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This semester I've been really focusing on web development. We want to apply to YCombinator over the summer, and I want to make sure that I'm more than capable

by unalone 18y ago

This semester I've been really focusing on web development. We want to apply to YCombinator over the summer, and I want to make sure that I'm more than capable of handling the aspects of the site I'm running. My co-founder (apparently that term's inappropriate now) is very much a math-and-science person. I'm not averse to them - I took calculus in my junior year of high school - but at the same time, that's not what interests me. I'm much more an arts person: writing, music, theatre. It's a good combination, because we look at what we're developing in different ways. At the same time, I'm learning how to program, I'm in a digital arts course, and next semester I'm taking an upperclassmen programming course. I'm not planning to throw my life away on a project. But if I've got a good idea, I'm going to try to implement it. I'm young: I can risk failure.

strlen 18y ago
> But if I've got a good idea, I'm going to try to implement it. I'm young: I can risk failure. Sure but don't risk your undergrad. Graduate school is a much better time for this. And to quote DHH, don't treat your life like a planned waterfall project: "I want to do web development, so I will do X, then I will do Y."
- unalone 18y ago
  Worst comes to worst, I leave college for a year or two, and come back after I've tried everything a bit older and a bit wiser. I don't think that web development is my big thing. I'm interested in the web, but I'd hate to have to work on ideas I don't love. My current project is something for writers, so it has practical uses for myself as well. And YCombinator summer happens in Boston, which happens to be the place I want to go, so I told my cofounder and we agreed we'd give it a good try.
  - crabapple 18y ago
    Worst comes to worst, I leave college for a year or two and chances are, like most dropouts, you won't return. then you won't have a viable website business or a degree. four years later you are stacking shelves at borders. one day you are asked to create a display for a book by paul graham and you just lose it and uzi the whole mall as you realize how you were guided down this path. i crack me up
  - timr 18y ago
    Crabapple is obviously trolling, but (s)he's got a point: it's a really bad idea to drop of out of college to pursue anything less than an instant success. You'll have plenty of time to chase rainbows once you've finished your degree. I realize that this isn't popular advice amongst the "school is for luzers" crowd that camps out on this site, but every good developer I know had the maturity and perseverance to finish college. It isn't that hard. Important corollary: you'll never have more free time to pursue personal projects than you do in college. You don't need to quit school to find the time to make a popular website (just ask Rob Malda).
    - strlen 18y ago
      right. it's not even about a degree or the knowledge. more than anything, as this acquisition shows, start-ups aren't about technology or knowledge: they're about executing on an idea and tons of PR and marketing. but one way to increase your chances of winning (that is, drive a start-up to profitability or a home-run exit) is to get a body of knowledge that makes you stand out from others. i certainly agree that college is the time to pursue personal projects: but personals means exactly this, personal. work on projects that will teach you the most vs. the projects that seem to be the best from business perspective. you have rest of your life to spend worrying about making a profit. for 2 years out of my undergrad career i did contract systems administration / internal web app development. however, i've learned a lot more about systems administration. in retrospect, it'd have been better spent otherwise. trying to have personal projects while working full-time and doing a part-time masters is a great luxury.
      - unalone 18y ago
        work on projects that will teach you the most vs. the projects that seem to be the best from business perspective I think that the best metric is a third thing: "work on projects that you like the most." I think that the start-up I'm working on will teach me a lot. And it's got more than enough potential to earn me a living, too. But more than that, it's an idea that I love. The fact that I think I can sustain myself with it is an added side effect. I mean, I won't drop out of college just for the heck of it. My co-founder and I are applying to seed investors, though, and that means we'll spend time on leave from college working on the idea. If we get accepted, we'll work on the project full-time for as long as we can. But if we don't, then it'll continue to be a side project and we'll launch it from college.
  - strlen 18y ago
    > Worst comes to worst, I leave college for a year or two, and come back after I've tried everything a bit older and a bit wiser. Before you make this decision, you should talk to people who tried. However, as I've said, life isn't a planned waterfall project. You seem bright, focused and most importantly confident. I guess what I mean to say, don't come away from this knowing _nothing but_ web development (whether with a degree or not). When I was an undergraduate, systems administration was all I wanted to do. Then all I wanted to do was backend web-development. Now I've realized that both of these are just narrow technical skills that anyone could do, but I am no longer nineteen (yet luckily, I'm also not 30 yet).
    - unalone 18y ago
      That's sound advice. Thanks!

by unalone 18y ago

strlen 18y ago

> But if I've got a good idea, I'm going to try to implement it. I'm young: I can risk failure. Sure but don't risk your undergrad. Graduate school is a much better time for this. And to quote DHH, don't treat your life like a planned waterfall project: "I want to do web development, so I will do X, then I will do Y."

unalone 18y ago
Worst comes to worst, I leave college for a year or two, and come back after I've tried everything a bit older and a bit wiser. I don't think that web development is my big thing. I'm interested in the web, but I'd hate to have to work on ideas I don't love. My current project is something for writers, so it has practical uses for myself as well. And YCombinator summer happens in Boston, which happens to be the place I want to go, so I told my cofounder and we agreed we'd give it a good try.
- crabapple 18y ago
  Worst comes to worst, I leave college for a year or two and chances are, like most dropouts, you won't return. then you won't have a viable website business or a degree. four years later you are stacking shelves at borders. one day you are asked to create a display for a book by paul graham and you just lose it and uzi the whole mall as you realize how you were guided down this path. i crack me up
- timr 18y ago
  Crabapple is obviously trolling, but (s)he's got a point: it's a really bad idea to drop of out of college to pursue anything less than an instant success. You'll have plenty of time to chase rainbows once you've finished your degree. I realize that this isn't popular advice amongst the "school is for luzers" crowd that camps out on this site, but every good developer I know had the maturity and perseverance to finish college. It isn't that hard. Important corollary: you'll never have more free time to pursue personal projects than you do in college. You don't need to quit school to find the time to make a popular website (just ask Rob Malda).
  - strlen 18y ago
    right. it's not even about a degree or the knowledge. more than anything, as this acquisition shows, start-ups aren't about technology or knowledge: they're about executing on an idea and tons of PR and marketing. but one way to increase your chances of winning (that is, drive a start-up to profitability or a home-run exit) is to get a body of knowledge that makes you stand out from others. i certainly agree that college is the time to pursue personal projects: but personals means exactly this, personal. work on projects that will teach you the most vs. the projects that seem to be the best from business perspective. you have rest of your life to spend worrying about making a profit. for 2 years out of my undergrad career i did contract systems administration / internal web app development. however, i've learned a lot more about systems administration. in retrospect, it'd have been better spent otherwise. trying to have personal projects while working full-time and doing a part-time masters is a great luxury.
    - unalone 18y ago
      work on projects that will teach you the most vs. the projects that seem to be the best from business perspective I think that the best metric is a third thing: "work on projects that you like the most." I think that the start-up I'm working on will teach me a lot. And it's got more than enough potential to earn me a living, too. But more than that, it's an idea that I love. The fact that I think I can sustain myself with it is an added side effect. I mean, I won't drop out of college just for the heck of it. My co-founder and I are applying to seed investors, though, and that means we'll spend time on leave from college working on the idea. If we get accepted, we'll work on the project full-time for as long as we can. But if we don't, then it'll continue to be a side project and we'll launch it from college.
- strlen 18y ago
  > Worst comes to worst, I leave college for a year or two, and come back after I've tried everything a bit older and a bit wiser. Before you make this decision, you should talk to people who tried. However, as I've said, life isn't a planned waterfall project. You seem bright, focused and most importantly confident. I guess what I mean to say, don't come away from this knowing _nothing but_ web development (whether with a degree or not). When I was an undergraduate, systems administration was all I wanted to do. Then all I wanted to do was backend web-development. Now I've realized that both of these are just narrow technical skills that anyone could do, but I am no longer nineteen (yet luckily, I'm also not 30 yet).
  - unalone 18y ago
    That's sound advice. Thanks!