I just need a programmer

So, you are looking for a programmer? Well, I am one. A goddamn good one. I can make a computer cry twisting its inner wires with just my thought. And I happen to be looking for a partner too.

Are you a solid-brass-balls entrepreneur not afraid of rasing money? Can you knock down every tabloid's door to get our story told? Can you set up appointments across the globe with people richer than god? Can you bring a thousand customers just the first month and two thousands more the next?

I can code the whole fucking app in one month and get version two ready the next month if that is what you need. See? That's execution, my friend. I can code apps blindfolded and with my hands tied. Can you do business like that? I don't want dreamers, I want doers.

Now, stop wasting my time with an idea, I have had plenty every day of my life since I started programming and I have spent twenty years perfectioning my skills. I know what I can do.

So, I ask you again, what are your business skills? Besides having an idea?

The trouble with thinking "I have magic beans, I just need water!" is that you don't understand water. You don't know good water from bad. You don't really know how much water to use and when. You can't watch the beans grow and adjust your watering schedule because you think it's all about the beans. You don't get water.

That's my problem with "I just need a programmer" entrepreneurs. I can work out how to get paid, but I can't work out how to make them understand software well enough to make good business decisions about a software company.

(The same thing is true of "I just need a salesperson," of course.)

It seems funny to me that so many people want to be software entrepreneurs, but refuse to learn about software.

Six months ago I quit my banking job of five years to learn how to program. I am taking discrete math, data structures & algorithms, and computer organization courses as a non-degree student. I am also up to speed with python/django/HTML/CSS/JS, or at least I know them well enough to hack a prototype together.

Programming is overwhelming at first, but seriously, it's not that hard to learn enough to test out your ideas.

This is a good post. I'd take it one step farther. To say the idea is nothing without the execution still (kind of) suggests that they are different things. I think that where it comes to software, the execution is the idea.

I wouldn't quite claim that ideas aren't worth much. I know a few academics, and they are rightly careful about sharing their ideas before they get far enough with the implementation (lab work, publications) to ensure that they will be credited. If I'm going to agree that "idea stealing" is a problem, then I'm committed to agreeing that raw ideas do have some value.

Software can be like this, but in general, I think most software "ideas" are more similar to an idea for a novel, painting, or screenplay than a blockbuster pharmaceutical drug. Give two programmers the same "idea", and you'll end up with two different products - maybe almost as different as two different novels. Hell, give two writers or programmers the same detailed outline, and you'll probably end up with two different outcomes.

When I was in college, "business types" walked through shopping malls and appended "dot com" to what they saw, and thought they had a valuable idea. Now, people tend to prepend "social networking for" or "wireless". "Social networking - for surfers! for moms!"

Now one warning - however much I may feel this way, the law isn't necessarily on my side. IANAL and everything, but some IP lawyers came to talk to a startup I worked at once to tell us about how important it is to shut the fuck up, and evidently simply being "the programmer" doesn't mean you have to be included on a patent. So to that extent, the law does recognize a separation between idea and implementation.

I see a lot of "just learn to program" around here, and I think it's all a bit glib and far from reality.

Firstly, programming is hard. It's not the sort of thing you pick up in a few weeks. Hell, there are people who manage to make it through a CS degree and several years in industry without actually knowing what they're doing. What makes you think it's a valuable use of your time to do something mediocre that other people have spent much of their lives learning to do well?

Secondly, good programming doesn't make a good business. It's as important (I would even say more important) to have a solid revenue model. Who are your customers? Why are they buying? How can you get more? These are questions many programmers wouldn't want to touch with a barge pole. Don't waste that symbiosis.

To me, the real message is that ideas aren't worth shit. Implementation is king. It seems like a lot of people (angry ex-startup programmers?) confuse real business people (who can contribute a lot to a team in sales & biz dev) with useless "ideas guys". If you're one of those then, y'know, stop it. You should go learn an actual skill (programming or otherwise) that will allow you to contribute to the idea's realisation.

(I should clarify, though, that I think anyone working in software should learn about programming. But encouraging business guys to write their own code is like encouraging programmers to draw their own art.)

As someone who has spent most of his career at a consultancy, people like this put food on my table.

The ones who end up being successful understand that they need to learn just as much about the process of software development and usability as we need to learn about their vertical. They understand that a good product is a result of give and take with your developers and analysts.

The ones who fail are the type A alpha dogs who just want you to do whatever they say because they are paying you a crap load of money per hour. They generally have the right mindset for an entrepreneur, they are trying to solve a problem they have. A couple of common problems are:

1) Everyone in their vertical may have this problem, but they assume everyone does business the same way that they do and follows the same process. They weigh down their system with too many requirements and business rules. As a result, they bury the one or two useful nuggets and end up with a product that is only suited to them.

2) They want to make some monolithic end to end solution right out the gate. They want to jump straight to being a WalMart sized franchise when they need to start as a mom and pop corner store (aka a MVP).

This is a very unfortunate situation in our industry.

BizDev guy says he needs one of them "programmers" who can code and don't talk back to him. BizDev guy knew almost nothing about software development or the "properties of a system software". Business didn't work out because the software is flacky. BizDev guy blames them "programmers" when changes are hard, software is super buggy.

BizDev thinks he's awesome cause he has 3 things: Money, Network and Idea. Everybody should bow down to Money.

Programmers became hateful against the BizDev guy. They say "I can do this by myself, screw you guys". Then programmers try to re-create their ideal world: solving cool problems, working with cool gadgets, in a cool office environment. Some said programmers have to work in a close office, alone GASP. Of course these silos came up with a chunk of code that probably hard to be integrated. Them programmers try to hire BizDev guy cause now the VCs are on their butt asking how money could be made. Of course it'll be hard for them programmers to hire BizDev since they have a very strong bias. They probably ended up hiring Sales Engineer instead of bright BizDev.

Programmers think they're awesome cause they have 3 things: Knowledge, Skill and Idea. Knowledge is everything they say.

This... is why 9 out of 10 startups failed. That 1 startup that succeed? the BizDev guy has an MBA and BS in CS or EE. The Programmers? they took minor in economics/commerce or accounting.

I'm one of these guys.

Why didn't I learn to program? I had maybe an hour/day in between my job and my side hustle, and I just didn't have enough time to get through the problems in order to be a good programmer.

Since then, I've found that watching projects come to life, while learning on the side, has made it much easier to pick up Objective C, Javascript, Ruby, etc. Of course, I didn't expect programmers to work for free...that would be ridiculous.

That being said, it's kind of like learning HTML or CSS, unless you're doing it actively, full-time, for months or even years, it's going to take some time to feel like you know what you're doing.

Lastly, there are so many languages. There's Ruby, Python, PHP, C and its variants, etc. Do you learn web languages or something like Objective C?

Those are some of the things that went through my mind when I started.

that was me 2 years ago. I considered elance (couldn't afford it), recruited 1 cs buddy I went to high school with (he was busy doing his own things), so I figured I had no choice but to learn to program. I found HN, which introduced me to Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial, and I just launched my first app: http://www.fanscription.com Oh, and I'm an Econ/Business Major.

"Just Do It" -Nike

I think the majority of developers/startup founders have no problems sharing their idea or plan before launch date. They talk about it to attract new prospective clients, collaborators, create interest and so on. Very few operates in stealth mode nowadays.

So when you freely share your idea before launching the product you already consider the value of the idea alone basically zero, while you think the value resides all in your execution.

That's why I believe that if you have an idea you'd better be an exacutor or a sales person, otherwise there no or little value in your contribution. There's no shortage of ideas.

I somewhat but not entirely agree with this. I definitely agree in the case he discusses: there are way too many people with vague ideas who "just need a programmer". I don't think the root problem is that implementation is the source of all value, though. In their case, they don't understand how to develop computational ideas in a useful way at all. It's not the lack of C++ knowledge or Ruby knowledge, but the lack of a general understanding of computational thinking.

A computationally-literate idea that's well developed, on the other hand, can be very valuable, and can account for probably 90% of the interestingness of idea+implementation. Not always: sometimes you find really major things in the implementation that cause you to rethink the idea. But there are many times that I've implemented a theoretical idea myself and not really learned anything in doing so. You read a paper, or even a blog post, which explains an idea in detail, motivates why the author developed it, gives a broad sketch of how you'd implement it, etc., etc., but the author hasn't actually implemented it. Then I implement it myself. Have I provided the majority of the value, because I'm the first person with working code? Not really; in many cases the implementation was a pretty straightforward translation of the idea into code.

A computationally literate and well-developed idea is arguably something close to "execution", but not quite the nuts-and-bolts variety. To use a physics analogy, my ideas on space travel are not very well developed or valuable, but Freeman Dyson's are valuable, even though he's implemented his ideas to the same extent I have: neither one of us has ever attempted to build spaceships. He's a pure idea-person, but his ideas are developed quite fully, so readers can understand what he proposed and why, what its pros and cons might be, what possible pitfalls await, what the broad outlines of possible fixes for those pitfalls might be (even if they depend on materials or other things not currently available), etc.

I'd say the same of people even further into idea-land, like Isaac Asimov, who provided valuable ideas with nothing close to an implementation. The trick imo is that most ideas either just aren't novel enough to be interesting, or aren't sufficiently well developed and explained to provide value to a reader.

This isn't just a programming issue; it reminded me of my younger days as a freelance designer, where I would meet with many prospective entrepreneurs who would tell me something like 'I'm very good at design, I just need somebody to work the software.'

Invariably, there is more to both programming and design than meets the eye. While learning can help obviate this problem it's not a cure-all; it is also important to learn how to a.) prioritize and simplify when your reach exceeds your grasp and b.) have realistic expectations for outcomes vs. budget.

It's a good idea to learn both, but again, the execution is more problematic.

I am a marketer. I am also fairly technical and think that I have a firm understanding of how things work but lack the capabilities/aptitude to properly code them. I managed to cobble together a functional prototype of some analytics software we needed. It was fine until it became quickly apparent that my coding skills suck despite a more or less understanding of it all. We had to hire a coder to write it all from scratch to be able to handle hundreds of thousands clicks per day. It has been bumpy but it was still the right decision in order to allow our business to grow.

My point is, even if you want something bad enough that you will sit there for a couple of weeks straight to cobble your vision together, nothing beats having it done by a professional that understands what they are doing.

I wish still we had a full time developer and ui designer available to us to make my much grander/awesome/profitable vision a reality. In time we will...

Funny, I have the opposite problem. I need a biz-guy!

Question: If I were a "BizDev" guy and wanted to create a website that has similar functionalities as, say, Groupon or PayPal (I understand they're different), what languages would be best to learn?

I would suspect some front-end GUI paired with a back-end database system would be needed, but what languages specifically would be best?

As an entrepreneur with a degree in Mech. Eng. and Entrp., and I have done programming in MATLAB, some VBA, and some HTML. So I understand the logic behind programs, but don't necessarily know all the languages.

Any and all suggestions are most welcomed!

Wait, so they're surprised that they can't find students willing to work hard in return for some vague hope of money in the future?

Wow. Color me shocked. /sarcasm

And the advice that they could just learn programming themselves? I don't think anyone ever says 'I need X, but don't know anything about it myself. I'll just learn it.' (At least, nobody that thinks logically.) It doesn't work that way. (Okay, granted, some small number of people might think that and actually succeed at it. But at the cost of things they could have been doing efficiently, instead.)

Wow, I'm really impressed how quickly this page loads!

Or, maybe I'm just too used to the masses of those annoyingly slowly loading blogs.

What it really boils down to is the drive of the individual. If you're not willing to do whatever it takes to make the dream a reality then you're not an entrepreneur.

That might mean growing your network to find a co-founder or it might mean buckling down and learning to program yourself.

There's so much free information out there today that ignorance is no excuse.

There's another option, without having to learn how to program.

Be good and make money at what you do so you can afford to pay good programmers what their time is worth, so they can make your idea happen without too much hassle.

(Disclaimer - I run a company that does just that)

I used to be one of those people before I learned how to program. Best investment I've made in the last 10 years.

The problem with offering equity is that it's often just a dangling carrot that never materializes. I've worked for several startups offering stock options over the years and observed an alarming pattern: programmers are treated as commodities to develop the idea, then laid off before the product launch. The C-levels reap all the gains and the product builders go collect unemployment.

I believe that the punch-line is also "but I don't intend to pay hourly industry rates".

I have quite a few people I know who are on the "business side" of the entrepreneurial merry go round that quite often call me with their latest idea.

The remarkable thing is that no matter how many times I get back to them with a time estimate of 6 months - or a cost investment of $50k - $100k to get it live etc. the first sentence they always speak is "it's just a simple site that ... "

In fact it's not really limited to these guys. Everyone who calls me to get something done starts off by telling me how simple it is. "It's just this simple thing that ... " as if that's somehow going to make me realise that it IS simple and I can actually do in a weekend what I had thought would take months!!

If it's that simple, DO IT YOURSELF!

Too many business people think programming is a commodity that can be easily outsourced. Too many programmers think business people all have vague ideas. They are both wrong.

I really liked this post. Jumping into execution/implementation, especially when we're naive about all of complexities is a valuable learning experience. It seems we're also likely to meet folks and make new friends who do understand the complexities ..and from that group we'll find our project partners.

He also makes a good point about discouraging people ...it seems we need to do more of pointing people down the path of learning, implementation and discovery.

Yoh ho ho.

That post was much better than I expected.

Ideas are important (although the usually mutate in the process of implementation.) The ability to implement is important (although the tendency to go after low hanging fruit rather than what is actually needed is strong.)

The last ingredient, though, is the ability to communicate the idea and the implementation to customers/investors/users/etc. Marketing, UI/Human Factors, and Sales are often as important.

One thing I'd say is that I don't believe programmers are the only profession afflicted with this scenario.

Who knows how many times I've had a 'brilliant' idea for something outside my domain where I've said to myself "this is a great idea, now all I need is a ____". I am just thankful that I'm smart enough not to start asking successful people to buy into my stupid idea until I've done some research first...

I'm with this guy, if I have Ideas I learn to implement them myself, if nothing else even if I got other people to do the work I know what they're going through to do it so I can plan for it, and as issues arise I can help not just sit around trying to motivate.

Great quote:Learning to program used to be an inevitable consequence of using computers. Sadly, that's no longer true. The inevitable consequence of using computers these days seems to be interacting with people we may or may not know well and watching videos.

I am currently one of these guys in transition. Using Gladwell's 10,000 hour as a proxy for mastery. I estimate getting between 100 - 250 hours of programming time is good enough to get a working MVP out.

Does anyone think this is overly optimistic or unrealistic?

Naaa.

If you have an idea and you learn how to implement it you might find yourself a single founder/creator.

You know what they say about those, right?

"What's wrong with having one founder? To start with, it's a vote of no confidence. It probably means the founder couldn't talk any of his friends into starting the company with him. That's pretty alarming, because his friends are the ones who know him best." -- Paul Graham, 18 mistakes, 2006.