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Sweet. Thanks for the interaction this evening. Truth be told, I had no expectation what so ever for people on HN to even really comment / consider what I'm put

by cgshaw 16y ago

Sweet. Thanks for the interaction this evening. Truth be told, I had no expectation what so ever for people on HN to even really comment / consider what I'm putting out there (that's why I put it on posterous and not as an Ask HN). I had no karma and I'm not a programmer. I live 1,836 miles from Palo Alto. This post served two purposes, 1. hail mary that I found someone kick ass who was interested in getting involved for a random reason (they liked sports or bbq maybe) 2. help me figure out how get buy in from developers. By looking at the feedback, "over the top," "not enough information," etc., I can get a sense of how I have to change my pitch to an engineer. It's not that I think all engineers are the same, but that I don't know many engineers, so I wanted to hypo-test. I'd love nothing more than to learn Python, Ruby, erlang, etc., and crank it out myself, but if I've learned anything in life it's that I should concentrate what I'm best at and learn new things incrementally along the way. Thanks for not just making fun of me and moving along.

stanleydrew 16y ago
I'm not one to make fun of someone who puts himself out there like you have. I've been there before. I think you'll find that engineers are a critical and skeptical bunch. You're right that you should get in front of as many of them as you can. You need to learn as much from them as possible, even the ones who aren't working with you. Listen to them. They will help you in subtle ways that you might not notice at first. At this point your most important goal must be to gain credibility. I don't think you should learn Python or anything like that. We both agree that's probably not a great use of your time. What you do need to do is understand enough about how web-based products are built and how they work to talk competently about specifics. That's going to be hard. One way to do it is to try to build something yourself, which we've kind of ruled out. One way to do it is to read a lot. One way to do it is to find someone you know who's an engineer and watch what he/she does while asking questions. Credibility is everything. And you can't substitute it with passion. I wish you the best of luck. Keep us updated.

by cgshaw 16y ago

stanleydrew 16y ago

I'm not one to make fun of someone who puts himself out there like you have. I've been there before. I think you'll find that engineers are a critical and skeptical bunch. You're right that you should get in front of as many of them as you can. You need to learn as much from them as possible, even the ones who aren't working with you. Listen to them. They will help you in subtle ways that you might not notice at first. At this point your most important goal must be to gain credibility. I don't think you should learn Python or anything like that. We both agree that's probably not a great use of your time. What you do need to do is understand enough about how web-based products are built and how they work to talk competently about specifics. That's going to be hard. One way to do it is to try to build something yourself, which we've kind of ruled out. One way to do it is to read a lot. One way to do it is to find someone you know who's an engineer and watch what he/she does while asking questions. Credibility is everything. And you can't substitute it with passion. I wish you the best of luck. Keep us updated.