messel

CoffeeScript is much easier to read than javascript, that alone is a blessing. Admittedly I haven't used coffeescript much yet, I just cranked it up with nodemon a couple of weekends ago. I need a good starter coffeescript project that works on the backend with node, and the client side.

Perhaps a better name would be a taxonomy of startup strategies. One startup may switch or select several strategies depending on it's size and market. I'm interested in seeing this list expand if you pursue it. Please send me a url to a destination where you'll further develop it. (messel at gmail dot com)

Consider the trade of autonomy for predictability. It's not an easy decision. In my professional career I've leaned heavily towards predictability and it's been a poor fit.

You could always try it out, and go back to client work if it's not a good fit.

Was thinking two iframes when I read the ask. Always helpful to see it live and consider it's utility in practice.

It just worked on my imac, 10.6.7, using a dell keyboard

Holy crap how did I live without that binding. Updating the post asap!

I've done work for years with estimation theory, and probabilistic estimators, but I never knew there was a field of study dedicated towards language development using statistical methods.

It would be ideal to have a range of introductory documents followed by a great book or two on the subject. Any tips appreciated.

Howdy. I wrote down a few ideas about this topic this morning. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2382448

You're going to have to identify the influencers/experts in the community you wish to serve, and then come up with a compelling reason for them to contribute.

fat fingers downvoted, luckily inspection and edit html let me correct the error. odd that I had to do so.

cleaned out the left and right braces

a href="vote?for=2378453&dir=up&by=messel&auth=MY_AUTH&whence=%69%74%65%6d%3f%69%64%3d%32%33%37%38%32%34%30" onclick="return vote(this)" id="up_2378453"

img vspace="3" hspace="2" border="0" src="http://ycombinator.com/images/grayarrow.gif

/a

That's great feedback for Charles. I suspect he's trying to settle down the language, then push for beautiful docs. The biggest push for accessibility and language adoption is great documentation.

Cool example.

I concur, and I'm the author. It's a wonderful introduction to Big O for folks that struggle with it. My post is merely a tool to help refresh my knowledge of fundamental concepts. William Shields does an excellent job of making Big O approachable to non-CS majors.

The only passage I take issue with is his description of O(n) arithmetic examples. In my thinking addition/multiplication are O(1) but I blame that view on years of thinking about FLOPs and letting thoughts of # of operations conflate with big O notation. In practicethe example of adding two large integers is a single operation, or at least a fixed size handful operations for arbitrary precision.

Variation on the string around the finger as a reminder trick.

By auto-tagging do you mean extracting entities from text? If so I have some experience using third party apis (Zemanta, Alchemy, OpenCalais).

One of the problems I've had with various to do list hacks is that task priority and completion changed over the life of the list. In addition coordinating group tasks doesn't have a natural fit with planning personal activities.

Large tasks morphed over time into long term goals, and never left the list. Actually I preferred those because they aided navigating smaller decisions on how to spend my time, without having a discrete blob for each task. "Is this task helping me achieve my long term goal, if so how and how much?" More on this later (the text file task list).

Quick history of my relationship to task lists:

When I started my first push towards a functioning product (and what I hoped would be a real company) I used p2, a wordpress blog theme for coordinating group activity.

I combined that with emails and filters by recipient to keep track of ideas that were plausible and consistent with the driving product idea (relevant ads based on social streams).

Over time my email usage as a task list grew into many different tabs (gmail) and information gathering/interests intermixed with project tasks (bad idea). I became bogged down with what I thought at the time were relevant tutorials, docs, and ideas but later proved to be of limited value or wild goose chases down implausible technical paths.

My technical cofounder (he had four years of web development under his belt in 2009, I had a few months) coordinated our product and coding activities with lighthouse milestones and tickets. Those worked fine for well defined objectives, but ended up decaying too slowly based on our understanding of project direction. Eventually we abandoned the lighthouse ticket approach to email coordination and screen sharing.

At that point I relied on a simple text file to keep track of my top handful of project priorities (and nothing else) and worked through them one a time. I could rearrange the order on the fly as specific tasks became more important (overhauling an ad widget's design, redesigning the interface to be more attractive to visitors vs. hosts). Those tasks morphed into priorities that served as a filter for irrelevant vs focused and necessary actions.

In our busiest periods (late 2009/early 2010) email and text files weren't enough. Even priority lists felt inadequate and I stopped regularly wrestling with the lists. At that point I naturally realized the idea, when it comes to startups lists there can be only one. One thing has to stand apart and be doggedly pursued until it's finished and proven valuable, or discarded and proven a false alarm or too difficult to handle with current resources. http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/07/18/when-it-comes-to-st...

We tried several different ideas and Tyler has become a formidable web hacker, while I've gained some technical chops (I've coded algorithms/sims in c++ for 15 years but only recently added web development) and continue to refine my product focus and understanding of market needs. Unfortunately our product ideas and implementations didn't pan out. After actively pushing for a year without results we parted ways and are still friends.

At the end of 2010 I took a break from web development but came back to it with the new year. Since then my personal task list (and backlog of desired activities) has become sloppy.

You're perception is correct.

It's a public admission of slipping and not following my own advice due to a lack of discipline in areas of interest. My apologies if there was no value added.

Build relationships with companies that don't mind working with remote consultants or employees. Writing was mentioned by jaltucher and is a great place to start. If money isn't a huge issue, you could write squidoo lenses or web pages full time adding your own ads. I wrote a few dozen lenses for squidoo in 2008 early 2009 and they generated a steady $40-60 a month. Take that concept and push it to a few hundred or thousand lenses or focused sites.

there's more than one definition crux, Victus is also translated as nourishment. My favorite words have a few contradictory interpretations.

http://www.online-dictionary.biz/latin/english/meaning/victu...

It's hard to imagine a government which embraces risk and failure as par for the course for learning and improving, but it's worth doing.

Totally agree on the efficient market thesis, but not when it comes to big research and public works projects.

In my post I reference an earlier short essay on mega projects

http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/01/13/think-bigger-short-...

Some projects entrepreneurs can't build unless thousands of them get together. Many of these mega projects have resulted in very long term benefits. Hoover Dam, Panama Canal, Lunar Mission, DARPAnet are just a few ideas which entrepreneurs can't possibly tackle on their own, even massive corporate IR&D budgets can't be risked on such endeavors.

Not only am I interested in the product, but I'm eager to read more about the process, such as estimated timelines, margins, fulfillment times.

Can you imagine creating a startup that connects hardware craftsmanship to designers and rewards contributors in a beneficial way? Why stop at your own teams design instincts, there could be a broader opportunity you've uncovered. Cafepress like, but much more design/quality focused.

This is one of those defining moments for a startup, where they turn the corner and come out on the other side stronger, or collapse based on a lack of user trust and system problems. Time will tell.

I believe SO is designed so that new users ask questions. Then after getting a few rep points from questions they can contribute back with answers or comments (my preferred input).

I'd just like to add that there are costs to doing business that you can claim that are well within your right. I'm not a tax or legal specialist but things like servers, shipping costs, and your unpaid time may all be deductible to balance against your revenue.

It's worth it to hire an accountant to make sure your business is crystal clean, and that you're not penalizing yourself unnecessarily.

I'd love to see a cross platform variant, influenced by TextMate's design. I tried out redcar last year but it wasn't ready for primetime then. I may be confusing redcar with one of many other editors I tried out last year, I'll give it another look.

update it was redcar that I used last year, and it has improved quickly (kudos to the project team). That's a great sign. Kinda psyched to have something textmate-ish on ubuntu! The themes are pretty hot, and the bundles are chock full of languages.

If you're on Mac OS X or can run a VM, TextMate is a wonderful project editor. It was the reason I switched over to Mac for development. It does everything I want for development, and gets out of the way for everything I don't want. It'll take a little to get used to.

Autoformatting code is controlled under bundles (format all, re-indent text).

Go to definition/declaration is functionally done with go to symbol.

There's support for code completion but I haven't used it much.

If you want to share those experiences, I'd appreciate the information. Maybe I can learn something vital. Hit me up at messel at gmail dot com anytime you feel like it.

Hey running a coffee shop is a great business as long as you're not next store to Starbucks, or if your coffee is incredible. Besides, you don't have to code to run a business. Understanding how software is structured, what resources certain design decisions cost are valuable skills.

What language(s) do you code in? I hit the wall with c++ after 14 years of building sims/algorithms with it. Ruby/Python/javascript have opened up incredible avenues of hacking fun for me.

Maybe it's time for you to found/cofound. It matters more when it's your creation, and that might be the missing ingredient. You gained battle scars and learned quite a bit at your three failed startups, and to hell with baseball analogies anyway.

From Paul Kinlan: http://github.com/paulkinlan

Do you have a Web app? Do you want to get it into the Chrome Web Store? Not sure exactly where to start?

If you can answer "Yes" to any of these questions, then this app is for you.

By entering your app url, Appmator will examine your web app and create a basic manifest that you can upload into the store with in 30 seconds.

It is really as simple as that.

Features: - One click process - 30 seconds to get your app in the Chrome Web Store - Examines your site to get: - Title of your app - Description of your app - Icons to use on your site - Creates the zip file automatically for you to upload in seconds - Allows you to configure your app immediately

I'll keep that in mind for a decision this week. Worst case, I can keep on using the old xp box, and look for smaller or slightly looser organizations that don't mind me using a Mac for work.