apitaru

Change the reality of any piece by diving into it and playing a game to win it

I found the spirit of article a bit narrow-minded for all the reasons mentioned here already.

It did however make me think of an almost opposite activity for the next time I interview someone:

Pick a difficult trick question (like Binary Tree reversal but harder/arcane) that neither of us can solve, and spend some time working on the problem together with the candidate.

After all, solving problems together (directly, or indirectly) is what we'll be doing day to day.

This might not be a good idea, but I'll definitely try it out once and find out.

This is grossly misleading. What I'd love to see is a chart that shows tax-paid-per-dollar-earned. I know it won't tell the whole story, but it'll tell a straight story.

Yes, as in any field I'm sure there are scammers out there, or even just poorly conceived programs. So maybe what we need is a review site for these academies.

The author neglects to mention the wonderful feeling of having your code successfully compile and come to life. For some it is a special kind of high that makes all the 'construction work' worth while.

There's also no mention of the thrill of the hunt for the right abstractions - which can be both intellectually and emotionally stimulating.

The less these two factors come into play, the less motivated one would be to sit in front of a computer and click those keys all day long.

If you're set on finding out, and if you require the structure that an academy provides, and you understand the financial implicatios, then don't let this article dissuade you from trying.

Discslaimer: I'm co-founder of http://kitchentablecoders.com and http://sfpc.io

Prototyping tools seem to be blooming this year (see pencilcase.io and pixate.com), and it'll be great to see them mature over the next few years.

Great little resource for building your first game.

That said, the term 'Mechanic' in game design has multiple meanings. My favorite is in context of Dynamics and Aesthetics, as explained here - (pdf) http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf

Right, to my taste it's a better game (though very differently tuned beyond the puck-through-a-gap idea).

More than anything I was trying to respond to the parent's question about why the game works at all, especially compared to so many bad single-switch games in the app store.

(In writing this I just realized - Maverick Brid is not a single switch game like Flappy Bird. Not that it matters - even without the dive key it's superior).

By making the collision predictable [edit: interestingly, larger than I would have imagined needed], the gamer knows exactly why he/she failed. There's 'honesty' in the directness that most games lack (and therefore gamers crave).

And then - by allowing a quick restart, any frustration is overshadowed with the desire to try again.

There are other interesting fine-details. For example, notice when the bird starts to dive (an experience game developer pointed it out to me). It happens when the bird goes under the last flap-point. This allows for a much deeper control system than the one-switch interaction suggests. This depth is intuitively grasped by the gamer on some level, providing more fuel to try again.

I think Flappy Bird is a wonderfully well-tuned game. I've yet to see a clone that implements the finer details which made the original shine.

Many games introduce difficulty through complexity. Here's a game that's simple to grasp, hard to play, yet not boring or frustrating.

I wish this was acknowledged more often, as it might have made the developer feel more comfortable being associated with his game's meteoric success.

This is a great implementation, and super fun in many levels. Thanks for whipping this up.

(meta: yes, just a simple comment to say its great. Lets not forget to post these as well once in a while)

I sometimes feel like the ice-cream factory guy in this funny bit by Mitchell and Webb - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-zRPDvTJTo

At the same time, I'm happy Mitchell and Webb stayed in comedy rather than attempt to cure cancer.

If you feel a calling to a particular space or venture, follow it - even if its Angry Birds. On the other hand, if you think your calling is in medicine, think well before attempting a go at this "golden age of entrepreneurship", as chances are you'll regret not doing what you love.

Finally. Someone at Apple must be a Bukowski fan. I'm reminded of his poem "16 Bit Intel 8088 Chip" (not his greatest, but suitable):

http://bukowskiforum.com/threads/16-bit-intel-8088-chip.2791...

Why is it important that the founder is from Goldman Sachs?

I'm especially curious because GS is mentioned in the title of the post, which suggests it must be important to the poster and perhaps relevant to HNers.

[edit: retracted as per parent request]

I've just posted a couple of projects and love the way it looks. As for the live-demo part, I haven't uploaded the apps yet, wondering if you'll be streaming audio, as my apps are sound-centric (Sonic Wire Sculptor, Numby)

Great job!

I worry that these kind of articles are not just annoying. They can cause real damage.

// A Dramatization //

Consider a young developer that knows a bit of PHP and wants to get started on her project. Then she (or "he", or "they" .. whatever) reads HN and finds out that PHP sucks. HN is Mecca to her, so she now spends the next 3 months figuring out that (truly) superior language. She picks whichever framework most HNers are (innocently) promoting at the time.

What she doesn't know is that those karma-gods took their sweet time to figure out 10 other things (== 1000 hours) before using said superior language and framework. It's supposed to be easy, she thinks. She gets frustrated because no-one had told her about those 10 other things. Time is running out on her savings. "I'm not a real hacker", she thinks. She never airs her project.

// End Scene //

Now run the same story, only she doesn't read HN and just codes the thing in PHP. It's actually a pretty cool project and ends up on first page of HN ...

You're judging to quickly. Take a step back and reconsider. The point is in the use-case, not the mechanics. He is allowing people to blog ad-hoc, using twitter as the glue to otherwise loose content containers. By doing this, he is extending the light(er) state-of-mind of twitting into blogging (which is otherwise a 'heavier' commitment). It's clever.

There's a lot of great advice here already. As a long-time freelancer, I'll try to add my tiny part:

I'm always amazed the influence that personal projects have on which kind of work comes through the door. There's a reason why many companies have a public 'labs' page. Featuring these projects will pull in clients that appreciate your sensibilities (I believe these are the best clients to have).

btw - the fact that you're on the first page of HN is a good start!

This struck a chord: "We are the species that fools itself”

I think this is at the heart of how we are capable of creating something from nothing ('create wealth' as pg would say).

There's also a dark side - I've come to notice that people who cannot 'fool themselves' are less happy, and at times dangeruosly so.

We are indeed a self-winding spring.

> The problem with commenting about how horrifying it is is that it's not a unique observation and therefore not that interesting.

Fair enough. But again - this wasn't a judgement. Maybe I expected a quick vague reference to one of these obvious points.

> How do we do teach them? Not sure.

On one side kids will be kids. On the other hand, adults fail in similar ways, sometimes spectacularly - and then millions of people are allowed to die (Sorry for the dramatic delivery).

These situations have a certain 'smell' to them, which I think kids can identify. Maybe it's not as stinky as stealing, but there's definitely a fragrance.

It'll be great if we can have a red light blink in their heads at the point - an inner voice saying:

"I know what's going on. It's just as wrong as stealing. Option 1: stay away from the situation. Option 2 (better): fine a way to stop it."

How do we teach our kids that it's wrong to steal and lie? I'm guessing here: Train them to defer instant gratification in favor of a higher ground.

I hope I don't sound silly. I'm a young parent and Bob Dylan is playing in the background.

I find it interesting that this is what you took out of the story. I'm not suggesting it's wrong. My immediate reaction was:

1) These kids are evil. 2) Are they spoiled rich kids? 3) How do I reduce the odds of my kid behaving like that in 10 years.

btw - I'd like to hope the kid who video-taped it knew exactly what he /she was doing. Maybe a silver lining in an otherwise depressing bus ride (that and the 100k).

> I'm curious why you wouldn't feel flattered that your creation was noticed and worth copying?

Because I'm human, I guess. Sometimes I'm flattered and sometimes I'm not. It has a lot to do with the nature of project, how it has been copied, who copied it, why they did it.

Understanding this, I'm now trying hard to position myself in situations where I'll be flattered when it happens and disappointed when it doesn't.

> Do you believe ideas can be owned?

I do not, hence the entire premise of my parent post.

You make a valid point but I think other factors are at play in my case.

For starters, the comic you've linked to suggests that I don't come up with many new ideas, but a glance at my HN profile might reveal otherwise.

I think it has more to do with how long I spend in open-mode. I suspect longer than others. I like to marinate on my ideas. I try to give myself a lot of time to solve a problem. The result is a certain level of depth that I might feel extra ownership over. This is a side-effect and an unintentional one at that.

I'm now working hard on optimizing my work-flow to counter this issue. Some of it has to do with releasing things sooner than later (thus feeling less invested in them at that point).

Many of us here have experienced our work getting cloned by others. While I totally get that 'everything is a remix', I still can't help but feel that kick in the gut every time this happens. I am always bothered by how much I care. It took me a while to reconcile this emotional-jerk. Here's how I see it now:

John Cleese has a wonderful talk about how each project consists for 'open' and 'close' modes [1]. In one sentence - open mode is playing around with ideas and stumbling upon a gem in the rough, while closed mode is the execution of polishing that gem to perfection.

Seen through this framework, I would claim that 'cloning' is the act of jumping in on someone else's open-mode work, and forking a new close-mode.

Why do we care when someone does this? I think that as the open-mode is a highly creative process, it is hard to not get emotionally attached to the rough-gems it produces. Some will describe it as nothing shy of birthing an idea. In that sense, the kick-in-the-gut that I feel is probably the sense of loss associated with someone 'snatching my new-born'.

I'm not suggesting that cloning is good or bad, but just trying to provide a reasonable explanation to why we feel pain when someone clones our work - even though we know it's OK.

[EDIT: there are situations where 'cloning' is in essence thievery. And that's not OK. Where to draw the line deserves its own thread.]

[1] John Cleese on creativity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg

In the past 10 years I was able to support my side-projects (see profile) and family life (we have 2 years old) by not having a day job, but instead carefully choosing freelance projects. Here's how it works:

Freelancing allows me the flexibility to dedicate pockets of time to side-projects that require a push. I simply don't book myself of 3-4 weeks if I know I need the time for a side project. This allows these side-projects to organically flourish rather than wither in the long term. If and when any of these projects become a source of income, I can easily turn my attention to it without having to change my lifestyle.

Regardless of their monetary success (some of my projects are not meant to be products at all), I've noticed that they act as magnets towards the kind of freelancing jobs I'd like to take. This creates a positive feedback loop, as the freelancing gigs often help me push forward at least one of the side projects (code wise or knowledge of the domain).

Overal, the trick is to keep your projects (paid or not) within your core curiosity-zone. If you're just starting out, the mission is to get closer to this zone with every new freelance gig. The end result is that enjoy both the side projets and my freelancing gigs. The line between them blurs more and more every-day.

Great post. I used to often speak publicly. Last week I gave my first talk in years, to a large crowd. I was nervous because of how long has passed since I've last done it, but then I remembered my old habit. Before my talks I used to spend time with the conference goers in the hall, just chatting with them about whatever comes up. This seems to play a trick on the mind, making me feel like I'm speaking to friends rather than a faceless crowd. It worked last week as well. I highly recommend trying it out.

That's great to hear. Overal I love the concept but worry about your marketing. The Bloomberg stunt was clever and fun, but placing the words 'code' and 'easy' side-by-side can lead to frustration on the back-end of your proposition. Coding is hard. Hard-Fun [1]. And that's OK.

[1] http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html

Congrats to Codecademy. I hope they spend it wisely on fulfilling their promise that "Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code."

I'm a bit worried about what might happen to all these young potential coders if the marketing doesn't deliver as promised.

Meanwhile, I'd like to propose a much humbler effort which is not intended to compete by any means with codecademy:

We run a little anti-school from our Brooklyn loft. We call it Kitchen Table Coders [1] because we only allow as many people who can fit around our kitchen table. Every weekend we pick a topic that we're excited about and carve out some time to teach it to others.

(btw - we're not a startup nor do we wish to be. If you'd like to start a Kitchen-Table-Coders session in your town, please do. We'll help you get started.)

[1] http://kitchentablecoders.com

This project has tremendous potential for children with special needs. I've basically had to build a similar device from scratch in 2006 as part of my ITP (NYU) thesis project [1]. This could have saved me so much time! Backing it, and hope you will too!

[1] http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/dmal.9780262...