ndl

16 ms·

31.
by ndl 16y ago
Lots of moving shapes, especially if there are threads. Usually they are visual-kinesthetic representations of how the data structures fit together, what they do (as movements), and what it looks like when there's a bug.
32.
by ndl 16y ago
I'm just starting now. I'm glad you posted this. There's much survivor bias in the startup community. It's not the sound but the silence that bothers me. Constantly wondering whether a lack of responses indicates that something is wrong
33.
by ndl 16y ago
Ever since "losing" to Microsoft on the desktop, Apple have slowly perfected their strategy for being the smaller alternative. They find the most lucrative niche and design to the point where they can own that piece of the market. Built i
34.
by ndl 16y ago
I'd advise branching out in the beginning. I learned too much Java in the beginning and wish I'd tried Python earlier. I also think that some languages (especially Lisp) will teach you things about other languages.
35.
by ndl 16y ago
Definitely give C and Scheme a try. Both are simple, compact languages with strong philosophy and history. I think that most of the languages we have today compromise between C style and Lisp style. One of my favourite books is called, "W
36.
by ndl 16y ago
I disagree with, "Note 1: If your idea is to build something truly technically challenging, then scratch my advice." If you want to build something technically challenging, you absolutely must learn the basics of whatever field it's in. Y
37.
by ndl 16y ago
From my personal experience: The "business" person should learn a little about computability and feasibility. You don't necessarily have to understand the theory and mathematics of it all but should have a sense of when a problem is intrac
38.
by ndl 16y ago
A big theme in programming is to get as much complexity out of one's head and into the computer as possible. In this regard, I consider the IDE an extension of the high level language. Whether I use one depends on what I'm coding in. I'm
39.
by ndl 16y ago
John Mullins describes a lightweight technique called the "long interview" in The New Business Road Test. I've only used this seriously once. The results of my trial provided good insights but were not as definite as I'd hoped. Another me
40.
by ndl 16y ago
Google is aiming into the future. Targeting legacy systems can be a great way to solve customer pain and get easy users, but it's usually not a long term growth strategy.
41.
by ndl 16y ago
"To build a business, you need to understand subjects like finance, marketing, intellectual property and corporate law." Many colleges, especially small ones, have absolutely nothing in these subjects. As for the ones that do, many success
42.
by ndl 16y ago
Investors frequently look to others for votes of confidence in a potential deal, whether it's PG wanting multiple-person teams or VCs who close when other VCs take an interest. The "vote of no confidence" argument is for why having multipl
43.
by ndl 16y ago
One side effect of canned themes is that you will look similar to other startups doing the same thing. This could be an advantage in the beginning, because the site will feel familiar to new customers who are used to the theme. You will w
44.
by ndl 16y ago
This also applies when choosing partners. Being a lone founder is vastly better than throwing together a group that is all friction and no teamwork.
45.
by ndl 16y ago
If I were signing up for said free trial and saw a credit card request upfront, I would be suspicious. Many subscription services promise such a "free" trial and then make it difficult to back out. It also violates my model of how "free"
46.
by ndl 16y ago
In the long term, you often have to aim where the market is going to be, even at the expense of where it is now. I believe this reasoning favors HTML5. Consider using a library such as Sproutcore to develop an HTML5 app with desktop look a
47.
by ndl 16y ago
This "team" ambition depends equally on the environment as the candidate. I agreed strongly with this article until I realized that I was assuming an equity-for-all startup, rather than the much maligned office job. There is definitely a p
48.
by ndl 17y ago
Years of research and countless dollars have gone into making programming a systematic, controllable process. Old school managers frequently wish that a dev team would output like an assembly line. Simultaneously, we're expected to be into
49.
by ndl 17y ago
There's a difference between results that come from people who we think to be generally bad but do not have any incentive to do anything but a reasonable study, versus people we suspect desire to directly tamper with the research. I wouldn'
50.
by ndl 17y ago
According to the clang home page as of March 7th 2010, "Clang's C++ support is currently alpha quality at best, but is evolving rapidly." Obviously, clang does not mean to attract C++ developers. For a while, I'd been adamant about develop
51.
by ndl 17y ago
I at least somewhat believe that ad-blocking is a symptom rather than a problem. Some advertising legitimately alerts me to things I find interesting, and I avoid blocking ads in general for this reason. Most, however, are repulsive and i
52.
by ndl 17y ago
The idea of a typist pool intrigues me. It reminds me of the concept of a thread pool or connection pool, the idea being that one has many instances of a certain resource to share distribute over requests. Rudimentary parallelism and task
53.
by ndl 17y ago
I've heard from many people on this, in the publishing industry, in the music industry, in the software industry... The funny thing is how not worried about it some people are. Maybe they're just in denial. I hear from one talk that textb
54.
by ndl 17y ago
Apple's taking a real gamble these days. On one hand, I'm sure they understand well the market that doesn't want to deal with customization. Ever since the iMac and maybe even before then, Apple has catered to people who want their compute
55.
by ndl 17y ago
I read an article in the Harvard Business Review relating to this some time ago. The author basically argued that social interaction comes from the limbic brain, so trying to learn it the way one would mathematics is awkward and misguided.
56.
by ndl 17y ago
My impression (as it might be wrong) is that the words "I think" are contextually appropriate depending on what you're trying to accomplish. If you want to voice an opinion for consideration but not push for it, then "I think" demonstrates
57.
by ndl 17y ago
Months ago, I attended an entrepreneurship talk at which the speaker argued that the textbook and journalism industries would die as the scarcity of these media ended. One week ago, I attended a talk by an editor at one of the major US publ
58.
by ndl 17y ago
Reminds me of the Paypal story, in which the original plan was to build a secure way to transfer money between handheld devices. They realized their destiny was on the Internet after a demo web page started gaining serious traction among u