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Comment by terryjsmith | Hacker News Reader

As a programmer I've been trying to think of a way to do my own Offer HN or the like. The problem is that most programming projects are much broader in scope and there's a learning curve to learning my code for someone else who follows up. I'd be open to suggestions for how I could lend my programming knowledge to this phenomenon.

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Maybe something like Wil Shipley's "Pimp My Code" series where he gives feedback to Cocoa programmers, but for your area of expertise, of course.

http://www.google.com/search?q=pimp+my+code+site%3Awilshiple...

I've thought about that. The problem is that I'm the first to admit I'm not a fantastic programmer. My strongest trait is just getting stuff done and getting code out the door.

Not for one thing or another but:

> The problem is that I'm the first to admit I'm not a fantastic programmer.

Is a trait unfortunately very few programmers actually have, most of them think they're aces (especially when they're not) and:

> My strongest trait is just getting stuff done and getting code out the door.

Is a very desirable property.

I think you're not half as bad as you may think you are. The mentality you display is more or less exactly what I'd be looking for in a new hire.

But not what you'd necessarily be looking for in someone who critiques code

No big ego: check. Ships: check.

I don't see a problem.

That's good personal insight - become a fantastic programmer.

I'm certainly trying. I am a CS dropout and feel like I'm lacking a good bit of theory (algorithms and math specifically). I gobble up what I can find that actually makes theory applicable/interesting.

I too am a CS dropout, and am grateful every single day for having dropped out. I learn more in a week of working at the startup I'm at than I did in a month of college. I'm only 3 months into doing real-world professional development, but I believe that this will still be true a year from today, and I hope that it will still be true 10 years down the line. I too am lacking in some of the theoretical stuff, and have found MIT's open courseware (their intro to algorithms course: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput... ) to be incredibly useful in supplementing what I missed while in school. I've also heard good things about Khan academy but haven't checked it out yet.

I'm a high school drop out and had a very similar reaction to yours for the first couple of years. Thing is this: industry teaches you process and refinement; not (or rarely) theory. You must obtain some sort of abstract theoretical foundation to be a "fantastic" programmer - whether you do that through self-education or a formal education doesn't matter.

I've personally taken the former route - rigorous self directed learning with a dash of discipline and love for the knowledge will turn you into something far greater than what could be elicited from you by "just going through the motions" at a college.

Granted. I'll probably be going to college soon anyways because I want to pursue Aerospace - but that's, again, self inspired (rather than "ZOMG I NEED TO GOTO SCHOOL OR MY PARENTS WON'T KEEP PAYING MY RENT" - not saying all people are like that, I know more likely than not most people are self-sufficient; I said that more in line with how parents tend to enforce college on their kids instead of letting them be inspired to the action).

Dsp for engineers is a fun read that makes a certain class of problems interesting, approachable and understood

Maybe you could offer to help solve bugs that someone has been having a hard time with. Sometimes all it takes is a pair of fresh eyes to spot the problem.

I appreciate the sentiment, but isn't that kinda in the StackOverflow space, where you'd get far more eyes on it (tho potentially of far more spread ability)

I thought SO was for more general questions. Do alot of people ask for help solving specific bugs there?

Maybe the best thing you can do is build that drive in others. Hell, I've got two web projects that have been meandering along for over a year, both not launch-ready - getting stuff out of the door is, for me (and I imagine many others), the biggest problem.

Perhaps you could be some sort of "entrepreneurial personal trainer" :)

I'm thinking of offering to help someone create a weekend project, if they can design but not program or whatever. I've been looking for a small project to do (no longer than a weekend) to familiarise myself with AppEngine, but I don't know what sort of uptake this would have, in a community of programmers.

How about startupweekend.org? If you haven't heard of it, you are missing out big time. If they don't have it in your city, contact them and see about helping to get one there. BTW, I don't have anything to do with them other than having participated in one near me and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

That sounds good, thank you. I already have a startup, though, so I just wanted to do something quickly over the weekend. I'll give startup weekend a try, it sounds like a good place to meet people!

Glad you are open to the idea. Even if you already have a startup, here's a few reasons to do it anyway:

1. SW attracts a lot of different types of people - BizDev/UIX-Designers/Coders/Legal/etc... You may help someone w/o the technical chops bring some traction to their vision/dream/idea.

2. You WILL meet people that might be useful to you down the road. So great, you have the technical chops, but lack bizdev - well, you are in luck b/c you have met people who have that skill that might be able to help your dream come true.

3. It's fun! It's intense, but very fun. Especially if you are a competitive individual.

4. It's not a bad recruiting ground for tech talent. These people go to these events because they have passion. What more could you ask for?

When I went to it, I wasn't sure what to expect. A bunch of unemployed novice programmers? A pure networking event? I never, in my wildest expectations, expected to meet such quality people at the top of their respective games.

I've never been to events like this (hackathons/etc...) so maybe this is a common thread. For me, it was a great experience that I would repeat again - regardless of my current status.

Hope this helps someone.

If you're looking for a weekend project - I am teaching myself to program, and decided that an interesting first web app could be a simple program that generates coupon codes for promotions, and then tracks which coupons are being redeemed (when the user records a redemption).

I only know a little programming myself, and have no real familiarity with working with databases or AppEngine, but Django + AppEngine should work (from what I understand about them) for this project.

I don't know if this is something you can do within a weekend, but if you are interested in helping a rookie get his feet wet, feel free to contact me. The info is in my profile.

Hmm, that does sound interesting. Is this something that other sites can use to create and track promotions, or something users can use to generate coupons? I'm not sure how these things work...

I thought it would be simpler to just have users (let's call them vendors to distinguish from customers) manually track their redeemed coupons by entering their active coupon codes in the site. The original intent was for brick and mortars (traditionally old fashioned when it comes to these things) to have some help with basic marketing ROI.

Of course to expand the functionality to websites, there would have to be an automatic way for the coupons to be 'redeemed'. The basic flow I have so far is:

1. User creates new coupon (give it a name and description)

1a. App generates unique code for coupon and stores the coupon information in a database

1b. (external to app) User uses coupon code to create coupons to be distributed through whatever channels are appropriate (mailings, website, emails, etc.)

2. User received coupon from customer and manually records a redemption (based on the unique code)

2a. App records redemption count to DB

3. App displays statistics of coupon redemption (how many, when, maybe other attributes)

That's very interesting and shouldn't be too hard to make, send me an email and we can discuss it further!

Ha, since you put it out there...

Want to finish an open source Techmeme on AppEngine? A buddy of mine got half-way there building it but had to bail. I want to get it finished so we can stick it in an iFrame and add it to WindyCitizen.com as an alternate view of the local news in Chicago, showing you what's hot in the local media right now.

Hmm, I'm not very familiar with Techmeme. Isn't it just a CMS? It doesn't sound very interesting, sadly :/

Techmeme takes feeds of news items and clusters them based on their timestamp, related keywords, and internal links to determine what the hottest stories are in Tech right now. It's an automated, super smart Tech news aggregator. It's not a CMS. It's a web app where you feed it RSS feeds, and it tells you what the hottest stories across all those sources are right now. It's awesome.

It's a crime that we don't have Techmeme-like sites for more verticals than Tech and Media news. That's what I'm interested in and have made progress on.

Oh, I see. That's potentially very interesting (and I have a masters in machine learning, so it shouldn't be too hard to pull off). Send me an email and let's see if we can whip something up quickly?

Yea, this is along the lines of what I'm thinking. Hand me a design and I'll HTML/CSS/JS it up for you, maybe throw in some PHP love.

I'd love to team up with a designer and crank out some websites for people!

offtopic: how did your price experiment work out? Mail me, I'm super curious!

Unfortunately, with our current sales volume, it would be nearly impossible to extract any sort of meaningful conclusion from that experiment, so I haven't been able to run it :/ It's a shame, because I think about it every time I look at our pricing page, and wait for the time our sales will be reliable enough to extract any sort of result.

I've written a few thoughts on pricing here:

http://blog.historio.us/on-pricing

Basically, we're looking to launch some not-so-pleasant changes to the account system soon :/

Write useful modules and let HN members use them for free? Actually, just open source them and post links?

What kind of modules would you be looking for? Open to suggestions :)

I personally don't need anything right now, actually, but thanks anyway. :)

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