posts permalinks and their own pages
Part 2:
1) Create a simple login system
2) Create a page that lists all of your posts
3) Create a page to add new posts
4) Create a page to edit posts (you can reuse the "add new posts" code)
5) Create a page to delete posts
6) Allow posts to be scheduled in the future
Part 3:
1) Use the same method above to allow users to sign up for your blog and post comments.
This is exactly how I learned to code. I started with a small core problem ("I want to display posts from a database") and started tacking on features one-by-one. There was no end goal, no todo list, no lofty requirements -- just me seeing how many features I could build by myself.
While you could certainly find a benefit in moving to the Bay Area and networking or joining a "learn to code" program, I think there's a lot to be said for just sitting down and churning away at a project like this. Once you get the hang of things, you can pick up contract work, which will both offset your living expenses, and let you improve your skill on someone else's dime. It has the added benefit of forcing you to work on problems you might not normally encounter, like parsing email sent to your server.
Mainly, before anything else, coding should be fun. If you get yourself into the swing of things, you'll have a hard time not working on your startup.
Although I had read a couple of books and tried some tutorials none of it really felt like it stuck until I just started building a site that I wanted. Even though it isn't the most systematic education, each piece that you learn is focused on solving a current problem.
As I look back over the year, I have learned a reasonable amount of HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL and just enough of deploying to a LAMP stack at my hosting company so that I can get sites up and running.
It sounds really daunting, and there were some really hard days this last year, but if you stay focused on solving one or two chunks of the overall problem at a time you can work your way through it.
I now can now do what I set out to do, which is build full working prototype sites. I have several demos deployed and am starting pilot implementations with customers on two of the sites.
I don't know your technical background or formal training. My own background was pretty technical but not web development. Even if your background is not technical, there are plenty of examples of people with Liberal Arts backgrounds and teens teaching themselves do do web development.
Another possibility for you, is to try to go to one of the dev bootcamps, you commit 12 weeks of undivided intense concentration under the tutoring of experienced developers. This would quickly get you a foundation.
Best of luck
Even if you decide that doing the web development yourself isn't all that exciting, you will now be in a much better position to evaluate other programmers that you hire to execute your vision.
Okay, so as somebody who quit their job to learn to code (I just didn't realise that was what I was doing at the time), I'll say: if you are going to code you have to be thorough. Codeacademy is a good start. I began by doing pretty much everything on that site in a couple of 8hrs/day 7-day weeks. From there, Treehouse, Zed, books, blogs, StackOverflow... there are a hundred ways.
Bottom line: if you want to be a technical founder you've got to commit to learning the hard way, be passionate and determined. Non-technical, you should read and type along to something like Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial book so at least you've got your hands dirty with code and can understand how it works when working with a co-founder. For a brief intro to simple web apps, you might try the Essential PHP with MySQL course on Lynda.com as you can see the inner workings of CRUD etc.
I've been at it six months and I can hang out with devs and talk shop, no problems. You could probably get to where I've done quicker too. Good luck!
Would you be interested in joining another startup, like mine, as a cofounder? I am the only founder.
As a suggestion, you should join a startup (not necessarily mine) and since you are not burdened by the thought of securing your next meal, you can really take much bigger challenges, much higher risk (in terms of time, not necessarily money).
For instance, I see a lot of people saying release early, go to market asap, but I somehow feel the otherwise and I agree that's a risky approach but not totally unworthy.
Just a suggestion.
I am looking for cofounder currently, someone who is willing to take risk (a lot of it) so if it suits your appetite, then you are welcome. I do not expect any money from you, will not pay you ad expect you to take care of your expenses until we secure a round or go profitable.
As far as what I am working on, I am elaborating a lot on it because that does not matter. Personalities should match first.
Contact me: shail2@live.com if interested. I am based in India.
And being a programmer is a necessary but not sufficient part of being a founder.
I would suggestto you the HN Proposition approach:
http://hnproposition.blogspot.co.uk/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694
Basically - you seed a hacker with 5000 USD to build their MVP, then you seed yourself to promote it, SEO it, sell it basically. Its essentially a way to buy an MVP. It may work really well - it may not, but whatever, you seem in the right place to do it.
You will benefit from learning to code no matter what, but right now I suspect you need to hustle. And trying to sell three or four new startups, birth them into the world, is certainly going to do that for you.
First, ask yourself why you want to learn programming. Is it something that really excites you? Go watch some of the Destroy All Software[1] screencasts: do your hart jump everytime you see Gary orchestrate Vim with elegance? Are you eager to start molding your ruby/python code with his mastery? If the answers is yes, then just let yourself go and start learning: define an easy project and just try to build it up from scratch (watchign screencasts, reading tutorials along the way).
If the answer is no and all you want is to start a tech business, then perhaps it is better for you to hire/find a team?
Btw, if you want to discuss programming, bouncing ideas off and just general support chat, fire me an email (in my profile).
Good luck! :)
Does not have to be something big. Perhaps just playing tic-tac-toe with your web app can be a start. or not even that. You don;t have to build a web app from the beginning. Try building a simple console app first. It's much easier.
