Travis

50 ms·

451.
by Travis 17y ago
I found this today and am going to take the course as a refresher. It's a crunchcourse for SICP, all free. And since other folks will be doing the same thing, it seems like it may have an active community paced along with it. I work with
452.
by Travis 17y ago
You may have already considered it, but I believe that the zoho suite will take care of a lot of your requirements. They have different components, so you may have to pick and choose what you want your employees to use, but (based on the q
453.
by Travis 17y ago
I second the rec for byoung2's article. As I don't know your situation, it's difficult to give advice, but I'll throw out the generic stuff: - if you're going to do a web startup, you probably should have 1 technical co-founder - if you're
454.
by Travis 17y ago
"It's not that I think your solution is bad. I just think you're solving a non-problem." I second this, although for totally different reasons. I use mint.com, the credit card sites, or just gcal with email reminders. I personally wouldn'
455.
by Travis 17y ago
I'd recommend testing your hypothesis. A pure split test (A/B) doesn't quite seem right, because it'll be more difficult to compare w/o doing some sort of multivariate regression. I'd suggest this: peel off a small segment (10%, 20%) rando
456.
by Travis 17y ago
Yeah, same here, except I graduated in 2004. I took CS from an engineering school, so I had a little less theoretical background (that was replaced with EE / CompE basics). But I agree -- I had exposure to big-O in h.s., but didn't realiz
457.
by Travis 17y ago
I don't use screenshots very often, but for that 20% case when I need them, they're invaluable. Still seems a little antiquated that I have to snap a pic, then go somewhere to upload it. Seems like something that could do that and submit
458.
by Travis 17y ago
Why are you looking at a server rather than sending it yourself? If you follow best-practices, you're not going to see worse results than using one of these 3rd party groups.
459.
by Travis 17y ago
I'm not commenting on the relative quality of the two products (emacs v. vi), but I second the feeling that I should be using vi. Had a quick start on my desk for the whole year now! Wonder where I've picked up that attitude -- I've been
460.
by Travis 17y ago
You definitely do not want to succumb and retaliate. There is no end game there, except that users leave both forums as they are spammy and unusable. There, all you've succeeded in doing is killing off two forums. First, contact the admin
461.
by Travis 17y ago
Is there a site to coordinate some HN meetups? I'd really like to get one going in the San Diego area.
462.
by Travis 17y ago
It seems like what you've done is to reduce your liabilities (you hold no textbook inventory) by pushing that onto a student. If it works, awesome -- brilliant business strategy! However, a few questions: - do you have reason to believe th
463.
by Travis 17y ago
My company went through several iterations of advisors before we found a group that worked for us. First group was SCORE, who didn't work out (they would've been more helpful if we wanted to start a restaurant, rather than a tech startup).
464.
by Travis 17y ago
I use authorize.net for my billing. I think they're pretty standard. They have a recurring billing API. If you want to do the whole "store credit card" thing, without storing CC info on your servers, look into their Customer Info Manager
465.
by Travis 17y ago
One bias that might be working against you is actually your longevity in the field. Coding turns over quickly; lots of programmers move to other fields or move up the ranks. To a lot of hiring managers, staying in the same career for a lo
466.
by Travis 17y ago
I'd take a list of 3-10 ideas and sort them based on different criteria, like "estimated cost", "my knowledge of the field", "potential for profit", "intellectual engagement", etc. Out of that, a few ideas will bubble to the surface. Start
467.
by Travis 17y ago
I'm a PHP dev, so I'm a little biased. But still. Use whatever will get you to a minimum viable product fastest. How you build the application should have little impact on your business. If you can build the PHP app 5 times faster, and y
468.
by Travis 17y ago
I would tell them the benefits of standardization and assemblage. Making things to specification is a little appreciated, but very useful, concept. E.g., a component of America's success in many wars (although I've read the disparity betwe
469.
by Travis 17y ago
How much stock do you put into the MB personality test? I remember taking it as a college freshman as part of a statistics class. At the end of the section I was pretty well convinced that all the MB stuff is really just babble. Yes, peop
470.
by Travis 17y ago
One other way of looking at it is more of what Cialdini describes in "the psychology of influence". Basically, the world around us is too complex for our biological brains to really grasp, so we look for short cuts to get us through the da
471.
by Travis 17y ago
awin, You'll see different responses from all different kinds of people to this. Everybody has a different allocation to the relative weights of different aspects of the system. However, I would advise you to not worry much about applicati
472.
by Travis 17y ago
+1 especially for that second part. I feel like you can easily evaluate other people's competence after working with them for a month or two. You don't need to spend 40 hrs / week with them to know this, it's more of an evaluation over ti
473.
by Travis 17y ago
"We only have 1 product to review, and the code to write a 'story submitter' is trivial at best. Needless to say, the tech team didn't find this useful and campaigned hard against it." Alternate approach: get the tech team on board. Build
474.
by Travis 17y ago
If he's an approachable person, who doesn't try to lord it over you due to his ownership / position in the company, then I'd recommend taking a direct approach and meeting with him, data in hand, to prove your POV. Specifically, get the co
475.
by Travis 17y ago
Tanenbaum's OS book is superb. One of the few undergrad CS books I've kept (most of the rest were on the math side of things; while I think that's cool, it's not so much for me to keep...)
476.
by Travis 17y ago
Have you tried craigslist in the freelance section? I'd interview them on the phone before hiring, but if you have some technical competency you should be able to listen through a bad contractor's BS.
477.
by Travis 17y ago
What makes a business good? To me, there are multiple inputs: profitability, efficiency, building value for customers, ethical behavior, innovative-ness, leadership, brand. Companies like Swoopo / C4G are really profitable, but they score v
478.
by Travis 17y ago
C4G reminds me too much of an exploitative business for me to really call it "best". It certainly is lucrative, but I'd group it with Swoopo rather than some of the others mentioned on this thread.
479.
by Travis 17y ago
Especially agreed on Amazon. Visionary leadership without the ego or high profile of Jobsian guy in charge (not knocking Jobs -- he's really effective at it). I'd say that Bezos is probably up there with Henry Ford level businessmen in Am
480.
by Travis 17y ago
I think this is the best advice -- work in something where you can create. To me, that's the core of my interest in software dev -- creating, working, making something. Carpentry sounds like it could be very rewarding.

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