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Gyonkaon Ask HN: Is there a “product launch as a service” company?

I run a company that among other things, works with mid to early stage startups (as in, some folks with an idea). We help them build the product (design, development), launch it and do marketing. My email is in my profile if you have any questions, etc.

I recommend nailing down exactly what you think an MVP should look like and iterating on early customer feedback.

It's important to stress that we are there to help startups augment their teams at later stages, but by no means can we replace the culture and passion of a dedicated team working night and day to make your dreams come true. We can build you something fantastic, help you grow a user base, but at the end of the day the road to most effective profitability and vision is in the hands of the founder.

Gyonkaon We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

I really agree with the sentiment of audition projects. The interviews I have enjoyed the most all involved some sort of take-home project, although I have never been paid for one. On that note, how expensive does it become for a startup to dole out many interview projects across a wide range of candidates? I think a better strategy would be to conduct preliminary interviews and then based on some granularity, assign projects. One more issue I have with take home projects is that it is not always possible to tell who did the work. When it comes to interviews at startups I doubt that there would be much cheating, but for large companies where candidates are more easily able to slip through the cracks, I image this may present an issue. Can anyone speak to this experience?

Gyonkaon Foundations of a good UI

What do you think about consistency between a mobile app and a website? Logos and other such assets aside, is it valuable to keep the colour scheme the same, and keep UI elements such as buttons the same?

Gyonkaon Show HN: InterviewTable – Coding Interviews W Engineers from Google and Facebook

Interesting. Would they eventually let other engineers sign on, resulting in a sort of tutoring platform for coding interviews?

Gyonkaon Show HN: Littlebox, a pure CSS icon library – worth continuing?

Oh yes absolutely. Theses are fantastic icons, really well done man.

Gyonkaon Ask HN: Do you feel like your potential is being wasted?

To me it sounds like you don't like the work you do, and going to university to do an undergrad won't get you a better job (assuming you still want to work in tech?). The best way to get a job you might like more is to learn some new skills and pivot your career.

I'd also like to mention that going to a prestigious university has generally no bearing on the jobs you get, it's the people. As a result hiring companies (in the tech sector) don't really care where you came from as long as you can prove your value.

Gyonkaon Composer.js: a framework for building complex single-page applications

Composer was built specifically as a Backbone.js replacement to support Mootools

But why?

Gyonkaon Computer 'Web' to Change Billion of Lives (Yeah, Right)

Gave me a good laugh... but hey, i'm not sure I wouldn't say the same thing today about something that seems crazy then turns out to change the world.

Gyonkaon Uber Said to Raise $1.6 Billion in Convertible Debt to Expand

I meant raising money from Goldman Sachs' private wealth management clients specifically, I think the OP implied there was a pattern.

Gyonkaon Uber Said to Raise $1.6 Billion in Convertible Debt to Expand

So is this a usual trend with companies seeking IPO in the future?

Gyonkaon Ask HN: What is your process for planning/starting a new project?

Your process sounds pretty effective to me, especially for a shop with 4 people. I've also only really got experience working with smaller teams. The only thing I would say I do differently before I commit to any ideas and wireframe is to ask everyone part of the team what they think, especially if they are not developers.

Gyonkaon FuzzBeed – Randomly generated BuzzFeed

I thought it did just because of the URL name switching, but I see your point. Thanks.

Gyonkaon FuzzBeed – Randomly generated BuzzFeed

If you are downvoting my comment, please tell me why so I can improve my comments in the future. Cheers

Gyonkaon Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

I suppose you are correct, although all the training I received for software engineering was in straight OOP Java. I really dislike java in general.

Now I write mostly in python and go, learning a bit of haskell.

Gyonkaon Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

I agree with him in the sense that these are CS courses, and in in such a way Haskell ties together well with the math that one learns in a CS program. Keeping that in mind it makes sense to only have taught Java in courses specifically designed for developing software.

Gyonkaon FuzzBeed – Randomly generated BuzzFeed

School has late starts on some days, and most people had no idea when they were so I threw this together one day real quick to be able to check; then shenanigans ensued and we had an alternate website set up, see slatetart.tk

Gyonkaon FuzzBeed – Randomly generated BuzzFeed

Yeah... we both needed resume padding for university.

Gyonkaon FuzzBeed – Randomly generated BuzzFeed

Well done :P

I've pulled similar shenanigans, I made one website for my school: http://latestart.cf

Then later: http://slatetart.tk

Gyonkaon Anyone interested in teaching arc?

No problem - I think you will really be able to do anything you like, 3 years or not. If you are really set on learning Arc I know you will do fine. Since you aren't looking for a job or anything, and I guess just want to learn in you spare time, Arc should be completely O.K to learn.

Gyonkaon Anyone interested in teaching arc?

Sure, I could pick any language and learn it as a first time programmer (essentially). I could learn Haskell as a first time developer too. But should I? Comparing Arc to Python is not only a comparison of syntax and coding style, which by any means is a minute detail in this case seeing as they are both easy to grasp and relatively succinct, but a comparison of resources and community as well. Python for example is the language of choice at many schools and universities for first time programmers. The community is much larger and more developed. There are many more resources for python that I can find and know of than for Arc.

Arc might be a powerful language, but I find little reason to choose it over Python, Java, JavaScript, etc.

Gyonkaon Anyone interested in teaching arc?

Arc will be tricky to get a hang of learning to code (essentially) for the first time, I would recommend a language like Python. The syntax makes a lot of sense, it starts out easy to learn, but is extremely powerful.

Gyonkaon Anyone interested in teaching arc?

Do you mind if I ask why you want to learn Arc specifically? In my opinion there are better languages one can learn from the get-go, and in terms of usefulness.

Gyonkaon Robert Morris: All About Programming

I think he means the Bell Labs people were wrong, i.e Robert Morris did not enjoy math, for him it was about the programming. He later mentions that it was tough keeping in touch with the people at bell labs after ignoring their advice about math.

I THINK. You're right, it's a bit unclear.

Gyonkaon Show HN: Building terminal dashboards using ASCII/ANSI art and JavaScript

This is really cool! Seems like it would be easy to extend and link to simple projects, that way I can run this on my second monitor and feel like a real hacker ;)

Gyonkaon GoFundMe Tops Kickstarter as World’s #1 Crowdfunding Platform

Am I wrong in saying that the user base if different? It seems to me that kickstarter is more for products/businesses, but from my limited experience I think gofundme is more of a humanitarian kind of crowdfunding.

Gyonkaon 17-year old makes browser plugins to show sources of politicians' funding

I think many people are still surprised to learn about the competency of teens (and early adults?) when it comes to being able to make and build some cool things that are more advanced, by which I mean write code.

Source: Am 17, but won't usually harp about it online.

Gyonkaon Show HN: Nightchamber, a slow-web social site

This is cool, but I kind of see the use case a little different. I'd like to be able to receive a message like this on my phone once a day, just as a notification, at a time of my choosing. It would still be a random anonymous message, but it would be interesting because everyday I would receive some random/hilarious crap from someone elsewhere in the world.

Gyonkaon What is Redis?

I've never used Redis but have been meaning to give it a try. Since it's in-memory, what are the biggest kinds of systems you can set up with it? I would imagine it gets tricky to scale after a point?