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hunterp

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Correct. Not trying to toot my own horn, but after 10 years of getting better each year, I am solid programmer. I literally just finished working on SoundTracking.

However, I have focused solely on programming the last 10 years, and I believe my focus depleted from other skills that are highly necessary to balance someone out: product development, winning friends and influencing people, sales, marketing, physical builds, the arts and humanities, entrepreneurship and finally understanding and gettings your hands deep and dirty into real business experience:construction, food and restaurants, medecine, education, finance, fashion, etc, etc.

My intention is to help others not go down such a narrow path as I have.

Reading the Steve Jobs biography really lit a fire under me.

As the author of this article, but without trying to sound too self promotional, I disagree. I was the only Android engineer on an app that is currently featured on the front page of http://market.android.com

Entrepreneurship is awesome. I have self generating, passive income from my personal Android apps and I respond to most customers emails personally.

As far as my skills on SoundTracking:

I already had 2 years of solid Android experience under my belt, and over the course of the project, I learned a shitload more about Android.

I made use of my teammates extensively.

I released early and often.

I managed to generate positive relationships with over 20 api partners to make this project happen.

I discovered new ways to make objected oriented abstractions work in Android.

The list goes on.

I'm the author.

Keep your skills sharp. Every product that has software has a purpose. Google is a search engine. Android is a phone and an app market. A good app has a clear purpose and is easy to use.

But, work on your social skills. An idea that is coded with someone else as a sounding board is generally stronger than an idea coded by someone sitting alone at a desk.

Good luck!

This was my article.

A team is a group of people that are greater than the sum of parts alone. A manager coordinates the team, keeps them on target, and brings out the magic that only good teams have. Can you have an orchestra without a conductor?...same goes for a team.

And I would rather keep up with new trends by hiring someone with those new skills than having to learn them myself. Call me lazy, but I call this entrepreneurial.

Studies have shown that the older you get, the more strategic your thinking becomes, but the less sharp your raw calculation power. Same reason the fields medal in mathematics is only awarded to those under 40.

I think this is a pointless calculation. Why burn cpu cycles on such an old, meaningless question? Wouldn't you rather spend your brainpower helping other people?

At 28.8 I am a better decision maker. I have better life skills, I am better at making friends, making social connections and making business connections.

As a coder, I no longer like coding for the sake of coding. I like coding because it is a means to an end. My powers of abstraction are greater. After 2 years of moderately successful solopreneurship, I fully understand the absolute need to ally with other people.

I am able to cut through people's bullshit easier. When I meet a potential business parter/coder I am more quickly able to see exactly how strong they are, what kind of drive they have, and ultimately I am more quick (and confident) to tell them to fuck off if they are a liability. As a 20-25 year old, I had no confidence and could not speak up for myself.

I focus solely on projects that I enjoy with people that I enjoy working with. My ability to create potentials for happiness and avoid pitfalls is stronger than ever. Physically, I am stronger than ever, and I eat much much healthier.

I am more positioned than ever before to hit a project out of the ballpark.

Finally, at 28.8 I realize that my ageism is just another prejudice that was hindering my ability to take advice. Now, my mind is not closed. It is more open than ever before. Age has worked well for me, and young peers, it will work well for you too.

As a 1 dan in igo aka baduk aka wei-qi, I can attest it is an excellent skill to make asian friends and just friends in general. Chess offers you access to the western world...which is a declining commodity. Also, go is a more computationally interesting problem at the moment. The strongest computer is far weaker than even top amateur players....let alone professional players who are even far stronger.

I've been working on a theory on this one. In the most abstract sense, computers are an extension of the human self. Cave Paintings, Papyrus scrolls, Guitars, Printing Presses, Pens, Televisions, Computers are all an evolution of this. You can think of a mobile phone as a inanimate (non-sentient) robot that lacks the ability to self-ambulate. There is a distinction between sentience which has not yet been achieved, and partial autonomy. There simply is not a mass market use case that makes small scale robots like the finch popular enough. Instead, I believe that mobile devices will continue adding new and interesting features. NFC will be the big thing next. After that, some new pathways will be: printing from mobiles, and possibly some of them will have movable parts that developers can program.

Eventually, the mass market appeal of mobile devices will combine with the usefulness of a physical manifestion of our ideas into reality. You need to make a cheap robot USEFUL.

Ultimately, it is the person that controls the robot that will get the most use out of it. Just like a master craftsperson can use his or her tools far more effectively than any random person.

So...in one idea, the reason robots are not really here is that there is no mass market appeal to justify the hundreds or thousands of dollars that they cost.

Since this thread started, Japan has now 3 failed reactors, and 1 approaching meltdown. I take that back. No government, private industry, etc, no matter how organized is equipped to handle nuclear energy at the scale they currently operate at. There are nuclear projects that operate on 1/100th the scale. And this represents a decentralization of power. I'm still not interested in nuclear power. There are so many lucrative, healthy, green, sustainable alternatives.

Not joking at all. The reason sustainables are not super popular is that they have high initial investment costs, and represent decentralized power. Unless you have a united force supporting them like the spanish government (Spain is one of the most sustainable countries) or the recent 10 billion dollar investment for offshore wind by South Korea, you are not really going to win the economic battle necessary to get us going sustainable. Sustainables are a form of decentralized power, so there are a lot of reasons why centralized power does not want it to exist.

Nukes are only "safe" when built to spec like the functioning,socialist government of Japan is capable of. And then very "intelligent" blog articles try to rationalize a cancer causing, radiation inducing thing. Nuke plants that are old, not kept up to date, etc are very very dangerous. As economies ebb and flow, the demand for energy always is present, but the resources to keep a plant up to spec are not. Sustainable resources like hydro, wind, solar, geothermal and tidal are far less worrysome, on a different level of dangerous, and do not require disaster contingency plans after contingency plans. Keep It Simple Stupid, nukes are not simple and they are not stupid, let us usher in an era of idiot proof nuke free earth that allows for energy independence from the empire of the nuclear grid. To the solarnet! To the hydronet! To the geonet! To the windnet! To the tidalnet!

I probably know the pain. I've been putting food on my table since 2009 solely from Android app development. And not for contracts either, just me vs. the market.

Your IP. In JSON 15 years ago

While it is minimalist, it would be even more minimalist to just return the ip with no json wrapper.

Regarding item #4: Increased Payment Options

When the official Android market went live, you can now buy apps over the browser, then even download to your phone...so this is a bit out of date.