samlev

I've started writing a "learn to program" book, focusing on presenting a very low barrier to entry.

What I need is feedback as I go from a few people of different levels of skill from non-programmers to the programming elite.

I don't need many people, and I won't take much of your time. Once every couple of weeks, I might send you a new revision, and ask for some feedback.

My aim is not to teach you how to become a pro, but to teach you enough that you will be able to solve problems, and understand the denser books.

So what I'm asking of you is this:

- If you are already a programmer; I would like you to read, fact check, bug check, and generally tell me if there's something you think I could explain better.

- If you aren't a programmer; I would like you to read, and tell me if something doesn't make sense. This is perhaps the more important part, because if something I write doesn't make sense to you, or a concept is too hard, then the book can't do it's job. The other thing to point out is that by doing this, you will probably be spoiling the entire experience for yourself. I'm not saying that you'll end up in a broken state where you'll never learn how to program, but it might not be as easy as fun to learn as it would be once the book is finished. I'm sorry about this, but hopefully your sacrifice will make life better for all the future readers of this book.

So if you have some time to spare, and would like to be part of a programming book with "unicorns" in the title, and get your name on the "thanks" page when it's finished, let me know, and let me know how to get in contact with you. I'll try to make it all as painless as possible.

I've been reading HN for a while, and thinking about start ups/business ideas for longer. One thing that keeps showing up are these 'sexy start ups' which seem to be make-or-break ventures. They're trying to bend the rules, they have no initial revenue plan, but they want to change the world and go viral while doing it.

There's all this talk of businesses which take off like a bat out of hell, and that that's what VC funds are trying to catch on to - the next big thing.

My main question is this: how important is the 'sexiness' of a start up idea to getting funding? Would you be more inclined to throw money at something that could take the world by storm (even if there's no clear future funding model for it), or something that probably won't become a household name, but will probably turn a profit?

Don't get me wrong here - I love that there are VCs who will willingly throw money at something that just seems like a crazy idea, but (and maybe it's just the HN culture) it seems to be that if your idea isn't a bit crazy, then you'd better self-fund.

So yeah, how important is it to you that a start up is trying to do something new, crazy, and sexy?

Simple question that I ask because I'm curious. What do you use to try to explain technical ideas to non-technical people? Mine is most commonly a car analogy - not that I know much about cars, but a certain level of innate knowledge about them is in the public conciousness.

So what do you normally use?

First thing's first: I'm not looking for work right now. Second thing's second: I'm not looking for back-patting, or false sincerity. I'm asking for honest opinions from people who I trust to know.

OK, down to business.

Everyone knows that salary negotiations are hard, especially for us introverted types. I figure that one reason why I personally suck at them so bad is that I don't have any real idea of how much other people (employers in particular) see my worth. It's tough, but that's how it is.

So what I want to do here is get a little equaliser in my pocket; I want to find out how much people would actually be willing to pay me, so that the next time I go into a salary negotiation I know when I'm getting low-balled, and how far I can push.

Of course, this will change with location, job, etc. but I just want your honest opinion. If you were to hire me, based on the work I can show you, what would be 1. Your opening offer, 2. The lowest you would expect to get away with, and 3. The maximum that you would pay. Optionally; 4. What could I do to improve this?

Just so you're not making random guesses, here's some background on me:

- I work primarily in PHP and JavaScript, but have had (commercial) experience with Python (Pylons/Repoze.bfg/Pyramid; Django; Zope/Plone) and Java.

- I've spent most of my years filling the roles of both a Software Developer and a secondary server administrator.

- I've started an Open Source project (http://www.samuellevy.com/mico) which, while not huge, has a couple of translations provided by users (Russian and Spanish), and is being used by a couple of hundred businesses.

My website: http://www.samuellevy.com

tl;dr: I want you to pretend that you're going to hire me, and then tell me what you would offer me.

First I'll start off:

http://pastebin.com/ATdDUStd

That was from January 2008. I was young and stupid. I'm probably just as stupid now, but at least I can see now how stupid that was.

So let's open up the shame files, and show how far we've come by recognising how bad we used to be.