cyen

I'm not doing this to celebrate being rude, or being self-centered - it's about exploring my boundaries. I explicitly list in my rules that I shouldn't be cruel, or put people in particularly uncomfortable situations. My entire life I've placed rules around myself where there often are none (not talking to well-known entrepreneurs, for example, simply because I'm intimidated), and I'd like to change that.

As for po's other comment ("Although... on second thought, it would be good training for startup founders"), it's funny you should say that. I started this therapy the day after a partner and I decided to start a company, so this is an exercise not just for personal improvement but, in theory, professional improvement as well. I want to be able to take advantage of all of the opportunities ahead (talking to investors or reaching out to potential partners), instead of being intimidated or too timid upon approach.

And a couple of things to end this with: 1) I'll definitely try harder to ask for things from women rather than men, as the commenters pointed out 2) I should have / could have paid the cab driver at the end, to thank him for the help

Interesting discussion! These comments are in and of themselves continuing the rejection process (this life-on-display is a new experience for me, too) and I'm hoping for this to be a reasonably positive experience for everyone involved.

I’ve also come to loathe this mentality, at times. It’s the same mentality where someone whips up a two-page website and asks people to “review their startup!” I think startup is a phrase that’s been abused. You’ve made a project, or a mashup, or a hack, not a startup.

And that’s cool! Embrace that. More people need to do stupid shit. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Don’t do it to make money. Don’t even do it to learn hip new technology X. Do it for the sake of doing something stupid

To be honest, this is huge - looking at his resume, the only thing that makes it look like he did something significant is his sweet dreams/soundscapes project. Everything else under "experience" - which stands for "work experience," which is what he's applying for - discusses learnings.

What did he do during that time? He spent 6 months working in his university's computer vision lab, which sounds awesome - and he "learned how to take several ideas and combine them into a single result that highlights their strengths while nullifying their weaknesses."

That's incredibly vague - I'm glad he learned, but it's a cliche by now that you should be using "action verbs" in your resume ("built," "designed," "debugged," etc.)

Launch and iterate, right? That works for this process as well - send out your resume, and if you don't get the responses you want, tweak your resume and send out another wave.

Too bad labs.digg.com has been taken down by now...

- if your brand isn't immediately recognizable as a tech startup, signs like "Seeking CS / Math majors" are tacky but help immensely with capturing the interest of students who are browsing and want to know they won't be sucked into talking to a company totally outside their interests

- we spent much more time pitching our startup and answering questions about "what we do" than I imagine the average recruiter at a larger company has to do

- because the conversation almost always starts with them asking about us, if you're interested, you have to remember to turn the conversation on them to find out more, instead of just being left with a resume

- (more general) knowing which classes are good / hard / produce interesting projects helps a lot in evaluating what a particular candidate has done, and whether it matches with your company's needs.

likes:

- lots of powerful features that make necessary mobile app features (e.g. "pull up your contacts list!") super easy

- "puzzle piece" logic building inside app inventor is really easy to understand (ish), and pretty well done

- the process* is easy for non-programmers to do / understand / see in action

dislikes:

- how difficult it is to go beyond app inventor's available functions, if you know exactly what you want to do, or how you would do it if you could just pull up code (e.g. it's really hard / awkward right now to have multiple "screens" in an app)

- the android "look" in general, and the strict limitations of app inventor wrt visual styling

- the emulator is, unfortunately, _not_ easily accessible for non-programmers

- everything runs inside a java vm, and generally feels a little cumbersome

- the process* is slow and full of 30-second chunks of lost time

* process: make changes to the program -> "package" the app -> take a photo of the generated QR code -> download and install the app -> test your changes on the phone

And in terms of controlling quality, there definitely isn't much... :) http://www.regretsy.com/

What, and wow-slutty-behavior receptors aren't deeply and unavoidably bound into male brains?

If, by "it's all true," you mean - if you try the same dumb thing on 6-10 women over the course of three bars in one night, you might be successful with one, I'm very sad about your little faith in the entire female population.

If I as a woman did the reverse - approached groups of men throughout the course of a night and tried the same type of "canned opener" or "pickup artist" moves - how quickly do you think I'd lose every single bit of respect in the male gender? Probably faster than you lost yours.

While MIT prides itself in admitting students with passion and interests over those with 1600 (I suppose 2400, now) SAT scores, I think that the truth is that the overwhelming majority of the students who admitted are still the type to overachieve, overcommit, and - most importantly - follow the rules. To get good grades in high school, you turn in all the assignments, complete tasks (as inane as they may seem), and take the tests.

What this turns into, from my experience, is a large set of students who are not natural risk takers. What's more, I'd argue that MIT makes it or made it difficult to take risks and explore on your own. They load you down with work, pressure you into taking on a UROP (undergrad research for the uninitiated), and it's a rare student who has a significant project on the side as well.

In contrast, places like Stanford seem to encourage thinking outside of the box / trying different things. Their culture definitely doesn't seem like it slants toward loading yourself up with classes as a badge of honor, and I think that's a hugely positive effect on the ability of students to find time to dream. It feels like a cop-out answer, but I've finally admitted to myself recently that this east coast - west coast cultural divide (see inmygarage, above) does exist, and is incredibly influential.

So while the students who have left MIT and become successful are well-known and, frankly, represent, their reputation is disproportionate to their number. You don't see* MIT sophomores walking around handing out business cards for their "startup" - and I don't think it'd be such a bad thing if that changed.

* in comparison to other schools

Highlights: "The Reason Mario Wears Overalls" (character design by pixel): "Before you know it, you've used up 8 X 8 pixels. But if you draw a nose then a moustache, you don't really know if it's a mouth or a moustache, and it saves pixels."

"Letting Everyone Know It Was A Good Mushroom": "That's the reason why it's designed so that whatever you do, you'll get the mushroom."

Flot and Flotr are definitely past favorites, and its usage has felt the most natural

PlotKit (http://www.liquidx.net/plotkit/) - MochiKit-based, visually nice but not as well documented or, apparently, nearly as extensive as some of the other options

RGraph - an HTML5 canvas library, but pretty basic and definitely easy the least visually appealing

Highcharts definitely looks like it has the nicest animations of any of the previous ones, and also definitely has the best documentation / demo gallery. Thumbs up - definitely coming this way the next time I need a nice graphing library!

We're located in San Francisco (SOMA), and are constantly looking for sharp engineers.

How many times have you skidded away from attending an event (professional, social, whatever) because you didn't know anyone there? How many more would you have avoided if you knew everyone there was Not Like You, in some fundamental, if suck-it-up-able, way?

I'm still on the fence in terms of whether minorities (numerically in this industry) deserve 'special treatment' - but if members of a minority choose to reach out to each other (networking events, dinners, scholarships), who are we to criticize?

it let me concentrate, by not having words, but also lets me register some background noise in order for me to focus on my code.

The strengths of the old curriculum were the concepts you learned through 6.001 and using Scheme, not the Scheme skills themselves. Do I think 6.034 would be significantly different if I had to use Python versus Scheme? Not at all - and frankly using Scheme added nothing to my experience in that class.

6.006 does Python, but it's new and 6.046 had no practical edge to it at all. As a student who had a little bit of difficulty with the theoretical steps in 046, I can understand why they added the "test this and prove to yourself that this makes sense" exercises in Python.

As lame as it sounds, look into 6.00 - it's an "intro intro" programming class mostly required for Course 20 (Biological Engineering) students, but it's surprisingly robust as an introductory class - covering a lot of the topics you just listed, and well.