Hacker News Reader

DarrenStuarton Founders aren't programmers = doomed ?

sorry had to correct this.

I was replying to this

I'm struggling to give some examples. I don't know if either of lastminute.com's founders were coders.

so google and MS are perfectly valid answers.

Anyway laters folks.

DarrenStuarton Founders aren't programmers = doomed ?

how about you just delete my account Paul. I am done posing and joining in here so no lose to anyone.

DarrenStuarton Founders aren't programmers = doomed ?

so I get down modded for giving examples.... I know its not cool to moan about down modding but at least people could give a reason.

DarrenStuarton Founders aren't programmers = doomed ?

google, Microsoft etc :p

DarrenStuarton Best Books For a Startup?

I think news.yc needs a search.

Heres some we added 3 days ago :p

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135185

DarrenStuarton Best Books For a Startup?

Steven Levy is great, I would add his Crypto book as well.

DarrenStuarton Microsoft getting into the platform as a service market in a rather major though stealthy way

I like the look of some of these products that MS are working on but there is noway I am going to touch them until they become offical 1.1 releases.

DarrenStuarton Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

is there any video of the presentations?

on paper some of these seem like hacker projects not startups so I would love to see how they see value in these startups.

DarrenStuarton AOL acquires Bebo for 850 million

I dunno they seem to be buying a lot of stuff recently so they must have some cash.

Don't forget its time warner as well isn't it?

DarrenStuarton Ask YC: How many forums do you use?

yeah I wasn't sure. I think its kinda a forum more of a hybrid.

I would love some for forum like features if I was honest. Split the questions, news and cool links and I think it would be more forum like.

DarrenStuarton Ask YC: How many forums do you use?

yeah I have to agree I often think they are over looked.

DarrenStuarton 10 Ways to Improve Your Programming Productivity

excellent read, I agree with pretty much all of it.

my tip for not being side tracked is...

make your home page on your development machine blank.

Being a webdeveloper I found everytime I open my browser with igoogle I would get sidetracked by some story.

I have also taken to getting up earlier and reading all I can first thing and then just getting on with it.

DarrenStuarton [dead]

yeah I agree I have never seen any spam on here so they must be doing a good job.

Plus whos going to vote for spam?

DarrenStuarton Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?

designing the obvious - a common sense approach to web application design by Robert Hoekman Jr

The New New Thing

Masters of Doom (story of id software, great story)

Smart Start-ups: How Entrepreneurs and Corporations Can Profit by Starting Online Communities

steven levy's Hackers and crypto also for the history.

DarrenStuarton Little Known Hacker News Is My First Read Every Morning

lol, no sense of humour I guess

DarrenStuarton Hacker News Site Guidelines

shouldn't this list be on or linked on the submit page?

DarrenStuarton Little Known Hacker News Is My First Read Every Morning

oh well at least scoble didn't get a whiteboard out to explain how it works :p

DarrenStuarton Are .NET developers the American tourists of the software industry?

Its an untyped, interpreted and does not have any heritage with the likes of C or even basic.

I guess it's heritage is smalltalk which I did enjoy when I studied.

Don't get me wrong it has its place but I think of it as a language that is like basic used to be. extremely easy to program in but if you learn just ruby you would have a hard time jumping to another programming langunage than if you had come from C#, C/C++ etc

no flames please :p

DarrenStuarton Are .NET developers the American tourists of the software industry?

> At least part of it is that in many cases it's not their chosen toolset; it's what they were given.

read my post I already said that.

> How so? You can figure this out yourself by comparing C# to ruby

DarrenStuarton PMOG

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132451

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2008/03/human-data-as-...

DarrenStuarton Ask YC: how is SimpleDB?

yeah I got it fairly quickly because I am using the other services.

DarrenStuarton Are .NET developers the American tourists of the software industry?

being a .net contractor myself I have to agree and then disagree.

The most day coders I have come across are in the .net field but as I work in this field I don't know if this is true. I suspect java has its fair share of day coders.

However I have met a lot of really good coders who use .net as a tool that has been given to them to use.

I don't want to get into a flamewar but the article did make me wonder if most developers view .net developers as lesser developers because of their chosen toolset. Does this have more to do with the hate of MS or do they really believe it.

From a knowledge point of view .net requries a lot more traditional programming skills than ruby ever does. I bet .net developers don't look down on ruby developers in the same way.

DarrenStuarton My dream co-founder (a little correction from a reply)

wtf?

DarrenStuarton Email to Postal

I am in agreement. This sounds like an idea that was not thought out.

DarrenStuarton Ask YC: What is your preferable development environment?

Thanks yeah I tried the first release but it would not work on my fresh install of vs08 and .net 3.5

I'll give it a go again.

DarrenStuarton Ask YC: What is your preferable development environment?

.net vs05(vs08 seems like it needs a service pack) on windows

php coda/code igniter on mas osx(using mamp)

DarrenStuarton Ask YC : How to jump in the video games development?

well it depends on what you are after. If you are going to be making your own games and selling them I would suggest garage games route. If you are after just being employed then its basically how quickly you pick this stuff up.

have you thought of mobile phone development or maybe the iphone/touch? There used to be a lower barrier to entry to get jobs doing these sorts of games. Also easy to learn j2me and build your own engine on it.

my only caution about the DS is effectivelly you will never be able to release a game on it but on the other side a cool tech demo on a ds would get your foot in the door with a devshop doing ds stuff.

good luck with it.

DarrenStuarton Ask YC : How to jump in the video games development?

I second gamedev its been around for a long time and has some decent helpful people on their forums. I used to use it a lot when I used to do game dev for my own projects.

also checkout garagegames.com great community over there based around their engines which are cheap and easy to use.

As for online degrees I wouldn't bother, most game dev employers are looking for killer demos and knowledge. If you are of an age that you are about to go to college/uni then I would do a game programming related degree for sure.

You could also checkout MS's XNA platform, its in .net but easy to get up and running and also with the creators club you can get stuff running on your xbox 360 if you have one.

DarrenStuarton Amazon SQS Price Drops to $0.01 / 10,000 requests

pararell batch processing springs to mind.

I have an idea for a broadcasting system that could use this and I am now tempted with the price drop.

DarrenStuarton Rethinking the Resumé - Skill Clouds

I would wonder what the hell was going and why they were messing around with font sizes and diffent shades of grey on my black and white print out.

Its a nice concept but in practice it does not work. Props for trying it out.