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fatimafouda

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I'm a big fan of the show and since it's is coming to an end soon I thought I'd explore it a bit.

This time I wanted to find out whether certain animals were overrepresented.

I want to explore other things next, like maybe female representation. What do you guys think?

I personally think that if you're good at something you should never do it for free, charity work notwithstanding of course. In your case, I don't really understand your reasoning/correlation between wanting to travel and offering your AWS skills free of charge. You can always find early stage startups that are looking for someone to setup their system on AWS, and willing to pay for it, in any of the cities that you've listed. They might want a one-time job (think freelance).

Why wouldn't you offer a paid service?

Aaron Swartz, not just for his programming skills, but also for never giving up on his fight to make knowledge opensource (See the Guirella Open Access Manifesto)

Other programmers I look up to are:

Tim Berners-Lee

Linus Torvalds

John Carmack

I'm currently working on an AI customer service Desktop/Web app solution. We're a team of two.

Initially, it was going to be only desktop, because we were targeting big enterprises who still rely solely on phone for customer service. So, pretty backward companies. A Desktop app would have been perfect and not too "revolutionary".

But, then, we decided to not limit ourselves to that market alone, and have since made the transition to include web and even mobile solutions.

My advice is to: Stop hesitating. Write code (MVP?). Run private and open betas. Collect feedback. Make predictions. Make decisions. Maybe your market will rejoice over your desktop app and maybe they won't. The point is, you won't find out until you actually test it. If it works then that's great. Now, you can focus on marketing and growth. But if the feedback that you get points that your customers would rather get web, then that's also great. Because, now, you've gained an important insight about your customers, and will have a choice of either to switch to web (if it's a true market need (also from customer feedback)) or to start something new.

TLDR: Based on our market research alone, you CAN definitely make a living off of a desktop application; it depends on your customers, that's why it's paramount that real customers test your app asap. Don't worry about the future too much. If your desktop app is successful and somewhere along the line, customers demand a web app instead, you can always scale and adapt.

SPOILER ALERT: "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother." - 1984 Haunting last line. All struggle is futile; acceptance is inevitable. So yeah, pretty bleak, but favorite book nonetheless. I also love Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, which while not classically dystopian, still manages to elicit dystopian stoic despair against the backdrop of a seemingly normal world (our very own time and age). It automatically coaxs readers to draw parallels..maybe dystopia is not something imagined. Maybe it's more familiar than we think. Lastly, Robert A. Heinlein needs to be mentioned at least once in this thread; Farnham's Freehold and a Stranger in a Strange Land.

It's pretty prevalent at universities in my country Egypt. Most students apply for an opportunity to travel, and not necessarily for the volunteer work. Personally, I think that the organization's goals aren't very clear. The girl at their booth told me their goal is "to spread world peace.."