Not by trying to turn a Java cash register into a business. There's nothing particularly wrong with writing a Twitter clone as an exercise (although I could thi

Not by trying to turn a Java cash register into a business. There's nothing particularly wrong with writing a Twitter clone as an exercise (although I could think of more interesting exercises), but trying to turn it into a business - with everything that entails - is such a large distraction from coding that you'd better skip it (if your goal is to be a good programmer; I'm certainly not a sufficiently good businessman to judge whether it's effective training for that, although I would go to work for someone else and observe.)