I just need a programmer

http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-12.html#e2010-12-01T15_45_40.htm

by bgray • 16 years ago

288 101 16 years ago

cs.uni.edu

wccrawford• 16 years ago

Wait, so they're surprised that they can't find students willing to work hard in return for some vague hope of money in the future?

Wow. Color me shocked. /sarcasm

And the advice that they could just learn programming themselves? I don't think anyone ever says 'I need X, but don't know anything about it myself. I'll just learn it.' (At least, nobody that thinks logically.) It doesn't work that way. (Okay, granted, some small number of people might think that and actually succeed at it. But at the cost of things they could have been doing efficiently, instead.)

gregpilling• 16 years ago

"I don't think anyone ever says 'I need X, but don't know anything about it myself. I'll just learn it.'"

Yes, people do that. Like me, when I was interested in having a strawbale house I read a book and built a strawbale house (took 6 months). Learned a lot about construction in the process. When I wanted a website, I read a book and built my first website. Like the house, it was not the ultimate expression in its field but it was a website. So now I am not an expert at construction nor website building but I do know a whole lot more than the average person and I do know what parts are hard and what parts are easy. Makes the conversations with the real professionals much easier.

kenjackson• 16 years ago

You're definitely unusual. Almost everything I own I bought by exchanging cash for the product. Most services, I exchange cash for the service. I generate the cash by doing things I'm good at.

My dad is unusual too though. Say you need a new dryer, he'll go on and tell you that all it is is some heating something or other, sheet metal, yada yada yada. I'm half way to Sears... :-)

porter• 16 years ago

It seems funny to me that so many people want to be software entrepreneurs, but refuse to learn about software.

Six months ago I quit my banking job of five years to learn how to program. I am taking discrete math, data structures & algorithms, and computer organization courses as a non-degree student. I am also up to speed with python/django/HTML/CSS/JS, or at least I know them well enough to hack a prototype together.

Programming is overwhelming at first, but seriously, it's not that hard to learn enough to test out your ideas.

stevejobs• 16 years ago

Most people are good at what they're good at, so it makes no sense for them to learn something they have little interest or skill in. The typical request from a non-tech guy is not in implementing a hard engineering problem like database management or search query structure, but in putting together what is typically a glorified e-commerce site or social site (digg etc).

bad_user2• 16 years ago

Implementing a social or an e-commerce site requires skill if you don't want to deliver a me-too product that will utterly fail.

To be an entrepreneur regardless of the domain, you either have to have enough money to buy top talent or you need to be able to do the job yourself.

E.g. you will utterly fail to start a business that produces tasty eco-sausages if you have no idea how to: a) produce or buy eco meat or other ingredients and b) make tasty sausages or c) hire a chef working for a 4 starts restaurant that loves to make sausages

If you don't believe me, try it out.

Entrepreneurs that think coming up with an idea is enough, and "just need a programmer" are lying to themselves. But hey, they are free to try it out.

jimbokun2• 16 years ago

Just happened to read Forbes write up on Reed Hastings (Netflix) as their CEO of the year. Turns out he has an M.S. C.S. from Stanford.

Jobs did some programming and soldering logic boards. Gates wrote a BASIC interpreter with Paul Allen. Zuckerberg was in Harvard C.S., I believe, and wrote the first implementation of Facebook himself. Bezos has a B.S. in C.S. and Electrical Engineering. Larry, Sergey, Jerry Yang all Stanford C.S. grad school drop outs.

So, I am having a hard time coming up with a spectacularly successful software company where the founders "just needed a programmer."

scrrr• 16 years ago

Funny, I have the opposite problem. I need a biz-guy!

roel_v• 16 years ago

Me too. I can't find someone with idea, no matter how stupid, no matter how hard I try. Going to 'networking events' usually yields dozens of business cards of people who want to sell 'services' to 'local businesses' (design, legal, accounting, market research, whatever...) but they all just want to get paid by the hour - let along that one of them could come up with an idea.

So that causes the situation where you have 30 or 50 people all trying to sell each other the same services, with nobody who can actually create anything new.

flyosity• 16 years ago

It might be valuable to enumerate for which exact reasons you need this "biz guy" and really ask yourself if you can't do most of it yourself, at least at the beginning. I'm a designer/developer and I sold ads and did a lot of business development for my startup for over a year before we were acquired. It's amazing how much stuff a smart person can get done (that's out of their comfort zone) when they really, really have to.

efsavage• 16 years ago

Yeah, I think the programmer version of this is "I've got a great program/site, I just need someone to sell it!".

balakk• 16 years ago

You mean programmers will actually admit they can't do everything? Fantasy.

anthonycerra• 16 years ago

What it really boils down to is the drive of the individual. If you're not willing to do whatever it takes to make the dream a reality then you're not an entrepreneur.

That might mean growing your network to find a co-founder or it might mean buckling down and learning to program yourself.

There's so much free information out there today that ignorance is no excuse.

nhangen• 16 years ago

I'm one of these guys.

Why didn't I learn to program? I had maybe an hour/day in between my job and my side hustle, and I just didn't have enough time to get through the problems in order to be a good programmer.

Since then, I've found that watching projects come to life, while learning on the side, has made it much easier to pick up Objective C, Javascript, Ruby, etc. Of course, I didn't expect programmers to work for free...that would be ridiculous.

That being said, it's kind of like learning HTML or CSS, unless you're doing it actively, full-time, for months or even years, it's going to take some time to feel like you know what you're doing.

Lastly, there are so many languages. There's Ruby, Python, PHP, C and its variants, etc. Do you learn web languages or something like Objective C?

Those are some of the things that went through my mind when I started.

sudont6• 16 years ago

Luckily the base thinking skills transfer over, so learning how to program in Java/C means that the student now knows how to program irregardless of the language. Picking up a new language is less like learning a new dialect and more like learning the local slang and customs.

Except for MUMPS. Fuck that shit.

adacosta• 16 years ago

regardless

eru• 16 years ago

Picking up a new paradigm is also harder than picking up a different language within a paradigm you know. But you'll get pretty far with the imperative languages you mentioned.

Locke1689• 16 years ago

Except for MUMPS. Fuck that shit.

Amen.

earl• 16 years ago

You worked for epic too?

geebee• 16 years ago

This is a good post. I'd take it one step farther. To say the idea is nothing without the execution still (kind of) suggests that they are different things. I think that where it comes to software, the execution is the idea.

I wouldn't quite claim that ideas aren't worth much. I know a few academics, and they are rightly careful about sharing their ideas before they get far enough with the implementation (lab work, publications) to ensure that they will be credited. If I'm going to agree that "idea stealing" is a problem, then I'm committed to agreeing that raw ideas do have some value.

Software can be like this, but in general, I think most software "ideas" are more similar to an idea for a novel, painting, or screenplay than a blockbuster pharmaceutical drug. Give two programmers the same "idea", and you'll end up with two different products - maybe almost as different as two different novels. Hell, give two writers or programmers the same detailed outline, and you'll probably end up with two different outcomes.

When I was in college, "business types" walked through shopping malls and appended "dot com" to what they saw, and thought they had a valuable idea. Now, people tend to prepend "social networking for" or "wireless". "Social networking - for surfers! for moms!"

Now one warning - however much I may feel this way, the law isn't necessarily on my side. IANAL and everything, but some IP lawyers came to talk to a startup I worked at once to tell us about how important it is to shut the fuck up, and evidently simply being "the programmer" doesn't mean you have to be included on a patent. So to that extent, the law does recognize a separation between idea and implementation.

vog2• 16 years ago

> where it comes to software, the execution is the idea.

I strongly disagree with that. Although ideas and execution (i.e. software) are both "nothing more" than information, they don't have much in common. Also, ideas are refined as well as changed during execution - that is, our perception of the big picture changes as we get more information about the details.

> Give two programmers the same "idea", and you'll end up with two different products

I fully agree with that. BTW, this somewhat contradicts the first statement.

dfj225• 16 years ago

> where it comes to software, the execution is the idea.

I think that is nearly true from the customer's perspective. They (most likely) don't have any information about the idea and only know what they interact with in the form of the execution.

pbhjpbhj• 16 years ago

You quote:

>Give two programmers the same "idea", and you'll end up with two different products

Do you or the parent have a citation?

I used to work in patents, the number of independent recurrences of the same idea in a particular field is often pretty high. All truck drivers appear to think of digital number plates for example.

Exact details may differ but I'd expect the majority of programmers to come up with a lot of crossover if implementing a well-defined idea.

It depends on what you mean by idea of course - is it "we'll make a game" or is it "we'll introduce digital scoring to board games" or "we'll allow bartering in our MMORPG".

sethco• 16 years ago

The idea and the execution are inextricably linked even in the academic case. The ideas that your academic friends are protecting have value because they, with a reputation for execution, have decided to focus on them. I have some ideas on string theory which are precisely worthless, no matter how correct they may turn out to be.

timwiseman3• 16 years ago

I know a few academics, and they are rightly careful about sharing their ideas before they get far enough with the implementation (lab work, publications) to ensure that they will be credited.

Perhaps it is just different fields, but most academics I know (I know math from my own graduate studies and history indirectly through my wife) will talk your ear off about their current work if you express a willingness to listen much less an interest. Most of the ones I know (again math and history) aren't worried about idea stealing because they have more ideas than they have time to work on and they know that all but the most trivial ideas will take substantial work to go forward with, its the research that counts not the idea for research.

IANAL and everything, but some IP lawyers came to talk to a startup I worked at once to tell us about how important it is to shut the fuck up, and evidently simply being "the programmer" doesn't mean you have to be included on a patent.

IANAL, but this definitely fits with my limited understanding of patent law. But that does not mean ideas per se have value outside the law. This is more an indication that patent law needs to be reformed than that ideas have intrinsic value.

(Incidentally, Richard Feynman has an interesting story about how his name wound up on the patent for nuclear submarines in his book: What Do You Care What Other People Think?)

nkassis• 16 years ago

This blog post seems to have something about that: http://pospapendix.blogspot.com/2008/04/richard-feynman-stor... (it's in there somewhere, search for patent)

Ataraxy• 16 years ago

I am a marketer. I am also fairly technical and think that I have a firm understanding of how things work but lack the capabilities/aptitude to properly code them. I managed to cobble together a functional prototype of some analytics software we needed. It was fine until it became quickly apparent that my coding skills suck despite a more or less understanding of it all. We had to hire a coder to write it all from scratch to be able to handle hundreds of thousands clicks per day. It has been bumpy but it was still the right decision in order to allow our business to grow.

My point is, even if you want something bad enough that you will sit there for a couple of weeks straight to cobble your vision together, nothing beats having it done by a professional that understands what they are doing.

I wish still we had a full time developer and ui designer available to us to make my much grander/awesome/profitable vision a reality. In time we will...

anamax• 16 years ago

> I managed to cobble together a functional prototype of some analytics software we needed. It was fine until

The key point is that you had something complete, it wasn't a vague idea.

In some sense, your prototype was "a product". It wasn't adequate in many ways.

I mention product because the "suits" are offering "I need someone to improve my product" terms while expecting "I need someone to build a product from my idea".

There's a huge gap between "a decent social site" and the minimal facebook, and market research and bizdev don't address that gap.

raganwald3• 16 years ago

The trouble with thinking "I have magic beans, I just need water!" is that you don't understand water. You don't know good water from bad. You don't really know how much water to use and when. You can't watch the beans grow and adjust your watering schedule because you think it's all about the beans. You don't get water.

That's my problem with "I just need a programmer" entrepreneurs. I can work out how to get paid, but I can't work out how to make them understand software well enough to make good business decisions about a software company.

(The same thing is true of "I just need a salesperson," of course.)

sudont6• 16 years ago

More like regular beans and magic water.

raganwald3• 16 years ago

Are you, by any chance, an expert in fluid dynamics?

maxwell• 16 years ago

Or, regular beans and regular water, but a "magic" combination of legume-growing and real estate insight.

storborg2• 16 years ago

To continue along the same analogy: the entrepreneur doesn't need to know about water, they just need to know what a good beanstalk looks like.

That's my problem with "I'm the magic water" software developers. I can work out how to pay them, but I can't work out how to make them understand users well enough to make good business decisions about a consumer-focused company.

(Note: I'm actually a developer. And I see that you understand the counterpoint as well, as shown by your last line.)

raganwald3• 16 years ago

I don't agree with your first line. If a manager knows what a good product looks like but not how to make it, he cannot manage its development. The same is trivially true of business things as well. We all know that good sales are high sales with low numbers of customer complaints. How does one manage a salesforce to achieve this?

If the salespeople say that the customers don't want what we sell, are the product managers to blame? Or are the salespeople not very good at their jobs and clinging to the false objections raised by prospective customers?

A sales manager must a decent understanding of sales to manage sales. A development manager must have a decent understanding of development to manage development.

An entrepreneur in a software-centric company had better have a decent understanding of several different things to succeed. It is not enough to say, "I know good software when I see it," IMO.

rcavezza• 16 years ago

I used to be one of those people before I learned how to program. Best investment I've made in the last 10 years.

vog2• 16 years ago

Wow, I'm really impressed how quickly this page loads!

Or, maybe I'm just too used to the masses of those annoyingly slowly loading blogs.

loire280• 16 years ago

It's written using NanoBlogger, which generates static HTML files. They're being served from a university server, which means powerful web server with nearly unlimited bandwidth. Hardly anything's static HTML nowadays...

Also it doesn't have dozens of plugins like so many blogs, so it's not hitting Facebook, addthis, last.fm, etc.

CoachRufus872• 16 years ago

that was me 2 years ago. I considered elance (couldn't afford it), recruited 1 cs buddy I went to high school with (he was busy doing his own things), so I figured I had no choice but to learn to program. I found HN, which introduced me to Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial, and I just launched my first app: http://www.fanscription.com Oh, and I'm an Econ/Business Major.

"Just Do It" -Nike

modokode• 16 years ago

Doing beats talking every day of the week. Which is what a lot of these callers mentioned probably do wrong.

ericlavigne• 16 years ago

I love your front page.

Have you gotten much response from businesses that want to use your service? How are you advertising?

CoachRufus872• 16 years ago

Thanks! I launched the site just a week ago and have been in talks with a few local businesses who want to sign up. As far as advertising goes, I'm starting locally here in Austin and hope to gradually spread out over time. I love the fact that I'm learning/making mistakes/improving as a make progress.

RoyG• 16 years ago

This isn't just a programming issue; it reminded me of my younger days as a freelance designer, where I would meet with many prospective entrepreneurs who would tell me something like 'I'm very good at design, I just need somebody to work the software.'

Invariably, there is more to both programming and design than meets the eye. While learning can help obviate this problem it's not a cure-all; it is also important to learn how to a.) prioritize and simplify when your reach exceeds your grasp and b.) have realistic expectations for outcomes vs. budget.

It's a good idea to learn both, but again, the execution is more problematic.

commieneko• 16 years ago

That post was much better than I expected.

Ideas are important (although the usually mutate in the process of implementation.) The ability to implement is important (although the tendency to go after low hanging fruit rather than what is actually needed is strong.)

The last ingredient, though, is the ability to communicate the idea and the implementation to customers/investors/users/etc. Marketing, UI/Human Factors, and Sales are often as important.

fbnt• 16 years ago

I think the majority of developers/startup founders have no problems sharing their idea or plan before launch date. They talk about it to attract new prospective clients, collaborators, create interest and so on. Very few operates in stealth mode nowadays.

So when you freely share your idea before launching the product you already consider the value of the idea alone basically zero, while you think the value resides all in your execution.

That's why I believe that if you have an idea you'd better be an exacutor or a sales person, otherwise there no or little value in your contribution. There's no shortage of ideas.

andyidsinga2• 16 years ago

I really liked this post. Jumping into execution/implementation, especially when we're naive about all of complexities is a valuable learning experience. It seems we're also likely to meet folks and make new friends who do understand the complexities ..and from that group we'll find our project partners.

He also makes a good point about discouraging people ...it seems we need to do more of pointing people down the path of learning, implementation and discovery.

Yoh ho ho.

zavulon• 16 years ago

There's another option, without having to learn how to program.

Be good and make money at what you do so you can afford to pay good programmers what their time is worth, so they can make your idea happen without too much hassle.

(Disclaimer - I run a company that does just that)

TotlolRon• 16 years ago

Naaa.

If you have an idea and you learn how to implement it you might find yourself a single founder/creator.

You know what they say about those, right?

"What's wrong with having one founder? To start with, it's a vote of no confidence. It probably means the founder couldn't talk any of his friends into starting the company with him. That's pretty alarming, because his friends are the ones who know him best." -- Paul Graham, 18 mistakes, 2006.

andyidsinga2• 16 years ago

I disagree. If you want to interact with carpenters, learning about carpentry, trying out carpentry (while not pretending to be an expert) helps a lot.

Put another way - its like speaking a language in a foreign country - the effort and practice is quite meaningful to those who live there.

It seems that to avoid becoming a single founder we have to have the ability to reach out and speak the language of those we want to join us.

Cheerio yohs.

sgentle• 16 years ago

I see a lot of "just learn to program" around here, and I think it's all a bit glib and far from reality.

Firstly, programming is hard. It's not the sort of thing you pick up in a few weeks. Hell, there are people who manage to make it through a CS degree and several years in industry without actually knowing what they're doing. What makes you think it's a valuable use of your time to do something mediocre that other people have spent much of their lives learning to do well?

Secondly, good programming doesn't make a good business. It's as important (I would even say more important) to have a solid revenue model. Who are your customers? Why are they buying? How can you get more? These are questions many programmers wouldn't want to touch with a barge pole. Don't waste that symbiosis.

To me, the real message is that ideas aren't worth shit. Implementation is king. It seems like a lot of people (angry ex-startup programmers?) confuse real business people (who can contribute a lot to a team in sales & biz dev) with useless "ideas guys". If you're one of those then, y'know, stop it. You should go learn an actual skill (programming or otherwise) that will allow you to contribute to the idea's realisation.

(I should clarify, though, that I think anyone working in software should learn about programming. But encouraging business guys to write their own code is like encouraging programmers to draw their own art.)

Travis2• 16 years ago

Is it that coders confused the good business guys with the charlatans, or is it that it's difficult to tell them apart?

Much like business guys can't tell good coders from bad without knowing about programming (100% agreement there), it's just as important for programmers to know about business (sales cycles, product dev, customer service, etc.)

r0s• 16 years ago

You have a good point, but still, the difference between learning to "program" and making a working product can be decades.

This hits home for me, struggling to self-learn desktop programming, pushing back expected prototype dates further and further.

krschultz• 16 years ago

I don't think they need to learn how to program well enough to make the idea they had, but they should learn something about the process of software development. Even if that just means reading a couple books on managing softward development (almost anyone asking this question hasn't even spent 8 hours 1 day reading blogs like coding horror or joel on software).

Understanding some of the challenges in writing software, being able to succesfully communicate with their software developers, understanding that "build me twitter for pets" is not a spec etc.

I had someone come to me the other day and they thought they had a brilliant idea, if only I could put it together (but it would probably be easy). He described Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 to me. I told him it already existed. He was deflated.

Since he couldn't even understand what he was talking about, he wasn't really even able to do competitive analysis and didn't know these things existed.

angrycoder• 16 years ago

As someone who has spent most of his career at a consultancy, people like this put food on my table.

The ones who end up being successful understand that they need to learn just as much about the process of software development and usability as we need to learn about their vertical. They understand that a good product is a result of give and take with your developers and analysts.

The ones who fail are the type A alpha dogs who just want you to do whatever they say because they are paying you a crap load of money per hour. They generally have the right mindset for an entrepreneur, they are trying to solve a problem they have. A couple of common problems are:

1) Everyone in their vertical may have this problem, but they assume everyone does business the same way that they do and follows the same process. They weigh down their system with too many requirements and business rules. As a result, they bury the one or two useful nuggets and end up with a product that is only suited to them.

2) They want to make some monolithic end to end solution right out the gate. They want to jump straight to being a WalMart sized franchise when they need to start as a mom and pop corner store (aka a MVP).

JoeAltmaier• 16 years ago

I too have a consultancy, I too see bright young people at the door with the same issues.

I tell them "Think of the skinniest chicken you can possibly make, that will still get up and walk, and make that first". They won't, or at least they don't. They cannot imagine their baby without All the bells and whistles.

All I can do is educate them on the process, help with archicture, and maybe (but not always) help out with the coding - I charge a lot and they generally shop the rest out.

gamble• 16 years ago

Number 1 is so, so true.

After being burned a couple of times on this, the first thought that comes to mind when someone claims to be a subject-matter expert is that they're really an expert in the business processes used by one particular organization. It's very rare to meet someone who has sufficiently broad experience in an industry to know how and why processes differ between companies.

rwhitman2• 16 years ago

There is a good business model in serving these people. Want to build the next WalMart sized franchise? Have the millions to make it happen? Well step this way my friend.

Paid a good chunk of my bills, I'll say that.

naithemilkman2• 16 years ago

I am currently one of these guys in transition. Using Gladwell's 10,000 hour as a proxy for mastery. I estimate getting between 100 - 250 hours of programming time is good enough to get a working MVP out.

Does anyone think this is overly optimistic or unrealistic?

yoshyosh2• 16 years ago

Ive read it takes about 6 months. To be honest a lot of it is about deliberate practice rather than just 'getting in the hours'

rndmcnlly0• 16 years ago

"Deliberate practice" is, in fact, what Gladwell is saying the 10,000 hours should measure.

naithemilkman2• 16 years ago

You mean it just takes a fixed amount of time to internalise yourself with a new field of study just like anything else? And for programming that lead time is about 6 months to get up to speed?

yesno• 16 years ago

This is a very unfortunate situation in our industry.

BizDev guy says he needs one of them "programmers" who can code and don't talk back to him. BizDev guy knew almost nothing about software development or the "properties of a system software". Business didn't work out because the software is flacky. BizDev guy blames them "programmers" when changes are hard, software is super buggy.

BizDev thinks he's awesome cause he has 3 things: Money, Network and Idea. Everybody should bow down to Money.

Programmers became hateful against the BizDev guy. They say "I can do this by myself, screw you guys". Then programmers try to re-create their ideal world: solving cool problems, working with cool gadgets, in a cool office environment. Some said programmers have to work in a close office, alone GASP. Of course these silos came up with a chunk of code that probably hard to be integrated. Them programmers try to hire BizDev guy cause now the VCs are on their butt asking how money could be made. Of course it'll be hard for them programmers to hire BizDev since they have a very strong bias. They probably ended up hiring Sales Engineer instead of bright BizDev.

Programmers think they're awesome cause they have 3 things: Knowledge, Skill and Idea. Knowledge is everything they say.

This... is why 9 out of 10 startups failed. That 1 startup that succeed? the BizDev guy has an MBA and BS in CS or EE. The Programmers? they took minor in economics/commerce or accounting.

ssskai• 16 years ago

Question: If I were a "BizDev" guy and wanted to create a website that has similar functionalities as, say, Groupon or PayPal (I understand they're different), what languages would be best to learn?

I would suspect some front-end GUI paired with a back-end database system would be needed, but what languages specifically would be best?

As an entrepreneur with a degree in Mech. Eng. and Entrp., and I have done programming in MATLAB, some VBA, and some HTML. So I understand the logic behind programs, but don't necessarily know all the languages.

Any and all suggestions are most welcomed!

yoshyosh2• 16 years ago

best to free lance those types of sites (groupon) since they don't require that much programming

cot6mur3• 16 years ago

You need a templating + biz logic language, and a database. The usual starters for non-purists are PHP and MySQL. Also, most front-ends use JavaScript these days, often with a helper JavaScript library like JQuery.

Myself, I'm more of a Python (language) + PostgreSQL (database) person, but they may take a little longer to get up to speed with.

_delirium2• 16 years ago

I somewhat but not entirely agree with this. I definitely agree in the case he discusses: there are way too many people with vague ideas who "just need a programmer". I don't think the root problem is that implementation is the source of all value, though. In their case, they don't understand how to develop computational ideas in a useful way at all. It's not the lack of C++ knowledge or Ruby knowledge, but the lack of a general understanding of computational thinking.

A computationally-literate idea that's well developed, on the other hand, can be very valuable, and can account for probably 90% of the interestingness of idea+implementation. Not always: sometimes you find really major things in the implementation that cause you to rethink the idea. But there are many times that I've implemented a theoretical idea myself and not really learned anything in doing so. You read a paper, or even a blog post, which explains an idea in detail, motivates why the author developed it, gives a broad sketch of how you'd implement it, etc., etc., but the author hasn't actually implemented it. Then I implement it myself. Have I provided the majority of the value, because I'm the first person with working code? Not really; in many cases the implementation was a pretty straightforward translation of the idea into code.

A computationally literate and well-developed idea is arguably something close to "execution", but not quite the nuts-and-bolts variety. To use a physics analogy, my ideas on space travel are not very well developed or valuable, but Freeman Dyson's are valuable, even though he's implemented his ideas to the same extent I have: neither one of us has ever attempted to build spaceships. He's a pure idea-person, but his ideas are developed quite fully, so readers can understand what he proposed and why, what its pros and cons might be, what possible pitfalls await, what the broad outlines of possible fixes for those pitfalls might be (even if they depend on materials or other things not currently available), etc.

I'd say the same of people even further into idea-land, like Isaac Asimov, who provided valuable ideas with nothing close to an implementation. The trick imo is that most ideas either just aren't novel enough to be interesting, or aren't sufficiently well developed and explained to provide value to a reader.

timwiseman3• 16 years ago

I must respectfully beg to differ on your interpretation. The way your describe your "computationally literate and well-developed idea " is not at all what most people consider an idea. It is pseudo-code, which really is the vast majority of the implementation.

Since I started using Python I no longer bother with pseudo-code at all, but when I was using Java I considered a complete pseudo-code 90% of the implementation and translating into Java to only be the last 10%. You touch on this by saying that its "close to "execution"", but I think you do not go nearly far enough. It is most of the way to execution.

To put it another way, I think having an idea is like standing at a starting line for a race. You havne't done anything except contemplating running the actual race yet. Having a fully developped algorithm in pseudo-code (possibly along with a thorough UI concept) is like passing the last mile marker. You haven't finished the execution yet, but you have gone a very long way towards it...

danenania• 16 years ago

Good post, but in my experience full mockups and pseudo-code is still not close to 90% of the final product unless I'm doing something that is trivial for me. There is just too much complexity that emerges in places which are difficult-to-impossible to anticipate until I've dug into code and physically tested the ideas I've laid out in pseudo-code. I'd probably put the number more in the range of 25-50% depending on the scope of the project.

Of course for simpler projects or in domains where the developer is extremely experienced and can anticipate every hiccup that might occur, that number could go much higher, but I don't think this is usually the case in the wild.

JMWes• 16 years ago

Too many business people think programming is a commodity that can be easily outsourced. Too many programmers think business people all have vague ideas. They are both wrong.

Kilimanjaro• 16 years ago

So, you are looking for a programmer? Well, I am one. A goddamn good one. I can make a computer cry twisting its inner wires with just my thought. And I happen to be looking for a partner too.

Are you a solid-brass-balls entrepreneur not afraid of rasing money? Can you knock down every tabloid's door to get our story told? Can you set up appointments across the globe with people richer than god? Can you bring a thousand customers just the first month and two thousands more the next?

I can code the whole fucking app in one month and get version two ready the next month if that is what you need. See? That's execution, my friend. I can code apps blindfolded and with my hands tied. Can you do business like that? I don't want dreamers, I want doers.

Now, stop wasting my time with an idea, I have had plenty every day of my life since I started programming and I have spent twenty years perfectioning my skills. I know what I can do.

So, I ask you again, what are your business skills? Besides having an idea?

afterburner• 16 years ago

I'm going to keep this on file if the situation ever comes up again... I couldn't quite articulate the sentiment then. Although it might burn bridges.

dasil0032• 16 years ago

To be Machiavellian about it, it's worth burning bridges with the two-bit hacks if it furthers your reputation as a truly badass developer.

rezaman• 16 years ago

This seems like a very good analogy to present when you come across non-technical people with pie-in-the-sky requests. They don't know how to go about building the features they dream of, and I have no idea how to go about answering any of the questions you list above. If nothing else, we both realize that the programming isn't just trivial, and neither is the marketing.

alain94040• 16 years ago

Exactly. Read again the 4 steps in http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2010/10/15/how-do-i-know-you-ar...

Either you produce value for the overall project, or you don't. Ideas are worth something, but sitting on one and doing nothing is not.

benohear• 16 years ago

"I just need a business person"

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

I believe that the punch-line is also "but I don't intend to pay hourly industry rates".

megaframe• 16 years ago

I'm with this guy, if I have Ideas I learn to implement them myself, if nothing else even if I got other people to do the work I know what they're going through to do it so I can plan for it, and as issues arise I can help not just sit around trying to motivate.

disgruntled• 16 years ago

The problem with offering equity is that it's often just a dangling carrot that never materializes. I've worked for several startups offering stock options over the years and observed an alarming pattern: programmers are treated as commodities to develop the idea, then laid off before the product launch. The C-levels reap all the gains and the product builders go collect unemployment.

dools• 16 years ago

I have quite a few people I know who are on the "business side" of the entrepreneurial merry go round that quite often call me with their latest idea.

The remarkable thing is that no matter how many times I get back to them with a time estimate of 6 months - or a cost investment of $50k - $100k to get it live etc. the first sentence they always speak is "it's just a simple site that ... "

In fact it's not really limited to these guys. Everyone who calls me to get something done starts off by telling me how simple it is. "It's just this simple thing that ... " as if that's somehow going to make me realise that it IS simple and I can actually do in a weekend what I had thought would take months!!

If it's that simple, DO IT YOURSELF!

tjmc• 16 years ago

My stepbrother used to do that. After politely turning down about his third "simple" idea, I tried a different tack and asked him to draw the entire app on paper.

After all, if it was so simple, it wouldn't take long to draw right? I insisted he include the appearance of validation messages, system generated emails and administration screens.

He didn't ask for my help again, but to his credit he did paper prototype another idea and got a guy to code it.

rwhitman2• 16 years ago

One thing I'd say is that I don't believe programmers are the only profession afflicted with this scenario.

Who knows how many times I've had a 'brilliant' idea for something outside my domain where I've said to myself "this is a great idea, now all I need is a ____". I am just thankful that I'm smart enough not to start asking successful people to buy into my stupid idea until I've done some research first...

kaiwen1• 16 years ago

Great quote:Learning to program used to be an inevitable consequence of using computers. Sadly, that's no longer true. The inevitable consequence of using computers these days seems to be interacting with people we may or may not know well and watching videos.

I just need a programmer

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