Things I, As a Developer, Wish More Entrepreneurs Knew

http://startupweekend.org/2012/09/20/10-things-i-as-a-developer-wish-more-entrepreneurs-knew/

by d_p • 14 years ago

30 29 14 years ago

d_p8• 14 years ago

Hey all. This is my first post to HN and also my first contribution to the Startup Weekend blog as an employee.

I think the subject matter would be interesting here and would love to hear if there is anything you think I missed. Startup Weekend gets to be in a cool place to lead among tech entrepreneurs and I'm always to happy to advocate for those in our field.

Thanks for reading :)

kefs2• 14 years ago

Thanks for writing :)

I actually just forwarded it to one of my partners.

His reply: "Is that a hint? JK. Good read man."

d_p8• 14 years ago

I'm glad! I had to keep the list short for the blog, but I think this would be a great place to collect other ideas. What 10 points would you have written?

iamdann2• 14 years ago

I'll be at the Startup Weekend event in NYC tonight/this weekend. First time with this hackathon, excited to see how it goes.

d_p8• 14 years ago

How exciting! Are you going to pitch an idea?

mgcross2• 14 years ago

Good list, and you could easily replace 'Entrepreneurs' with 'Project Managers.'

d_p8• 14 years ago

I was actually a PM before I became a developer. Do you think there is anything missing?

mgcross2• 14 years ago

Not off the top of my head, but give me time - I have only recently started working under a non-technical PM! The synopsis ('code monkeys') nails it from my experience (ad agency).

japhyr• 14 years ago

I appreciated the recommendation to learn how to read a balance sheet. I want to keep my expertise grounded in the technical side of things, but I know I will get a lot more done if I can speak eye-to-eye with the business folks.

thesash3• 14 years ago

Add the mythical man month to the list. SO many non-technical folks fall victim to the idea that by putting more people on a job you can get it done faster, when in reality as we all know, efficiency drops sharply after a point. It takes a woman 9 months to carry a pregnancy, 9 women can't do same the job in one month, and the same is true for solving any complex problem.

enjo2• 14 years ago

Except sometimes you CAN throw manpower at a problem and solve it more quickly. All projects are not the same, and all problems are not the same. It largely depends on how parallelizable the work is and how competent the overall system architecture is.

Point being: lets not turn platitudes into rules:)

thesash3• 14 years ago

My point isn't about throwing manpower at a problem, it's about diminishing returns. The notion that if you put two people on a problem they will be able to solve it twice as fast is a logical fallacy. That's a fact, not a platitude. That being said, if you put 100 people on the problem, you may be able to solve it quickly, but even then you will eventually reach a point where adding more people does not add any more benefit. That's what I wish more non-technical folks understood.

saurik• 14 years ago

"when in reality as we all know, efficiency drops sharply after a point" <- this is simply a rule: every possible task has some granularity past which point it cannot be decomposed, and every network of dependent tasks has a critical path that determines its minimal time expenditure.

Exactly where the "point" at which efficiency drops sharply is certainly project-dependent, but thesash didn't claim that it was not: only that people make the mistake of not realizing that this is even a problem worth understanding and taking into consideration, much less a fundamental one that will likely affect their project.

superasn• 14 years ago

Would be great to read another list for: 10 Things I, As a Entrepreneur, Wish More Developers Knew

d_p8• 14 years ago

I'll definitely suggest that to somebody in the office :)

Thank you for your comment.

josephlord2• 14 years ago

Additional item:

The demo that was thrown together is not ready to release into production!

naww2• 14 years ago

But what about "release early, release often"?

d_p8• 14 years ago

Is there a difference between that and "release early, release often, release broken"?

trey851• 14 years ago

As someone that is interested in possibly working with developers in the future but does not have a programming background. Can you elaborate on number 7. Would practicing on something like Codecademy help with this or are there better ways to improve your technical knowledge.

d_p8• 14 years ago

Great question, and I would invite any other developers in here to reply as well.

Where to start...having open conversations with your developers is a great place to start. It turns out we love studying and talking about our field.

If you don't have ready access to developers, you can try reading through "Coders at Work" that I linked to at the bottom of my post. Another great idea is to just go to Wikipedia with any of the terms you don't know.

Codecademy or things like it might teach you a little more about a specific language, but these are general principles that are not dependent on a given programming language. This is more about software engineering as a discipline.

You might also try "The Agile Samurai" by Jonathan Rasmusson. I've never personally read it, but it's in our office and I didn't hate what I saw in the table of contents.

koryteg2• 14 years ago

thanks a ton for posting this! as a semi new developer sometimes I run into questions like in my head like"is it ok for me to feel this way? should i just be coding faster?". Though it may be true in some scenarios, developing is one of the toughest problem solving skills to to learn. you are always facing something you have never done before.

Things I, As a Developer, Wish More Entrepreneurs Knew

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