kamphey

Might sound silly but I LOVE: Stephen Biesty's Incredible Cross-Sections. They single handedly made me interested in how things were made, how things were on the inside. How things were engineered.

saw this quick yt video and thought. omg. how could I wake up better? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxg31QFRIL0

Did we ever code?

Help people. Just make sure you're focused on helping people with software. Doing something useful for them. Doesn't matter who/what coded it. were we really writing code anyways? Coding languages are abstractions.

Just get to the heart of what people want. Talk to people and help them. Most humans on Earth, at least, aren't technical.

I find that internal frustrations are solved by external validation. Seeing someone happy and joyful from my work, makes it all worth it.

Ask the customer for a referral to someone who has the same pain point. Let them reach out to your future customers for you. What you should do is just talk to users. People who are actually using what you're building.

If you're searching for more, there's search points all around their role, their pain point, their industry. Find very specific words that people with your pain point actually use to search. Not just "best app to do X" but really what are they posting about and how do they talk in public? IF not then you'll have to do some cold emailing, cold DM's, You'll have to talk to people.

Get on their laptops and install something for them or sit down at their desk and see what they are doing and how you can help.

Wait is this a joke? I think it's incredibly useful to have these basic 5 heuristics. I've been trying to wrangle the agents to make very simple deletions and text edits quicker, faster. But just saying "go faster on these edits" isn't doing it.

I used to have a single dashboard of all the users in my admin page of my site/startup. Now I've vibe coded a bunch of charts, and actionable tasks I can take from the admin dashboard. It's become my command center for my site/startup.

I'm 42. Nearly every 5 years for the past 20 years I've had a career change. From working in Theatre to TV/Film, to Startup, to Google Sheets wizard.

Each progress hasn't been a full on "career change" but rather, a sort of side project I was interested in took over my entire world.

Doing theatre, I'd work with video guys. While in Video department, I did graphics to turn to Digital Content. While doing digital content, I automated a lot. learned to code Excel VBA, while trying to survive in a PA job, I automated Google Sheets While doing google sheets in a company, I side gigged doing online growth. While doing online growth, I learned to code. I coded my own site, I did more and more google sheets and created Better Sheets 5 years ago.

Now I play board games because I want to get off screen with friends/family. I am considering creating a physical gaming center/board game cafe. which might be a new career that I didn't go to school for and didn't have to even think about transitioning. If some side project becomes a full time work... great!

Formatting Google Sheets. I work all day every day in google sheets. I make video tutorials, and templates, and tools. Sometimes I work with clients/for clients. Sometimes I just make something on my own. Been thinking more and more about coding up a formatting engine in apps script. As that's what I've done many times before. But really would perhaps a SaaS or a Chrome add-on (not a sheets Add-on) be able to handle this better? But I don't really know how it would handle looking at a sheet and knowing what to format it like. Or would some kind of template actions be able to account for data out of place. This is where I fall apart in my thinking and wonder if someone else could really take a crack at a good UI for this. Instead of me who I am too in the weeds.

He might be referring to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6reLWfFNer0

College in general is pretty worthless in the long run. I'm 41 years old and I only speak of my college "experience" fondly. I don't speak to anyone about their college classes or what not.

I, actually, care more about what I did around college, which was make fun events and organize stuff. I ended up doing a few crazy things that I look back on and deem them to be my "internship" in entertainment or working in film. I created a late night comedy show. My friends were the head writer and the host. I just put it all together.

I also created a 24 hour short film competition. Did it 3 years in a row. Which not only was a great thing to do once but I had the grit to continue to do it and grow it year to year.

BUT>>>

Right out of college I ended up literally using my degree to get a job. I interviewed for a job in video on cruise ships, got turned down but got a job in theatre automatically because I had a degree in theatre. Done and dusted. Ended up working there 5 years, earning my way into video, then IT. Started coding and ultimately now two decades later, I'm putting it all together... coding on youtube in videos. crazy right?

Make a list of the 100 companies you want to work in. Then do nothing but search for people to talk to at those companies. Find them, talk to them. Listen to them. Ask them to tell you their story of how they got to work there. Do nothing but talk about those companies to every friend, family member, relative, anyone who will listen. ex-lovers. Reach out to anyone and everyone who might know someone there at any single one of those companies. Go to their meetups. Go to their open houses. Go to any events they hold. Any events they sponsor, talk at. Do nothing but focus on those companies and the people who work there. Create something. Make something that could work really well in those companies.

If you're a designer, redesign all 100 company landing pages. If you're a product manager, interview users and create a new product that those companies should make. If you're in sales, become an affiliate and start selling what they sell. If you're a developer, find a bug and tell them how to fix it. If you're a writer, find spelling mistakes and tell them about it.

When I was in a new city, and wanted a very specific job... which I didn't have at the time, I went online and found the people who had been doing that job. I reached out to any of them, asked them if I could buy them a coffee and they tell me how they got the job they are doing now. That's it. I asked a bunch of people. They were happy to meet me. I asked them their favorite local coffee shop and I went to it. Because I was new to the city, it was a great way to force myself to get out and discover neighborhoods. I also got to meet amazing people who really did give me the greatest advice ever. One of them gave me advice that actually got me promoted in the next job I got. One of them gave me totally unobvious advice that ended up becoming a side career for many years.

BTW , I don't give this advice nonchalantly. Just recently I started a new business myself in my local city after being remote for many years. I reached out to friends who owned local businesses and I met them for coffee.

So this same thing I did in 2013, also worked in 2025. And if I have a new business idea or something in 5 years, I'll do it again.

There are a couple of things to do: 1. Listen.

It's not a job interview. You're not there to pitch yourself. Listen. Actively listen. Ask questions. "why did you do that?" "how did that work out?"

2. Always follow up.

Every single person I met with, I very quickly in the next day emailed them or messaged them. I thanked them very personally. not just "thanks for meeting". I recollected some piece of advice, or story point. I also had the chance to ask if there was anyone they could think of that I should talk to. Here, not everyone did this. If it's a stranger, they might not be ready to recommend you, or recommend you talk to someone. But if something came up naturally in the conversation. then by all means ask "oh you mentioned this person did something interesting, can you introduce me to hear their story?"

I've used a Google Sheet exactly like this. Highlighted weekends and laid out with all days of the year. Export as PDF can fit on a single sheet of paper. But I also print it out on a huge paper and hang it up for my family. [https://bettersheets.co/bigyear]

Wife and I started a 3d printing business. We just started a couple of months ago and have put our items in a few retail stores. Our goal is not to do this super fast but more like supplemental income. Also its fun to print stuff for ourselves. I already designed a finger mini golf game and may start to build my own board games out of 3d printed parts.

So I want to build up 3d modeling skills.

I am not surprised but its much much slower to get a physical product business going than just writing some code and launching.

Is it this one? https://turtleacademy.com/lessons/1

Thanks. Wow there's full episodes of Cyber Chase on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@Cyberchase.Official

Turing Tumble looks a bit expensive, but might make a good birthday gift.

this part seemed interesting:

  "The experimental cohort outperforms the control group with statistical significance in comprehending potent ideational constructs encompassing representation, algorithms, and hardware/software interplay. Conversely, the control group performs better in grasping the debugging concept than their experimental counterparts. "

So from this I think I'll use more in-person items and building literal things that have a problem, to teach debugging. Perhaps some kind of marble run. And discuss with him what he thinks will happen (the expectation) and the difference between that and what actually happens.

I don't think it matters much. Sometimes I do consulting where I'm coding at the same time as the client is there with me. There's lots of little questions and tons of testing involved as I do coding in Google Apps Script in Google Sheets. And I'll quickly say "oh I think ChatGPT can figure this out faster than me" and just prompt it at the same time. Then copy paste and edit and figure out if it's right code for that part.

Not only do they not care, they think it's pretty cool that I can essentially save them an hour here or there.

What I would like is a list of creators, bloggers, youtubers etc, who have a solid audience and are seeking to mention others. For example I make a google sheets tutorial youtube channel. Sometimes I make a video that I genuinely could be featured by others and reacted to, and discussed... but I don't have the list of those to reach out to. I'm building it myself. like you said, in a spreadsheet. But there's no earning credits or trading. Wouldn't mind going through a list of people who are interested in trading exposure.

I used to ask Stripe Atlas for this kind of service. Because they made it so easy to spin up a company in 2 weeks, I thought it would be helpful to shut down a company too. But alas they haven't done it.

In general it was about $2,500 the last time I did it and only really needed a Lawyer to help file the final taxes and submit the paperwork to shut down to Delaware. Will be different if you have a company set up in a different state. Financial and Legal is the only thing you need to focus on. You can literally shut down the operations yourself.

The key issue that I found is that there is no emotional support. It's hard mentally, spiritually, and ultimately emotionally. Sometimes it's hard to actually go through the motions, the actions, the steps you need to do.

At least the legal part must be handled. You can literally keep the "company" as a personal asset and try to run it as a side-project or a hobby if you'd like. Many bootstrappers and indiehackers do that when they start a business.

I found a good support network of people who understand what you're going through can help. A simple telegram group, or whatsapp group, or even an online forum here should be able to help you with the emotional roller coaster. Feel free to express more about what you're going through and others might be able to share insights or just wallow in pity along with you.

You can just as easily fail at something you don't like as something that you do like. So might as well fail at the thing you like.

The most important mindset change was not to think of "Making" as something different than "Launching". I saw a startup school video that basically said you should Launch and then Launch again and Launch again, and again and again... I quit making a side project and then launching it. I just sat down and wrote out a launch list. One of those items was to make the thing useable. Some might claim this is like MVP idea. but that's a whole other thing. This "Always Be Launching" is really wrapping the product up in the hype from the outset.

I've started to do things like just email my list and explain that I'm considering making something. what questions or concerns would they have about it. And I consistently ask my email list if there's something I can improve about something I already launched.

The Book Launch by Jeff Walker helped put into plain terms the actual questions and how I go about pre-launching something I haven't made yet. It's helped me build about three or five new courses very confidently because I had been asked a bunch of questions from people who would go on to take that course.

Available to play here: https://queens-linkedin.vercel.app/ I thought this was so well done. Wanted to share with HN community too. (I didn't make it)

I wonder what those 52 languages are.

Perhaps a playdate, or a similar kind of programmable game device. Anything that he can use, and play games on, and code.

This is amazing... the end of the world is so close. My son will have a chance to see the end in 2100.

already started on this one since your recommendation and it's great! Thanks edit: Finished the lecture. Now taking a hammock nap.

Talk to users.

Startup School isn't enough for you? I found it extremely awesome to watch those videos over and over and over again. I get new insights every time, every year, from them. Even if the videos are the same, I am not.