Datasets:

ristew

/

askhn

like 0

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

yourabi: Go with Python. PHP is probably the worst language I've had to use (Single namespace, poor unicode...)Python on the other hand is pretty cool. It can be OO, functional, or procedural depending on how you want to look at it. It also has a lot baked into the standard interpreter and has some really awesome frameworks (Django, Pylons)

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

wvenable: PHP. So in a year down the road, you won't have to make the switch to it like everyone else has.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

binglo: Why are you determined to use either Python or PHP in this latest project?I would make sure you have a good answer to that question before using something besides Perl.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

bayareaguy: Why two web servers (thttpd and apache) instead of just one, say lighttpd or nginx?

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

treed: Python. For a lot of reasons. It's easy. It has a lot of libraries. The Python based CMSs are better. And most importantly it's easier to find decent python programmers. The vast majority of PHP guys I have interviewed ONLY know one language: PHP. The python guys tend to be much more well rounded. Of course the PHP guys are usually cheaper. You get what you pay for in this case. I would also have to recommend against perl. I did perl for 10 years before I switched to python 4 years ago. I think their philosophies say it all: Perl: There's more than one way to do it. Python: There's one obviously right way to do it. Sure, that's a huge generalization but I find it true in a lot of cases. Perl really is line noise compared to Python. And reading someone else's Perl is a real challenge.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

mechanical_fish: calendar/scheduling/notifications with some social networking and people matching/search functionality. The site will be highly configurable/maintainable by its community from establishing/interacting within groups to tweeking page layouts.How much of your app can be built by hooking together existing Drupal modules?If the answer is "lots" -- and because your brief description sounds like a long list of stock parts from the Social Network aisle at Costco, I wouldn't be surprised if it is -- perhaps you should consider Drupal. Which means PHP, alas, but that's a small price to pay for avoiding the annoyance of building every single one of your site's 120,000 proposed features yourself, from scratch.If the answer is "a lot, except for features X and Y, and I hate Drupal's existing, buggy options for Z" the Drupal community will be really happy to see you develop and contribute open-source code that can do X and Y. And we probably all hate Z, so fix it and you'll be our hero. You'll have plenty of time to work on Z because you won't be spending time redeveloping things like "basic user logins with emailed password reminders", or "users can create and join groups which have their own subsites" from scratch -- yet again -- in a language whose idioms you haven't learned yet.If the answer is "not much"... may I suggest that you seriously reduce the scope of your first project?Of course, if the proposed app is less of an actual future product than it is an excuse to broaden your mind by learning a language that's not Perl or Java, you should probably grab onto Python or Ruby with both hands. PHP has many practical features, but it doesn't have much to teach a Perl programmer.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

wensing: Python. It is more powerful with an extremely flat learning curve. In other words, you don't hit many walls with it. When you want to do something more powerful, the answer is 'right there'--it fits the brain.This is a bit dated but may help: http://www.artima.com/intv/prodperfP.html

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

thorax: I loooove Python. But if asked to "bet the farm" on a web app, I'd go with PHP because it's been successfully demonstrated again in again in every form of web app you can imagine. In a year, I'd recommend Python, but I still find Django and the other web frameworks a bit too immature and clunky to do things that PHP has been hacking with for years and years. As much as I hate to say it, for the Python community the web server has been an afterthought until the past two years. PHP was bred there.I probably would say it's a closer call if we hadn't found a great MVC framework for PHP called Code Igniter that just makes PHP (of all things) much more pleasurable to hack in than it used to be.All this being said, you're not risking much by going with Python/Django. But if the farm is on the line, I'd personally have to go with LAMPhp.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

sachinag: I spent a lot of time bellyaching about this when starting my company - looking at PHP, Perl (preferred by the devs), and Python (preferred by the advisers I trust).In the end, we went PHP, and it was hugely lucky - we were able to hire a couple of devs on very short notice because we were in PHP, even though we use a less popular framework called Qcodo. After they were hired, I asked them what they thought, and there was no way they were going to learn a new language to join us, but they were ok learning a new framework.My feeling is that PHP has the largest base of developers out there, and that means that you've got the biggest base of potential co-workers. If you yourself are a great hacker, you can prop up whoever else you're working with. If you're building an app/business to scale, you have to have other hackers join you.Hell, Apple has a hard time finding Objective C hackers, and they're Apple.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

menloparkbum: I've used all three of the languages you mention for relatively large web applications. People will say PHP sucks because it is ugly and retarded and only has one namespace. People will say Python sucks because of the whitespace issue and mod_python doesn't work on a $5/m shared hosting plan. Perl sucks of course because "the syntax is crazy!" But, huge sites are built in PHP (Facebook, Hype Machine, Flickr, half of Yahoo!), Python (much of Google) and Perl (craig's list). In my experience they are all about equivalent except for aesthetic reasons.The headaches in a web app are usually at the user interface level (DOM/CSS/Javascript) and at the systems level (there's a bug in fast cgi! MySQL imploded!) and language choice gluing it all together is mostly a matter of taste. People with taste overestimate its importance. You can get pretty far in the internet biz with no taste (MySpace... originally done in COLD FUSION).That said, the most tasteful option out of your choices is Python.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

tubby: PHP. Why? Because if you ever move your app to a hosted server, you'll have tons of hosting options with PHP. Only a few with Python.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

andreyf: Python has functions as first-class objects, very simple namespaces (files/folders), generators, and a cleaner syntax not to mention a thriving, growing community, much more helpful/intelligent (at least in my experience) than PHP's.PHP has a lot of coders that are one step about script-copy-pasters.No questions about it - Python is the way to go.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

talkaboutadate: Why don't you do a small prototype in both, and see where each one takes you? I'm not really a programmer, but I've got a dating web app running on around 50 pages of php.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

terminator: The best advice is try both PHP and Python and choose the one that matches your taste.http://www.google.co.in/search?q=php+sucks http://www.google.co.in/search?q=python+sucks http://www.google.co.in/search?q=django+sucks

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

Hexayurt: Python. PHP is really good for hacking things out, and there's a case to be made for using Python for the back end programming, and odds-and-sods of PHP to extract data into templates and so on - but fundamentally if you have real code to write, use Python.PHP ain't bad, but PHP code is fragile. The language, over a year or two, meanders about breaking code willy-nilly, and that alone is good enough reason to steer clear of it for serious applications.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

schtog: i never used Perl, one of the few languages i havent even tested.so it has a culture of libraries people say but what kind?making a lot of really high-quality ones like in python or just spewing out tons of buggy libraries with poor documentation and it is hard to find what you need or something in between?

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

RobertL: Excellent discussion by some obviously very experienced and intelligent people. I haven't used Perl too much, I'm much more experienced in Python and PHP, but I think all are capable languages.I think the most important things to consider are things that you can't really relate effectively to a forum discussion like this and that is what your real skill levels at each of these languages is and the availability of skill in your area and network of friends.I would lean more to those factors for making the final decision because it makes no matter that python might have wome extremely elegant and powerful syntax or library for coding a specific functionality if nobody working on the project is familiar enough with the language know the syntax or the library.The primary investment in any new app like this is "developer time". Managing that resource requires the juggling of many more factors than the capabilities of any given language.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

mojuba: Don't worry about "Extensive support of libraries and frameworks", you don't need it. All web sites I built, large and small, required only two additional components: the DB glue (typically mysql) and UTF support (mbstring). There may be specific situations when you might want to send https requests or use compression, but that's ok, even that is not called "extensive libraries and frameworks". The bottom line is, a good web site has a clean, simple source that doesn't depend on third-party code that much.

Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

metajack: Language isn't as important as the framework you will use for developing the web app. Have you looked at Django vs. Simfony, etc? Why not consider Ruby and Ruby on Rails?I tend to choose Python and more specifically Django.

Can anyone recommend a Venn diagram creation tool?

epi0Bauqu: You can do them in PowerPoint (click on the Diagram icon).

iPhone as WiFi base station?

wmf: A simple matter of programming. Just add AP mode to the wi-fi driver and enable NAT routing in the network stack. I have a feeling AT&T wouldn't allow it, though; they'd probably prefer that you get a more expensive plan if you're going to run a stompbox.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

gojomo: You could also root for Google Android.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

BrandonM: You could always go with Nokia's S60 devices. I've been extremely happy with my N82 so far, and there's also the N95 or the E90. Seriously, give them a look. You can install whatever you want without ridiculous workarounds, and they are all more capable devices than the iPhone.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

andr: Nokia's S60 is a good alternative. A very mature, yet completely open OS. Touchscreen phones coming, too. It would take years for Apple to catch up with Nokia's attention to detail. Too bad they are practically non-existent in the US...

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

bkbleikamp: Buy Apple stock :)

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

edw519: "But now I'm just depressed."Why? Because the landscape has changed?People affected by this will just have to adapt and find their place in the new landscape. That's all.The pie is so big there's room for everybody. And if you still don't think so, there are plenty of other pies no one has noticed yet. You just gotta find them.Nothing to be "depressed" about. Happens all the time.OTOH, this is an excellent example of the advantages of being small and nimble - you can adapt quickly while the big boys are stuck struggling.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

jsjenkins168: You are definitely not alone. I'm pretty worried myself. A phone to realistically compete with the iPhone (especially at its new lower price point) is nowhere in site and the walled garden seems to grow with each Apple announcement.AppStore could be another Facebook platform situation where Apple kills startups at will simply by releasing their own version of a application. And Apple wont need to push icon updates, their apps can run as background services just fine.I'd like to be optimistic about other emerging mobile platforms, but everyone else is so dreadfully far behind and thats a bit concerning for a developer.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

nickb: Gotta admit, I was surprised by their new apps. They are absolutely stunning. I heard rumors some time ago that Apple would offload their web apps (.Mac) to Google. Well, these new apps look better (and hopefully work as advertised) than Google's apps. For a company that only dabbles in web development, these new MobileMe apps change all that. They've raised the bar very high indeed.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

xlnt: maybe if you stopped wishing people would be "kicked in the teeth" you'd be a happier person. what you need is a better attitude. as you say, apple made something amazing. we should all rejoice.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

LPTS: No my friend you have it all wrong. The badge updates are a fine solution for now. Everything is fine, my friend.I'm a bit concerned with your tone. It's almost as if you don't have faith that the Steve will do what is right. Has he not given us the iPhone, freed us from shitty cell phones, and gifted us, from some unknowable realm only he walks in, this beautiful 15 in. macbook pro I am typing on. After all the Steve did, you still want to leave the cult? In spite of everything, you just have to see the spear marks and stick your finger in. In your dark night, you even compare our savior (Steve) to microsoft. Luckily for you, the Steve's ability to make totally awesome gizmo's with a touch of LSD in each one is only parrelleled by his limitless compassion, and he is willing to forgive you, if only you would open your heart up to his forgiveness.Why don't you sit down and talk for a bit, doubting thomas? You are free to leave, just sit down and talk for a minute first, my friend. We're not going to stop you from leaving. Just sit down and chat first.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

allenbrunson: it's hardly the case that the other 21k developers got "dicked over!" apple decided they were only going to let a few in during the beta period. i bet the situation will be rectified at some point after the app store launches.the only thing those 4k developers got that the rest of us didn't is a key to install apps onto real iphone hardware. everybody else can still develop for the iphone simulator, which is very good. and if you really really need to see your app on a real iphone, you can go the jailbreak route.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

jws: I think the notification system will work out. Apparently you can use it to play a sound, "badge" an icon, or display a custom message. That sounds limited, but I think it completely encompasses the vocabulary of the user interface. Think of how Apple's programs work, and the only think I think of immediately missing is an action button or two on the "display a custom message", perhaps that will be there, maybe not, I can still attract the user to interact with my program and that makes me happy.As one of the 21,000 "dicked over" developers, I am still hopeful that they will open the floodgate enough days before July 11th to let me deploy on Day 1 and stake my ground against any potential competitor before they are the incumbent. The nature of my application makes the emulator mostly useless, but I have written a suite of algorithms and when I learn the performance characteristics of the iPhone hardware I will be able to choose and tune rapidly to deliver the best user experience. It has been a lot of extra work that I could better spent if I could have chosen and tuned along the way, but I also understand their desire to limit load from the beta program. I suppose what I would have done differently is make a track for people whose applications need to run natively and made room for them... but that would probably be abused.I don't see that mobile carriers got kicked in the teeth here. AT&T appears to be loaning you $200 for a stream of 24 monthly $10 payments. That works out to about a 15% return on their money. Then read the articles about AT&T no longer paying a monthly share to Apple and justifying it "because they are using that to subsidize the phones". I call bullshit. The $10/mo more than covers the $200 subsidy.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

dhotson: I actually think this is going to be a fantastic opportunity for startups.. even though Apple has built some pretty high walls for developersI'm from Australia and mobile internet is currently just way too expensive and so nobody uses it. If the iPhone (and competitors) can drive demand and push prices down, it could really open up some opportunities for developers working on applications for mobiles.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

bprater: We needed a leader in cell phones. Until now, it was such a completely disjointed landscape that developing an app for phones was a walk in a field of mines. Companies were busy grabbing for land, but weren't working hard to create a great device. Maybe this is that start of focusing how to create awesome mobile applications for the masses.I think we are witnessing a pivotable moment in history.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

paulv: The only problems I have with the iPhone is that Apple decides what software is available and that makes it extremely difficult to write free software for it. There's _no_ reason in 2008 that people should be excited about (effectively) a computer that is actively free software unfriendly. The iPhone seems defective by design. The thing that makes me sad is that no one -- _particularly_ the people calling themselves hackers -- seems to care...

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

pkaler: Having worked on the XBox 360, Sony PS3, Sony PSP this is a HUGE improvement.The walled garden is not as huge an impediment as you believe it to be. Figure out if it is fiscally prudent for your organization to work on the iPhone platform. If not, move on. There are a ton of ideas that need to be worked on on a wide range of platforms.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

Tichy: I will prefer open source phones to the iPhone, of that I am sure. Except I don't like Android much (from a developer's point of view), and Linux on the phone seems to be still far away. For the time being it's like whatever, ALL phones suck, the iPhone just sucks a little less (hopefully).

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

LKM: Maybe we should wait to hear whether they remaining devs will be approved at a later date. I've seen people approved with absolutely no track record whatsoever, so the requirements can't be too stringent.

What about applying Comet to Hacker News?

JimEngland: An interesting thought, but I personally believe that the small size of HN doesn't justify implementing Comet.

iPhone released: discouraged as I am?

KirinDave: Here's the thing. I think most of us here are rational enough to not degrade into raw fanboy-ism (is that asking too much?). If Apple didn't keep knocking the ball out of the park while simultaneously facing a competition that seems utterly incapable of making an adequate response, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Sometimes I wonder if Apple's real brilliance is in carefully choosing which segments of a market to attack... perhaps they have an incompetence detector?It's not like open source projects like OpenMoko haven't had a chance to make an amazing phone. Indeed, I'm frustrated because before the iPhone announcement, the OpenMoko looked like a top-of-the-line sort of gadget, and then Apple leapfrogs all their efforts on the first try. But I want a great phone, so now I'm stuck with AT&T and buying an iPhone.If these independent "great products" want to compete, perhaps they need to start forming explicit alliances with other service providers to form an integrated solution that people want. It's very clear that at least the Apple-buying public wants that kind of integration.

What about applying Comet to Hacker News?

icey: I don't know about the rest of you, but I would personally prefer a fix to the "Unknown or expired link" problem.

Have you shifted your hours for better productivity?

nostrademons: I did this for a while when I still had a day job. I found that I was much more productive before spending 8 hours at a cubicle, so I went to bed at 9:30 and woke up at 6:30, then got 2 hours or so in before I had to go to work.I've found it's not as helpful now that I've gone full-time, because my productive times tend to rotate around the clock. It'll be 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM for like 2 weeks, then suddenly shift to 10:00 PM - 2:00 AM, then come back to 4:00 PM - 9:00 PM (which is where it seems to be now, so I should get back to work).

Legality of Republishing News (a la Google News)

wmf: Fair use is an exception to copyright, so it still applies even if a feed says "you can't do anything with this data". I don't know whether fair use applies in your case.Google News certainly gets special treatment, but in the opposite way you intended: they've been sued by newspapers and newswires for behavior that appears totally legal to many observers. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-6174008.html

Legality of Republishing News (a la Google News)

nostrademons: You'd take the word of random hackers on the Internet over that of your lawyer?Fair use is complicated, and depends on a lot of factors like:a.) how much of the original work you takeb.) how much of your work this constitutesc.) commercial or non-commercial?d.) do you have a positive or negative impact on the original copyright holder's business?There likely isn't a "right" answer until you get sued and a jury decides one way or another. But I think it's highly likely that a lawyer you're paying for can give better advice than we can.

Legality of Republishing News (a la Google News)

shafqat: We use feeds at NewsCred. We've done a lot of research into fair use, and it all depends on the factors mentioned by nostrademons in the comment below. Really depends on what you are planning on doing with/around the news.I would suggest just going for it - if you get sued, you'll get the publicity!

Resources on bots, spiders

tortilla: Regarding "competitive intelligence" you could check out RivalMap for some ideas, which is a cool looking service.http://www.rivalmap.com

Non-cellphone long distance

noodle: skype.maybe its just you, but i've not had problems.

Non-cellphone long distance

LogicHoleFlaw: Maybe an SIP phone and Asterix is the right answer? That gives you real VOIP over an internet connection.

What would you do differently?

swombat: Wtf? How did this masturbatory piece get modded up?

shared hosting

mrtron: I have had nothing but bad luck with shared hosting. I have embraced VPS's, and have had zero problems so far with my slice at slicehost. I am just a happy customer - but maybe I should see if they have an affiliate program :)edit: apparently there is https://manage.slicehost.com/customers/new?referrer=14676099...

shared hosting

ichverstehe: Ever considered a VPS? Shared hosting tend to be unreliable – which is natural, you have thousand of users on the same box running all kind of weird PHP scripts andwhatnot.I'd recommend Slicehost. Cheap, reliable and slick.

What would you do differently?

andr: The most recent starting from scratch that I can remember was Palm. No real file system, no legacy anything, databases for everything. Rather quick for its hardware but wasn't groundbreaking.

What would you do differently?

gm: As long as there are people with different opinions, there will be different answers to your questions. We will split up to different "religions" again, since we cannot agree even on whether command lines are a good thing, or on what amount of freedom is a good tradeoff versus security. There simply are too many variables: Power users want freedom, corporations want security, productivity, and low cost (and not even all the coprporations want that)...Too many players, too many egos.Right now the Mac zealot's ego prevents him from seeing anything good in a PC, and vice versa. If we started all over, people will, within a short amount of time, identify with a particular solution, and then we will have religions all over again.I'm not saying it's hopeless, but what I am saying is that the problem's root is people, human behavior; not necessarily technology. The technological mistakes (which itself is subjective), were kept alive mainly by egos, easily justified with the cost of undoing the mistake. And don't forget every mistake is a steppingstone for a later success. IBM's OS2 was a financial mistake, but which O/S has not borrowed from it?So I gues we might have the same kinds of problems if we start over again, with the names of the companies and people involved shuffled around.Maybe it's just better to keep going and try to do our best.

shared hosting

thomasswift: I'd also give a recommendation for a vps. You get to learn some system stuff, but control over your database great. I used to be on mediatemple running a WP Blog and sometimes thing would bork the database, and it be days before they could restart it. With a VPS, I can make it happen instantly.the setup is usually easy, plenty of resources online to get you going and if you don't want to play the command-line game to get certain things on there you can usually pay the hosting company themselves to 'consult' for your vps.I'd also put my hat in for slicehost. the support is great, imo.also: buy a vps with the most memory you can afford, you can run a bunch of sites on a 256 slice, but a few rails apps can really chew that up. (don't know if you do rails or not)

shared hosting

codilechasseur: no rails, mostly php and python. slicehost is looking really nice. anyone know where the data centers are?

What would you do differently?

bayareaguy: If I could go back in time, I would make a much more serious effort to encourage people I did business with that software patents are a bad idea and that they should always insist on software for which they have sufficient source code to always allow them to legally maintain their systems without involving the original vendor.To me that means it has to either be open source from the start or have a license that would guarantee an eventual open source release (i.e. along the lines of aladdin ghostscript).

What would you do differently?

edw519: If I could go back in time, there's one major thing I would do differently. I would:START WITH THE ANSWER, THEN WORK BACK.I wasted way too much time "coding forward" from where I was at to where I wanted to be. I should have just mocked up the final product first, worked my way back to the building blocks, filled in the rest, and fixed what wasn't right. Would have saved years.

shared hosting

Mystalic: Why do you want a shared hosting company in a specific area? You can manage your hosting just fine no matter their location if it's shared.And Dreamhost is the king of shared hosting. Fast, cheat, great customer service, employee-owned.

What would you do differently?

watmough: I think all the things you've objected to are 'local minimums' of some cost function.We have Windows because it was popular, then snowballed. We have C because it was the best systems language for the 'best' computers of its day, the PDP's.It seems that between people clustering to a local minimum, and momentum, we often get 'stuck' on less than perfect technologies.I'm sure if we started all over again, we would encounter similar problems.

What would you do differently?

deathbyzen: If I had to do it all over again... I wouldn't have taken my CIS classes so early in the morning. My brain cannot comprehend a linked list before 10am.

What would you do differently?

gojomo: "The big re-write" is a classic anti-pattern. There's hard-earned wisdom hidden in that cruft.

shared hosting

ktom: slightly off topic, but there doesn't appear to be way to direct msg you.I live in the Vancouver area as well, what is the url to your site? what does your startup do?

What would you do differently?

dant: I'd keep files but use tags instead of folders. I like powershell's object based cli, make sure nothing like the windows registry ever existed, the OS would only run byte code, memory would be transactional and grey would not be the default window background color.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

davidw: Yes: they'll be able to cover things you aren't as comfortable with, and thus complement your own skills.No: since you're 'looking', it'll be hard to find someone you trust thoroughly enough to really share the work with. It's easy for non-tech types to dream up lots of hard things to code.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

Mystalic: Your best bet, from my experience, is someone with the startup experience, business connections, marketing knowledge, and general know-how to execute on a completely different side of the business while you concentrate on the prototype.But for best results, and to avoid the pitfall davidw pointed out, get someone who knows the basics of hacking too so he/she doesn't ask you to build a website that can shoot lasers out of the screen.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

webwright: Totally totally totally depends on what you're building. B2C? B2B? A business with lots of bizdev ops or no? Investment required or not? Is the core problem (or the way you want to attack it) a technology problem or a sales/distribution problem? Heck, or a design problem?With the general question, I'll give you my best shot at a general answer. Building something people want to use is the first order problem where virtually every startup fails. Select a co-founder who will help you solve that problem. If you don't, funding, marketing, business plans, and recruiting aren't going to help much.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

edw519: "Assume a solo tech founder has all the skills needed to complete a given Web application for a startup."A huge assumption.If you're wrong about that and you get a non-tech co-founder, you're toast.Personally, I'd hedge my bets with a second tech and worry about the non-tech stuff later.I have been in the exact same situation twice before and here's what happened both times: I was working 100 hour weeks and my partner was bored. Then he went out and oversold what I could have delivered. A disaster. Twice. (You'd think I'd have learned.)The problem isn't whether you have the skills for what is needed. It's whether you have the time to do it. I underestimated what it would take and didn't account for all kinds of stuff. It's a very easy trap to fall into, believe me. The stuff that bites you in the butt down the line will be technical; count on it.I would have traded either non-technical partner for a fellow hacker in a heartbeat. If I had, who knows, you may have been reading this at Eddie News instead while I typed it from my yacht. Don't make the same mistake as me. Get another tech.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

adrianwaj: You'll need both soon enough, then the question is who becomes the CEO out of the tech founder and the business founder and when. If you can make the business founder a CEO comfortably then that would be a plus.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

tom: All of the skills you mention are valuable if you can find someone with "seasoned startup experience". They're not growing on trees (last I looked from my perch). A couple of questions for you to think about.Do you have the experience in the space you are trying to attack? If not, you best be looking for someone, either technical or not, who does, who can speak to the market, and investors about the market (or angels FROM the market). Also, what's your next milestone? Is it your first paying customer, or is it a demo that will not be launch ready? What will his/her first milestone be? Is there enough work at present to keep a biz person busy in exchange for the equity? There will ALWAYS be enough todo's on the list of the developers... In short, are you sure you're ready for a non-technical founder?BTW: my cofounder is non-technical (I'm sure he'd love to see me describe him as such). I asked him aboard before I'd written even a hundred lines of code. Why? Because he knows the market well and has professional experience / knowledge that I, or likely any other hacker, couldn't hope to pick up in any reasonable amount of time. If that's what you need - then get looking ... they are worth their weight in gold and very, very hard to find!

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

mdasen: It's a double edged sword.On the positive: they're good at marketing, getting in people's faces, getting the word out, getting people on board, etc. I just can't talk to advertisers so I'd end up with AdWords getting less revenue. I'd be bad at promoting the thing so there'd be fewer users.On the negative: most of them have no f'in clue what makes any sense in technology. They don't use it enough. Their ideas will be something like, "maybe we should do something like eBay, but with a better rating system". They'll come up with a lot of nonsense that isn't useful - but they don't know that since they just don't use computers and the internet as much as we do. Of course, they're a bit arrogant (it's why they're good in part one) so they think you should be following their lead.You need to find someone that can do part 1 without being so full of themselves that they think they know how to build a webapp and that you're just code in human form. It's hard because most of those types like to think of themselves as the "idea person" rather than doing the work of promoting, forming partnerships, etc. Their "idea" is crap and been done before. You need someone to do the non-code heavy lifting.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

rokhayakebe: Get a Business Graduate with Hacking skills. They exist.When hiring for a startup you can afford someone with A or B. In the worst case scenario you need someone with A and B. In the best case you need someone with A and B (assuming both are skills), and Passionated about what you are doing.It turns out that the majority of talented people are not "willing" to startup, but you can find one if you look hard enough.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

prakash: Whoever you find first that meets your hiring criteria.Also I would not put it as a tech vs. non tech co-founder; rather hire for complimentary skills so that as a team you can cover most of the functions.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

mrtron: One big concern you should have is this: Can you recognize a talented and driven non-technical person?Just as one great developer can do ten times the work as an average developer with far less problems, the same holds true with marketing, business, etc.So, it may be more of a challenge than you expect finding someone, and determining their skill level.I also catch myself minimizing the value of certain business issues and maximizing the value of technical issues. I think that is a natural tendancy, so make sure you keep that in check. Best of luck.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

poppysan: Marketing and funding can be a connections game. in my opinion, it's best to substitute years of sitting on a project with no connection to funding with giving a cut to a connected person with previous startup funding experience. Saves time and headache...

What would you do differently?

ajross: Just had to jump on this: 640k was no more an "artificial" limit than 4G is. The 8086, like all CPUs, had only a finite amount of die space. They chose to implement a 20 bit wide bus, because that fit the problem space of a contemporary minicomputer (the biggets PDP/11 had 4MB). But they didn't have space for paging or mapping hardware, so the operating system needed to reserve some space for hardware (video framebuffers, etc...) to use. So thus was born the 640k/384k memory mapping of PC-DOS. It made perfect sense given the limitations of the hardware.Now, IBM could have chosen a different part like the 68000, which was a bigger and more expensive chip that had an internal 32 bit architecture. But they didn't, for some pretty justifiable reasons (like the need to compete with computers like the Apple II which were under $2k).

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

richesh: Google: Larry Page + Sergey Brin (both technical) EBay: Pierre Omidyar & Chris Agarpao (both technical) Microsoft: Bill Gates & Marc McDonald (both technical) Apple: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak (both technical) PayPal: Max Levchin & Luke Nosek (both technical) (Yes, I know Peter Thiel is not technical, at least not on paper) Amazon: Jeff Bezos (technical) and probably hired a technical person at first.I'm not saying its not possible to grow a company with a non-tech person, there are many examples where this has worked (PayPal could count as one). My point is that two tech-founders can get a product out fast if you work well together.Although finding a hacker co-founder, is a whole another ball game. You really need to find someone who will take ownership of your idea as their own and move forward. This is soooo hard to find...soo hard...Good Luck!

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

aneesh: 1) Build the product 2) Sell the productIn that order. Get whoever you need to do that well.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

menloparkbum: From personal experience, I'm going to say no, don't get a non-tech cofounder (exception made for clones of Steve Jobs.)There is a lot of nontechnical stuff to do in a startup but it doesn't make sense to start most of it until you actually have something working.

Should a tech founder look for a non-tech co-founder?

clb22: I had this question many times. I think is better to have a tech co-founder, because you need to tryout your product and make buzz on the market. Then, the right people for marketing and business plan will come to you.

How many combinations are possible in a 9X9 Sudoku matrix?

arvernus: Enumerating the Sudoku 9×9 grid solutions directlyThe first approach taken historically to enumerate Sudoku solutions (Enumerating possible Sudoku grids by Felgenhauer and Jarvis) was to analyze the permutations of the top band used in valid solutions. Once the Band1 symmetries and equivalence classes for the partial grid solutions were identified, the completions of the lower two bands were constructed and counted for each equivalence class. Summing completions over the equivalence classes, weighted by class size, gives the total number of solutions as 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 (6.67×1021). The value was subsequently confirmed numerous times independently. The Algorithm details section (below) describes the method.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_of_Sudoku#Enumerati...)

how to make things easier to fix?

Tichy: Following up on my own question, some thoughts:- in Star Trek, everybody could fix software. I could just say "Computer, add a 'delete' column to the mail folder view". So if hard AI is possible (which I believe), the problem is solvable. Are "simpler programming languages" all it takes?- I think "graphical programming" doesn't work, or am I wrong (this used to be the common approach, "Visual whatever++")?- Is it also attitude of the programs? For example Thunderbird could ship with a small IDE that allows me to immediately dive into the code.- Maybe web applications should allow users to save customized JavaScript, like an inbuilt Greasemonkey-Feature

how to make things easier to fix?

noodle: i've not actually taken a good hard look at this before, but i've heard good things about iceberg:http://www.geticeberg.com/

how to make things easier to fix?

olefoo: You've touched on a very deep topic, people have been trying to make programming simpler and more 'intuitive' since the beginning.And occasionally someone succeeds in making small limited improvements in specific areas; usually by heavily constraining choices available to the user/programmer. But widespread and general improvements are few and far between; the rise of loosely typed scripting languages being the main one in the last twenty years.Programming is in some sense one of the most unnatural things a person can do; and this is made worse by the accumulated layers of cruft of 40 years of computer culture that both limit and enable what we can do today.

Best framework to build RIAs?

xirium: RIAs? Rich Internet Applications? Stick with JavaScript. Flash and Flex aren't currently supported on the iPhone or 64 bit browsers. Microsoft Silverlight is Windows only, which will arguably make your software inaccessable to a large pool of early adopters.Recent developments with SquirrelFish will make Safari's JavaScript implementation 10 times more efficient and subsequent developments could provide an additional factor of four improvement. Firefox is likely to follow with a similar implementation.

Should I pass on a remotely located co-founder?

swombat: I started a successful business with a friend who was in another city, two hours away.However, he was also my best friend that I'd known for 10 years.Remote is fine, but you need to know the person well in real life, or else there will be many, many miscommunications.

where's a good place to look for smart contract work?

noodle: look on any of the niche job boards.authenticjobs.com is a good start, and it has some links to aggregators where you can spread out your search. also, freelanceswitch.com's job board is decently good.they're not all designed for freelance/contract work, but they do have plenty of postings for it.

Should I pass on a remotely located co-founder?

Mystalic: I shall disagree with swombat. I co-founded a company a few years ago with some remote co-founders I had worked with on other projects. I thought it would be fine. However, there are major barriers to remote co-founders that can kill a business- Inability to brainstorm at any moment- Weakened brainstorming - It's just not the same via video, IM, or phone- Paperwork takes longer - Often you both have to sign it. Mailing that crap is just horrendous- Harder to keep on task - Having each other to keep pushing each other and set tasks and to-do lists is vital- Meeting with investors is a pain when coordinating two different travel plans- You just don't get to interact with your co-founders enough to REALLY know whether you're compatible for working together on a startup. You're going to have to be at the same place later on, might as well be now so you know this partnership is going to work 100%The geographic distance was one of the big factors that killed our startup. Don't do it if you can avoid it in any way.

Should I pass on a remotely located co-founder?

oldgregg: I think DHH would say you are doomed for failure unless you are on different continents. :)It probably depends on how self-motivated you both are and if you are keeping day jobs. The biggest challenge I've seen is keeping momentum-- and either distance or outside responsibilities are often huge drags -- but only you can make the call ultimately. You could try going long distance with just clear terms laid out so that in three months if stuff isn't getting done you aren't stuck in a lousy partnership.

where's a good place to look for smart contract work?

prakash: Firstly, congrats!Try the gigs board on 37 signals: http://gigs.37signals.com/gigs

where's a good place to look for smart contract work?

jon_dahl: I did contract work for 5 years before founding a product company. Most of our work came from two sources: reputation and relationships. Reputation took several years to build, so it isn't 6-month solution.Relationships, on the other hand, can be built quickly. The best relationships for us were relationships with other developers. We've gotten dozens of good leads this way, and have passed out dozens to other developers. What technologies are you going to use? Local user groups for those technologies can be a great place to start. Figure out where the local momentum is (Ruby? Python? User Experience? Startups?) and meet people.

Should I pass on a remotely located co-founder?

SwellJoe: My current business was started with a co-founder that was nearly as far away as it is possible to be while remaining on the same planet (I was in Texas, he was in Australia...which some folks think is bigger than Texas, for some reason). I wouldn't have chosen a distant co-founder if I were "hiring" someone from a pool of roughly unknown choices, it just happened that I'd known him for about eight years and had worked with him numerous times (with him as a contractor working for my previous company).There are circumstances where it can work fine, and my situation just happened to be one of those circumstances. I think the following has to be true for it to work extremely well:1. Very clear boundary between your job and your co-founders job. If you need to touch the same files in your codebase more than once or twice a week, you're probably working on stuff that is too closely related. In my case, the software was my co-founders job, and everything else (including some UI work, but mainly the website to sell the product, the business-related paperwork and banking/taxes minutiae, marketing, documentation, etc.) was mine.2. A good working relationship, where you both understand the others goals and understand what aspects of the task are to be done by each of you. Some sort of task management tool--we've used a bug tracker heavily from the very earliest days of the company--helps here.3. Equal dedication to the goal. Since you aren't in the same room very often, it can be hard to be sure that everybody is doing their part. And if everyone isn't "firing on all cylinders" for the good of the company, it will fail.But, you should keep in mind that the vast majority of Open Source projects are built and run by people who meet maybe once or twice per year. I worked for years on the Squid project and only ever met two of them in person (there are about 5 long-time core developers on the project) and spoke to a couple of others on the phone a few times. It doesn't stop them from getting great things done. MySQL AB was a famously distributed company--they had developers all over the world. If being acquired for $500M isn't a great success story, I don't know what is.Though, I should also fess up to the fact that my co-founder and I now both live in the valley, a ten minute drive away, and we get together once a week for status meetings. We're still pretty distributed though...most of our peers that I've met out here work in the same office or in the same apartment. I don't know that I'd be more productive in such a circumstance, or that we'd be further along in our plans...but maybe.

Should I pass on a remotely located co-founder?

richesh: My Co-Founder and I worked together at a consulting firm, we were in the same city. But when we decided to start working on our idea, we were in two different locations.For the first 6 months we worked remotely, and for the last 3 weeks we've been in the same location. And honestly, the amount of productivity that exists being in the same place at this early stage is not achievable remotely.1 week same location = 4 weeks remotely (In my opinion)

where's a good place to look for smart contract work?

ucdaz: Check out meetups, web 2.0 parties, and ppl you know within your hacking community.

where's a good place to look for smart contract work?

thomasswift: My advice: Attend networking events, meetups etc.Tell people you are looking for work, most of my work has come through friends (which you have seem to done)Charge what your worth beginning day one, maybe cut your personal friends a discount, but doing work for next to nothing to build your portfolio is great, but trying to raise your price afterwards is very very hard.To answer your original question: check dice.com and craigslist, but dice.com will be true contract jobs that don't want companies that consult, but contractor (most of the time) and craiglist will be full of build digg for 10$/hr types of people(maybe they'd hire you on for what your worth but I doubt it).

Should I pass on a remotely located co-founder?

izak30: My advice is if your question is 'should I pass on xx cofounder?' the question is yes. You need to be SURE with any cofounder.If it is somebody you have worked with and know well, it may not matter if they are in a different time zone, but if you have to ask: it probably will.

where's a good place to look for smart contract work?

gexla: You didn't say what sort of contract work.You are doing a "startup" yet getting into contract work is also a "startup." They are both businesses and any business takes time to build up to a point where you can make a living from that business. It also takes time. There will likely be times when you are freelancing where you don't have enough time or energy left over at the end of the day to work on your other projects.Networking is definitely important for freelancing. You have to let people know what you know and that you are available. Finding someone to work on a project can be hard and you need to be on the top of the short lists of candidates when people are looking for help.Another way to start freelancing is by establishing yourself as a known expert in niche communities. This takes time and effort but when you get to that point and people are looking for dev help in that niche then your name will come up.

where's a good place to look for smart contract work?

initself: I've found small contract jobs through Dice and jobs.perl.org.http://www.dice.com/ http://jobs.perl.org/

where's a good place to look for smart contract work?

bprater: If you have cash in reserve until the end of the year, why not get serious and launch your own product based startup?With some emphasis in marketing, you could quite easily bank $5k-10k from the product and be in a good position to show off your project (that is already making moola!) for winter YC.

Should I pass on a remotely located co-founder?

flashgordon: It really depends, I think. If you know the person or has a very good recommendation from a friend, then Id test it out. I am currently working on a friend of a friend (recommended highly by the latter friend) who resides in NZ (I am in sydney). Comms is a problem. It is a very new thing but I could really use his presence in Sydney.But I am new to this game, so I cant tell you the otherside of the story.

Should I pass on a remotely located co-founder?

rms: That's a hot domain name... have you owned it forever or did you buy it more recently?