4 ms·

> Which brings to mind patio11's constant reminders, that running a successful software business has very very little to do with programming well That may be a

by enko 15y ago

> Which brings to mind patio11's constant reminders, that running a successful software business has very very little to do with programming well That may be appropriate for patio11. Not to demean the guy but let's be clear, he runs an online bingo service. It's my understanding that he makes much more money from consulting gigs leveraged from this modest endeavour. Rest assured that if your ambition is to write the next Dropbox or, hell, any YC company, at least 50% of your founding team will need to be very good programmers indeed.

jcarden 15y ago
What does "good" really mean here ?
tptacek 15y ago
In one of his three (3) lines of actual- money- earning- businesses, he managed to factor the "product programming" component down to a kind of minima, allowing him to channel all his effort into engineering his marketing systems. As a result, he was able to use a program that can charitably be described as "Hello World" hooked up to a random number generate to eclipse his full time salary. If you can't see the pure hack value in that, you may be commenting on the wrong message board. The conclusion you think you can draw about Patrick and "programming" from the nature of his first product: you can't draw that conclusion. I'm writing this not to offend Patrick (he could care less about threads like this), but because you are taking exactly the wrong lesson about what Patrick did and then broadcasting it to the rest of the community. Stop, please? :| I'm a systems programmer, since 1995. The list of YC companies that involve "real programming" to me is pretty short. Dropbox qualifies, but how many from the rest of their class would? Which is to say: "technical impressiveness is both subjective and a stupid metric for a business".
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

4 ms·

> Which brings to mind patio11's constant reminders, that running a successful software business has very very little to do with programming well That may be a

by enko 15y ago

jcarden 15y ago
What does "good" really mean here ?
tptacek 15y ago
In one of his three (3) lines of actual- money- earning- businesses, he managed to factor the "product programming" component down to a kind of minima, allowing him to channel all his effort into engineering his marketing systems. As a result, he was able to use a program that can charitably be described as "Hello World" hooked up to a random number generate to eclipse his full time salary. If you can't see the pure hack value in that, you may be commenting on the wrong message board. The conclusion you think you can draw about Patrick and "programming" from the nature of his first product: you can't draw that conclusion. I'm writing this not to offend Patrick (he could care less about threads like this), but because you are taking exactly the wrong lesson about what Patrick did and then broadcasting it to the rest of the community. Stop, please? :| I'm a systems programmer, since 1995. The list of YC companies that involve "real programming" to me is pretty short. Dropbox qualifies, but how many from the rest of their class would? Which is to say: "technical impressiveness is both subjective and a stupid metric for a business".
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]