skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Agreed. I'm really speaking to the people that I meet and the people posing the question on YC News. If your name is Om Malik, you don't need to look to far to find a programmer that is willing to help.

As for learning to program - it's a great idea, but I would fully develop the business model, marketing plan, site map and probably 10 other things before I suggest someone start from scratch learning HTML.
"Learn to program while you start developing the idea."

I understand the spirit of this advice, but sorry, I don't buy it. Now is not the time for non-programmers to learn programming. I'll have enough work to do without refactoring your garbage. If you want to pencil up screens, flowcharts, or schemas, then do just that - use a pencil.

There are 2 better solutions to the "majority of the work" issue. Either get multiple experienced developers or give me more equity. See how easy.
While it's important doing the biz model/marketing plan, the idea is going to change/evolve anyway... with two weeks of hard work that stuff will need minimal maintenance after that...

Unless the idea needs a lot of business development (eg direct sales), programming is a good next step (by programming I'm also loosely including UI development)
Good point, but most programmers are clueless on the UI side anyways and would be happy to offload that stuff

"There are 2 better solutions to the "majority of the work" issue. Either get multiple experienced developers or give me more equity. See how easy."

a ton of ideas sound "easy" until u actually start doing them... since the issue is how to attract even one technical person, i think your 1st solution is easier said than done... your 2nd idea is a lot more realistic but 100% of nothing implemented is still 100% of nothing (until some work is put in)...
Fanboy to Facebook: I Don't Know How to Quit You.
It is a one size fits all kind of deal. You just have to try putting it on the right appendage. The difference here is that surgery is a service and software is a product. I think that basically they're the same. You "develop" a service the same way you would develop a product. You practice. In effect, practice is the iterative design of a service, just like rapid prototyping is the iterative design of a product.

Now, the surgeon can't just crack open your head and see what happens, but before he ever does that he's going to have practiced cracking open heads and mucking about with them somewhere (probably on a cadaver). He's probably going to have made some mistakes doing it too, and learned from them the right way to go about cutting up people's brains.

Likewise, you don't just ship the first piece of software you scribble out and see what happens either. Now, certainly with a web 2.0 AJAX calendar-organizer-automated-fish-feeder there's a greater margin for error than brain surgery, but it's a difference in degree, not in kind. If you launch a site that just returns "Internal Server Error" when someone surfs to it, you're going to be about as successful as a brain surgeon who never learned how to handle a scalpel.

So the surgeon cutting up a cadaver seems to me to be the same as a programmer blasting out a broken version 1.0 of his software. They're both trying something out in a situation where they can fix mistakes and reincorporate them to product. The surgeon makes a cut, looks to see if it's in the right place and is the right size, if not he keeps trying until he gets it right. When he can make the right cut every time without thinking about it, his service of cutting people is finished being developed. Likewise, the programmer writes some code, and checks if it produces the right output. If not, he tweaks the code until it does. Same thing. You can't compare a finished version of one product (performing brain surgery) to the development process of another product (writing software).
Classic: Tact Filters (normal people vs. nerds)
http://www.python.org/emacs/
Classic Hacker Reading: The Story of Mel
I know this is supposed to be a humorous article, but to me there's something profoundly sad here.
Place Your Bets: Google Reaches $2000 or TechCrunch Sells for $100M?
Is it really a revelation that Facebook's operating on a fad right now?

The bigger question is whether they can lateral this temporary success into something that's sustainable long-term.
I offered an "easy" solution to the "majority of the work" business issue, not an easy solution to doing the work. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

"most programmers are clueless on the UI side anyways and would be happy to offload that stuff"

Where are you meeting programmers? This statement is troubling to me on multiple levels. A web app is a holistic organism. "Offloading" or decoupling UI from server side processing is a recipe for an incongruent app. Maybe you need to find less clueless programmers.
Is Privacy Overrated?
We don't write tests. There just isn't time for luxuries.
Why are you arguing with your customers about what they want?

That's a hard argument to make if you're correct, but you're not - they are. It's an incredible user experience. It lets them in on the excitement. It gives them a story to tell others. That's why they want in.

And no, it's not "cheap" to give them a discount, it's rewarding them for faith and it's fair. (You can think of it as interest if you'd like.) It's also fairly standard practice.

Do it right, and they'll be out there selling more "pre-release" subscriptions for you. Deliver, and they'll be your best salesfolk.

Of course, it is poor form to take their money if you're not going to deliver.
" but most programmers are clueless on the UI side anyways and would be happy to offload that stuff"

That's so wrong on many levels. Quit watching movies and stereotyping programmers as akward geeks. As a programmer, I know and build UIs, and know usability probably much better that you. The problem is that in a startup there are tons of other much harder things to get done.

You can be more helpful if you can pickup the front end part (XHTML, CSS, Graphics, stock photos, logos), and let your programmer handle the hard stuff (programming the backend, databases, content management).

When I do something for fun, I found out that building the HTML/CSS part of it is not much fun, as it is more just an exercise in trial and frustration than just technically challenging. *unless you are doing advanced javascript programing.

I usually just pick ready made templates, and stock images, so I can concetrate on the harder stuff. Once done with the harder part, then working on replacing the UI with something good, is pretty easy.

and remember, all the good programers want good Equity. When I mead good, I mean distributed equaly to the amount of work they do. Nobody wants to do the hard stuff, and get less out of it. They will feel they are cheated, and not appreciated (one of the reasons some of the founders leave). If all you bring on the table is an idea, then you are not worth that much.
I'm frusterated with GEdit. No regex search and replace, tabbing requires ctl+t, ugg. And there's no block select mode. I really miss TextPad since switching to Linux.

So far I like Kate the best, but it's dog slow to open. Someday I should bite the bullet and learn VIM I guess.
Creating a Facebook app "web" (would you use this FB app?)
I'm thinking of building a FB app to create "related" links between FB apps.

As the developer of a FB app, you would be responsible for creating links from your app to other apps. My app would show you app after app and you would need to decide whether to create a link to your app or not.

You can't cheat by writing a script to create links on all such apps because the links are a limited resource. For example, if the service shows you k apps, maybe you could create only k/10 links.

This system would create incentives for developers to create these related links and also provide a way to advertise (at least to other developers as they have to examine app after app). Users who are not developers can make use of the connections, thus providing a way for people to find your app.

Is this a reasonable thing to try?
Wal-Mart threatens to sell value added Bananas in India
Wither Second Life?
Original source requires registration: http://www.yankeegroup.com/ResearchDocument.do?id=16437
> Someday I should bite the bullet and learn VIM I guess.

Start today, it's an investment that will pay off big in the long run.
counter-theory:

Having higher performance (or brighter outlook) allows companies to take on weaker performing women.

--yes that guess is politically incorrect
What's worked well for me is to have my cofounder hunt for libraries and mock-up prototypes. He can Google, I can Google, so he might as well free up the time for me to work on the production product. And we always, always prototype 3rd-party libraries before using them in the real product (how else are we gonna know if they work well for our purposes?) It doesn't matter much to me if I throw out his garbage or if I throw out my garbage, we have to rewrite it anyway. I just want to have a working example in front of me that does what we need.
Patent Troll: AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo Sued Over Competitive Bidding Patent
25 SQL Commandments
These hints--many of them previously unpublished--can help you avoid the plague of poorly written SQL statements
So the advantage for a young company is that you can get a much higher limit than a credit card?
Just launched! Asking for news.yc feedback.
This is what we've been working on nights and weekends since February, and we hope the site explains itself.

We have applied for YC program for this winter and still are waiting for a response, but since the coding is done for a modest ver 1.0, we see no reason to keep it in the basement any longer. Therefore we're going with a "slow launch" strategy to get <100 very happy users with kids spending hours in our system. Hopefully this will allow us to figure out potential bugs/usability issues before big PR push.

Technically we are a mixture of online/desktop software with our own local persistence layer written in C++.

Please take a look and let us know how we are doing. Directness and critical thinking are very much welcome!
You made me hungry on the ramaddan! LOL;->
Is there a "Secret of Successful People"?
It matters to me. A lot.

There's a big difference between rewriting in order to evolve and rewriting just to figure out what you already have.

My worst code is better than most of the garbage I inherit. I don't want a non-programmer coding any more than a fifth grader driving a bus. Wait for an adult.
[From FOWA] On-demand host goes up against Amazon S3
Flexiscale, a new UK-based on-demand computing service aimed at Web 2.0 startups plans to compete with Amazon's EC2/S3 service.
Give it a try if you have kids. We have been working long hours getting this site and client software working and are anxious to see how kids will actually use it.

As far as children's online privacy, this application gives parents a good balance of manual configuration and automatic protection that they can use. We hope it will be a good solution to the common complaint from people with children that they hate sitting behind their kids playing "yard monitor", while they surf on regular browsers.

If you don't have kids, try it anyway. And if possible forward it on to anyone that does. Thanks.
Steven Pinker: A Brief History of Violence
This is what we've been working on nights and weekends since February, and we hope the site explains itself.

We have applied for YC program for this winter and still are waiting for a response, but since the coding is done for a modest ver 1.0, we see no reason to keep it in the basement any longer. Therefore we're going with a "slow launch" strategy to get less than 100 very happy users with kids spending hours in our system. Hopefully this will allow us to figure out potential bugs/usability issues before big PR push.

Technically we are a mixture of online/desktop software with our own local persistence layer written in C++.

Please take a look and let us know how we are doing. Directness and critical thinking are very much welcome!
Congratulations!, I haven't downloaded it but it sounds like a great idea.

It would be great to see some screen shots of the browser on the web.

Does it run in any OS?
LAMP developer Needed -- Neat job ad!
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, explains the difference between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0
80% of browser functionality is written in JavaScript, very similarly to how Mozilla's XUL is done, greatly reducing our dependency on any client platform.

But we are Windows-only at the moment with Mac OS X in the very near future. We are also debating either we should move to Mozilla platform, but it potentially will make a fairly fat download... Currently our browser is 400kb binary with zero dependencies.
Web Innovators Group: More Boston Startups Present
Great idea, nice start. What are your thoughts on the SLA?
Disclaimer: I haven't tried Nu yet, just read the FAQs.
Nu isn't about Ruby semantics, it's about Cocoa and Objective-C semantics. It's a Lispy/scripting way of interacting with the Mac OS programming paradigm. The author is also the author of the RubyObjc bridge, and Nu was a result of his frustrations with the "impedance mismatch" between Ruby objects and code and Objective C.
I disagree. I think if you can't program, you shouldn't be starting a tech company. (Unless you worked for a Google, MSFT, etc in a non-tech role & have great tech contacts)

Just like if you've never used a hammer, you shouldn't start a construction company.
The numbers don't pass the smell test. Best bet: All-male boards represent brand-new companies. Only mature, profitable companies start to worry about installing "tokens".
"Companies that provide remote access--through mobile devices or other means--to their web experience will have a greater impact than pc-centric companies."

A massively multiplayer online game featuring realtime 3D graphics delivered on a phone? Unlikely to happen soon.
What I use is VirtualBox, not VMWare.
You cite wikipedia on the front page. If I were being picky, I might bring up the fact that there are definitely things there that some people would find objectionable for kids.
Microsoft looks to become major player in ad world
A QOS router (1997 called, wants its etc etc etc) with 2 research network customers (estimated recognized revenue from both deals: -$20,000, including services), and a dark fiber startup. Revolutionary.

There's a strong response to this statement, and I'd love to hear it, but haven't yet: name one application whose adoption is hampered meaningfully by the current architecture of the Internet. Even BitTorrent works over NAT.

Innovation happens on top of the Internet, not inside it.
Done. We've implemented a simple Bayesian filter to remote most of the ISP's. There's still some work to be done, but it's a major improvement.

ESER
Seekler Alpha Release and live screen shots
This article has a date of Aug. 28, 2002. I think the trend is away from replacing company founders.
this is based on my personal experience as a programmer and from the programmers I know professionally and personally (so I'm not just watching movies)

"You can be more helpful if you can pickup the front end part (XHTML, CSS, Graphics, stock photos, logos), and let your programmer handle the hard stuff (programming the backend, databases, content management)."

that's one of the things i meant to say. I guess i just didn't make it clear enough

"When I do something for fun, I found out that building the HTML/CSS part of it is not much fun,"

yes... again I agree programmers either can't or don't like doing ui - sorry i forgot to include the last one
being able to serve kid-targeted ads to kids on the web would be awesome. massive click-throughs i bet....and somewhat slimy. even better would be parental control on what ads were served to their kids. give the parents a cut on CPC if they let their kids see ads? spitballin...
I love the Ballmer turn from the German guy at the end.
I'm really glad to see that people are coming around to this school of thought. It seems very closely related to the decline of waterfall and the rise of iterative development.

It's really important that we (the people who believe in prototyping and iterative development) emphasize that this is not a chaotic way to approach a problem. We absolutely do plan - however, we plan by coding and prototyping, rather than writing detailed specs. Specs are good - but they emerge from the code and the prototype. We absolutely do consider design issues - however, we discover and implement these things through refactoring. And in the end, we may very well throw out our first approach and rewrite, if it appears to be necessary.

But I think this is leaving the realm of opinion and entering the realm of reality. The people who try to do the pure waterfall where an architect designs and writes specs, a coder writes code, a tester does testing - they seem to be losing badly in the race to get excellent software to market. From what I've read (successful startups, Google) the free market appears to be rewarding the better approach.
""Offloading" or decoupling UI from server side processing is a recipe for an incongruent app."

that's a major generalization/assumption

it really depends on the technologies you're using and your team; not everything is built using rails

besides we have web services now and isn't it good practice to decouple the view layer anyway (as little logic as possible)? I mean in many companies there are completely separate teams that handle just ui or serverside tasks
Sometimes it just does slow you down overall.

Remind me again, how many web startups have failed because of a bug? How many? Hm.
My first thought also. I'd like to be able to block pages by keyword also... or just have a 'community driven' approach - have adults install a toolbar say, and have them mark pages that are suitable for kids.
GBP72.00/month for 1G RAM instance (not including bandwidth or storage).
I dislike writing more code for my tests than the "actual" code. I do not eat the "test driven development" drivel hook-line-and-sinker. Sorry, call me an unenlightened developer.
Are you implying that the number is very small or very large?
The teenager making millions with her MySpace-Layouts comes to mind: those layouts have the same properties ("marginal whatever bla production costs") as things designed for Second Life, yet their value does not yet seem to be zero.
slicehost is great, if your not 'in with in crowd' to get free hosting from mt.

if you pay(money) for it, you'll at some pay(downtime) for it.

I'm speaking from shared hosting/grid experience, not their dedicated stuff
I'm really trying to contain myself because I'm going to get silly bubbly effusive. I can't help it, this product is a dream come true. For dramatic effect I'm going to post the greasemonkey script I adapted to try to do this for my kids in firefox, seriously I am going to get on the horn and let everyone with school age kids I know about the browser.

Some things that I think would be really useful: You've got that toolbar on the left side that's always there. For poorly designed sites (disney.go.com is the one I tried) they force a side scroll bar so you can't see the whole page left to right at once. I understand there's a big trade-off here; if that toolbar hides they may not know how to bring it back, but they may not know how to use the left to right scroll bar either. It would be nice to have a appear if moused over option, or perhaps check if the website is not resizing appropriately and shrink the toolbar for those sites.

Another thing I would think would be nice is to be able to filter content within sites. So perhaps pushing CTRL + f12 creates a ban on that particular directory within a white-listed site. In our family that means kongregate.com is okay but kongregate.com/zombie_rampage not so much. That would address the wikipedia concern as well. Perhaps you might even trace sub-directories other users have banned and apply them to your child's browsing if you enable it.

In any case the firefox icons are getting deleted from the desktop and start menu right now and pikluk is now the new default browser for at least three people in this family.

Oh, and as promised:

// Invisibility Cloak
// version 0.1
// Gina Trapani
// 2006-01-03
// Released to the public domain.
//
// ==UserScript==
// @name Invisibility Cloak
// @description Turns time-wasting web pages invisible until a specified time of day.
// @include http://flickr.com/*
// @include http://*.flickr.com/*
// @include http://metafilter.com/*
// @include http://*.metafilter.com/*
// @include http://www.kongregate.com/games/SeanCooper/boxhead-2play-rooms/*
// ==/UserScript==
//
// ==RevisionHistory==
// Version 0.1:
// Released: 2006-01-03.
// Initial release.
// ==/RevisionHistory==

(function () {
// EDIT THE NEXT LINE TO SET THE HOUR AFTER WHICH SITES SHOULD APPEAR
// HOURS IN MILITARY TIME, SO 15 = 3PM
var surf_time_after = 23;
// END EDIT

var readable_time = '';
if (surf_time_after > 12 )
{
readable_time = surf_time_after - 12;
readable_time = readable_time + 'PM';
} else {
readable_time = surf_time_after + 'AM';
}

var tstamp = new Date();

if (1<2 | tstamp.getHours() < surf_time_after )
{
var b = (document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0]);
b.setAttribute('style', 'display:none!important');
alert("This game or site has been deemed shady by the parents!");
}

})();
Venture Capital's Hidden Calamity
APL: An Earth-like Planet is Forming in a Star System Called HD 113766
looks great. seems like you understand your customers well. good luck!
This is an excellent idea. I know of at least one family member who will find this very useful!

Some suggestions I have are:

I like the web site design, I think it conveys the simple "child-friendly" look. However, the colors are stark and a bit bold, slightly desaturating/lightening them might be a more pleasing to the eye.

A family member of mine is having a hard time keeping their young daughter from accessing stuff she shouldn't be seeing on the internet. The problem is this little girl is quite a hacker, and has found very clever ways of circumventing the protections, even going to the extent to sneak onto her moms computer to get the passwords to disable the controls. I'm not familiar with the details of your protection schemes, but I guess my advice is dont assume kids, just because they are young, cant crack your stuff! Kids are much more computer-savvy these days so make sure all of your bases are covered.

Good luck on your YC appliation. This idea is refreshingly new and I like it.
a screenshot is a must, right on the homepage
I think this is a good idea. Have you considered tracking which sites are most commonly allowed and then providing that list as a default for new users? I can imagine it being quite a pain to allow access one site at a time. If there were a "community accepted" list of sites, that might be a cool feature.

Our of curiosity, how many downloads so far?
This would go directly against one of the statements and some of the company policies stated on the website. On the 'Learn More' page,

"At PikLuk, we value your privacy and that of your children. To that end, we: Do not market to your children."
Yes, TDD implies that there is a more or less exact specification. Otherwise, if you're just experimenting, you would have to write the test and your code, and that's going to make you less inclined to throw it away and test out something else (see "Planning is highly overrated").

My strategy has generally been to throw some tests that cover most things in a general way, and when I find bugs, add lots of detailed tests that make sure those bugs will never come back again. That makes it feel less pedantic.
New Business Advice & Resources Email Newsletter from Dan Kehrer: WhatWorks
Good stuff!!!

I'd move over to FF base and you have all OS' covered. If you have to install a binary, people don't care if it's 400kb or 2Mb. Size, under 10Mb is irrelevant to most of the people. Usability and compatibility is what's important.