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Comment by Rayzar | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for your comment. In retrospect I may not have adequately detailed the work I have done so far, so that explains the responses.On the other hand though,sometimes its not just about the programming aspect of a project,for instance, if I have an idea for an app that I want to develop, but my technical skills limit me, it would be nice to have people to bounce the idea off and have it implemented. In short, great projects are made up of good product vision and adequate technical skills to implement it, some people have the two skill sets while in other cases its not that easy to bring two different people with the complementing skills together.

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When you say have it implemented, it almost sounds like you're looking for a 'hacker' you respect to enjoy your idea so much that they'll build it for you. That would turn off anyone.

I think what the parent commenter meant by showing your work is to have either a list of related projects you've finished and details on how they relate or all the material you've gathered so far and a very specific question regarding your current stumbling block.

If you approach a guru (or anyone, for that matter) with a question that would only take five minutes to google, of course you'll get the shaft. On technical issues, everyone is guilty of ignorance until proven innocent, and willful ignorance is not lightly tolerated.

Lots of folks just aren't looking for mentorship opportunities, too. I'd say scan the list of current and previous mentors for something like Google's "summer of code" and use it as a jumping off point for contacts that have a track record of providing mentoring to aspirant hackers.

It's also not easy as someone business-minded with technical skills to cope with the hordes of business-idea-no-technical-skill MBA-clones trying to poach you to spend all your time on their project, not yours, for very little gain.

I'm guessing I'm not alone in being tired of the whole "Oh, you can code? I have an idea for this site.." thing. Gotta pitch it right to people overwhelmed with that sort of thing. If you really just want a few words of feedback so you can go out there and find a techie to work with knowing it's technically viable, that's great, but that's not necessarily what I'm picking up from you here.

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