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I'm opposite. I have so many ideas but don't know how to program. Just pay attention to anything that frustrates you in daily life, especially if you're resea

I'm opposite. I have so many ideas but don't know how to program. Just pay attention to anything that frustrates you in daily life, especially if you're researching something to buy. Is there confusion? lack of info? etc? Is there a way you can scrape content together to present information better for this audience? It's all about creating value, and I find reducing frustration or thinking on the part of a user is usually an easy way to start.

klinskyc 10y ago
Out of curiosity, any reason why you don't want to learn programming?
- a_small_island 10y ago
  ADD
  - bloaf 10y ago
    Mental illness is not a good excuse. For example, Terry Davis wrote an entire operating system from scratch despite having schizophrenia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
- sixQuarks 10y ago
  It's not that I don't want to learn. I've made 3 serious efforts to learn, and although I understand how programming works, I could never do it at the level I want. However, the small amount of programming I've learned has given me good insights and allows me to communicate better with technical people.
  - rpgmaker 10y ago
    > I could never do it at the level I want. Even professional programmers can get that feeling when looking at some of the really popular apps/webapps/games. You have to keep in mind though that none of those are built by a single person but by at least a couple of people (usually dozens upon dozens). The key is to start small but to start somewhere and keep going.
    - sixQuarks 10y ago
      Yeah, if I focused only on programming, I'm sure I could learn it well, but then my marketing/biz skills would suffer. It's better that I focus on my strengths.
gedrap 10y ago
Noticing frustrating bits and lack of better options is a habit, I believe, which has to be developed. It's easier to notice horribly frustrating things and that's what startups often do, but that might be out of scope for many side projects. However, noticing small things that might be fixed in an evening or a week - that's a habit. I find it similar to the 'I want to blog, don't know what to write' issue.
jak1192 10y ago
Hey how about you spit ball some of those ideas over here? I bet there's plenty of hungry programmers in here eager to make them come to life
- awqrre 10y ago
  Random idea: How about a mobile multi-player game where any player can grab and throw digital balls found around them and the goal is to get them in specific spots? They could be found using GPS/augmented reality and you could shoot them using your phone's sensors by swinging the phone or a gun/canon app with specified settings for example.
- bloaf 10y ago
  I have ideas for crazy things. Here are some: Make a Wikipedia for code. Not a wikipedia about code, but a Wikipedia where the pages are the code. No references to outside tools/libraries, all the functions are either in the base language or references to other wikipedia-of-code pages. The pages are presented in a literate programming style. Bring back the Inferno OS, but replace the original VM (Dis) with the Microsoft CLR. Make a P2P publishing system for scientific publications. Let the contributing scientists have individual accounts, and manage reputations with a blockchain reputation system. Let people also donate their CPU cycles to scientific computations through this system. Require publications to store their data in a database format that your system's client can query and process with some programming language. Require all data tables, and results that appear in the publication's text be expressed as functions performed on data queried from the database (or potentially databases from other publications.)
- sixQuarks 10y ago
  I've tried to find a technical co-founder a couple of times, it didn't work out. I think there are just so many "idea guys", it's hard to differentiate the good ones from bad ones. I've been successful enough with my ideas that I just hire programmers and designers and just bootstrap everything myself. It's just easier that way.
elbigbad 10y ago
I agree, and if you can come up with a way to get paid for this indirectly, like perhaps with Amazon referral links or something, even better. That way you're creating value for someone else, they don't have to pay for that value, and you might get enough to pay for server/hosting costs.
Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
A friend of mine who is a musician wrote about that : https://koketteriet.se/blog/i_can_use_vim_now_give_me_a_gui.html https://koketteriet.se/blog/i_can_use_vim_now_give_me_a_gui....

klinskyc 10y ago

Out of curiosity, any reason why you don't want to learn programming?

a_small_island 10y ago
ADD
- bloaf 10y ago
  Mental illness is not a good excuse. For example, Terry Davis wrote an entire operating system from scratch despite having schizophrenia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
sixQuarks 10y ago
It's not that I don't want to learn. I've made 3 serious efforts to learn, and although I understand how programming works, I could never do it at the level I want. However, the small amount of programming I've learned has given me good insights and allows me to communicate better with technical people.
- rpgmaker 10y ago
  > I could never do it at the level I want. Even professional programmers can get that feeling when looking at some of the really popular apps/webapps/games. You have to keep in mind though that none of those are built by a single person but by at least a couple of people (usually dozens upon dozens). The key is to start small but to start somewhere and keep going.
  - sixQuarks 10y ago
    Yeah, if I focused only on programming, I'm sure I could learn it well, but then my marketing/biz skills would suffer. It's better that I focus on my strengths.

gedrap 10y ago

Noticing frustrating bits and lack of better options is a habit, I believe, which has to be developed. It's easier to notice horribly frustrating things and that's what startups often do, but that might be out of scope for many side projects. However, noticing small things that might be fixed in an evening or a week - that's a habit. I find it similar to the 'I want to blog, don't know what to write' issue.

jak1192 10y ago

Hey how about you spit ball some of those ideas over here? I bet there's plenty of hungry programmers in here eager to make them come to life

awqrre 10y ago
Random idea: How about a mobile multi-player game where any player can grab and throw digital balls found around them and the goal is to get them in specific spots? They could be found using GPS/augmented reality and you could shoot them using your phone's sensors by swinging the phone or a gun/canon app with specified settings for example.
bloaf 10y ago
I have ideas for crazy things. Here are some: Make a Wikipedia for code. Not a wikipedia about code, but a Wikipedia where the pages are the code. No references to outside tools/libraries, all the functions are either in the base language or references to other wikipedia-of-code pages. The pages are presented in a literate programming style. Bring back the Inferno OS, but replace the original VM (Dis) with the Microsoft CLR. Make a P2P publishing system for scientific publications. Let the contributing scientists have individual accounts, and manage reputations with a blockchain reputation system. Let people also donate their CPU cycles to scientific computations through this system. Require publications to store their data in a database format that your system's client can query and process with some programming language. Require all data tables, and results that appear in the publication's text be expressed as functions performed on data queried from the database (or potentially databases from other publications.)
sixQuarks 10y ago
I've tried to find a technical co-founder a couple of times, it didn't work out. I think there are just so many "idea guys", it's hard to differentiate the good ones from bad ones. I've been successful enough with my ideas that I just hire programmers and designers and just bootstrap everything myself. It's just easier that way.

elbigbad 10y ago

I agree, and if you can come up with a way to get paid for this indirectly, like perhaps with Amazon referral links or something, even better. That way you're creating value for someone else, they don't have to pay for that value, and you might get enough to pay for server/hosting costs.

Johnny_Brahms 10y ago

A friend of mine who is a musician wrote about that : https://koketteriet.se/blog/i_can_use_vim_now_give_me_a_gui.html https://koketteriet.se/blog/i_can_use_vim_now_give_me_a_gui....