jojoleflaire

Quote: "If you’re over, say, thirtyish, you grew up in a world where a good chunk of what you read was true."

What kind of moron writes this crap?

Make sure you learn about the rules around the 83(b) election for your stock.

When it comes to DVDs I want exactly one thing: a player that goes from closing the tray to playing the feature in less than one second.

No FBI or Interpol warnings in multiple languages, no previews, no disclaimers, no bonus features, no menus. Just. The. Damn. Movie.

If I want any of thatother garbage, I can press the "menu" key at any time and go there.

Copying DVDs? Who cares. Anyone who wants to do this already can, and the legality of such activity probably doesn't bother them. As a consumer I wouldn't spend a penny on this. But I would buy a new player that works like one I described above in a second.

You are a minor player. Not being harsh, but it's just a job for you. Don't worry about the corporate details, if you believe in the vision. If the company is successful, you will be too. But make sure that as the company grows, you grow (career wise) too. You might get rich some day from it.

One thing that took us a while to figure out, but helped immeasurably once we did was getting good, at VM/image based development.

So in our case we wrote the code on whatever laptop we liked best (I did most of the coding for first few versions our software on a 12" PowerBook, other folks used ThinkPads or Dells with Windows).

But having a beefy server box with enough memory/disk to host a few different VM environments (various QA, staging, multiple different DBs etc.) and the ability to rapidly set up new ones was killer. It makes the laptop choice more a matter of personal preference, and keeps a consistent environment where it counts.

A few things:

1. Many have rightly noted that Davis Square in Somerville is a cool place to hang, yet no one has mentioned its crown jewel: Redbones. Do you people really live here?

2. For excellent pizza, check out Emma's on Hampshire near Kendall Square.

3. Flat Top Johnny's near the Kendall Square Cinema is an OK place to play pool and have a beer. But watch out: their computer keeps track of how much you drink and you will get cut off if it thinks you have had too many too soon. Infernal Machines!

4. Games People Play on Mass Ave.

Just one?

For two players: Scrabble or Carcassonne. For three or four players: Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico

If you can find them: Titan Talisman 2nd Edition and Illuminati are also totally awesome.

What percentage does it take to get 2x your base salary in 4 years max (accounting for multiple rounds and the subsequent dilution)? Adjust base salary until it fits your goals.

Remember: early employees never get rich, except for the really exceptional cases in which even the dock workers get a huge windfall.

I second this advice.

I have two daughters. The oldest is 4 going on 5, the youngest is closing in on 2. I guess I read the same books as my wife when she was pregnant with our oldest daughter ("What to Expect When You're Expecting", and some encyclopedic books regarding kids development and diseases). But neither of us has really resorted to any kind of manuals since then.

The most surprising thing (to me, at least) about having kids was the realization that they aren't alien creatures or high maintenance robots, but little people with their own very different personalities, even as newborns. And like other people you need to engage them on their level. And the relationship evolves from there.

So I guess my advice here is listen to them first. Read some clinical books to get the facts about sickness and heath, and when to call a doctor, but your let own observations be the main guide. Congratulations!

In my experience, the best way to break in is to find a process that either isn't handled or handled only tangentially by existing ERP packages. It helps too if that process represents a new way of doing business for your customers. That way you get to pitch for growing the top-line (i.e. creating dollars that didn't exist before your software came on the scene) vs. bottom-line savings that just cut costs.

Not to throw cold water on your idea, but I have deep reservations that pure technical expertise in generic enterprise development/implementation will win anyone over. All of the big guys plus numerous other consulting companies already offer this, with much more name recognition (deserved or not) than you will have. Additionally, one of the main features of packaged software is that customers not only are loathe to manage a development process, they are reluctant to even engage one in the first place.

But if you can distinguish yourself by being The Smartest and Best (TM) in a particular business area, all of your skills in execution can back that up and create a winning operation. But without that domain focus and expertise the story is much less compelling.

Apple II+. That machine ruled -- simple enough for a 11 year old kid to fully understand, programmable from the get go (it basically thrust a BASIC prompt at you after turning it on) and kick-ass games like Wizardry and Ultima to boot. Brings a tear to my eye.

I guess I read a few things into the question. My experience is that a "record" is more often than not a series of rows in different tables, and the tricky question in these scenarios is making sure that updates either work or don't work in their entirety. This is what I was meant by the "this is what databases are for" line.

It is practically impossible to maintain a useful, enforceable lock on a record in a web application, given the lack of a persistent connection between the client (browser) and the back end. So you are usually left with two choices:

1. Last one in wins: given that the two users presumably have good reasons for modifying the record in question, let them figure it out if there is a conflict. As long as updates are atomic, consistent, blah, blah this works best.

2. Versioning: Every record has a version number associated with it and the database rejects updates with a version != to what is in there.

The real trick is to set yourself up so that you have a single-writer for any given piece of data in the common case and defer whatever locking is necessary optimistically to the database.

I know databases aren't fashionable around here, but this is exactly what they are for. Seriously.

36 - B.A., M.A. Classics; undergrad minor in Comp. Sci. 2 startups: 1 acquired; 1 round C and soon-to-be-profitable.

You describe a social, not technical problem. There is already a solution today -- it's called your manager.

This is why the tools market is the domain of a few niche companies and IMO a waste of time for startups. Pain points at the level at which you could conceivably write code are all unique to the organization. It's a consultant's game -- A branching layer like you describe will be written in PowerPoint, not emacs. Do it and get yourself a promotion.