6 ms·

But that's the thing. My life now sucks because I've spent most of my spare time researching this. And progress has been so slow. Friends have drifted away,

by NSX2 19y ago

But that's the thing. My life now sucks because I've spent most of my spare time researching this. And progress has been so slow. Friends have drifted away, etc. If I give up and sell out, at least I'll have a comfy position at a respectable company where people smarter than me would respect what I have to offer because I have 6 years worth of thinking about the problem on them. But the startup route ... hell I can't even find any programmers to put a demo together ... I could make a career out of this "there" ... or just keep fumbling in the dark making teeny tiny progress (if any) while my personal/professional life suffers. I don't know anymore. That's why I posted this, I guess. Quite frankly the "75" year old me is saying, "Do what you want, but keep in mind you're going to need good health insurance as you grow older."

aswanson 19y ago
If I give up and sell out, at least I'll have a comfy position at a respectable company where people smarter than me would respect what I have to offer because I have 6 years worth of thinking about the problem on them. No they won't. You'll be a part of a dispirited bureauacracy, and nobody will care. They probably won't even finish the project. Your best bet is to get a bunch of young college age programmers to work with you. They are unemployed and are ready to hit it out of the park. If I was in NYC I would hear you out and try to help. Start looking for talent where the people are hungry.
- NSX2 19y ago
  > our best bet is to get a bunch of young college age > programmers to work with you. Columbia couldn't seem to care less, and the entire NYU structure has so far gotten ... hold your breath ... 2 resumes. Only one of which was remotely relevant, but not experienced enough to take initiative on this. And since I'm not a programmer, I don't have the experience to provide guidance in that department. I don't know why, but NY is not very start-uppity at all. People here fantasize about going to work for the IT dept. of Morgan Stanley or something.
  - trevelyan 19y ago
    Give up. You're six years into a development project that requires programmers but you don't have any programmers. You seem to think that a company will hire you because you have experience - if your work is really that valuable why haven't they hired you already? Get a job and continue to work on this in your spare time. Fund development and be smart about making what you build as generally-useful as possible (an enabling technology rather than a solution). If the market pans out for this other company, there will be opportunities for you... assuming you executed.
  - aggieben 19y ago
    It strikes me as odd that you've been noodling for 6 years an idea that needs programmers to implement, but you haven't become a programmer yourself in all that time. Do you have any idea how many "Learn X in 21 Days" books you can read in 6 years? :-)
epi0Bauqu 19y ago
If you have valuable knowledge that no one else has (or can easily get), and you need programmers, why don't you share what you can here and see if anyone wants to join you? Presumably you can share enough to give people an idea of what you are doing?
- NSX2 19y ago
  If I could find some programmers who won't dismiss my value after I've transferred my insights, I'd gladly do it. But judging from the thinking processes of what I see on posts here ... Just to give an example, a few days ago a "bored developer" posted a post saying he was looking for good ideas. Whenever I see MBA/Financial-types posting on Hacker News looking for programmers, the response is usually, "Why should I partner with you - what value do you offer since you can't code?" So I asked a simple question on this post: Suppose I share some ideas with you that you wind up developing. What do you offer in return? I was hoping maybe an arrangement like "I'll code on the weekends for your idea if you share an idea I like enough to pursue" or something. Instead everybody kept downmodding my post; last time I checked it was in the negative something range. So if I can find people willing to go it on equal terms ...
  - SwellJoe 19y ago
    You've made the mistake of believing an idea has value. It doesn't. An idea plus a good execution of it has value. If you can't convince a developer that you bring needed value to the execution of that idea, and you can't pay developers to work on your idea, then you have nothing. In six years you could have learned to program well enough to build a kickass demo--the fact that you haven't makes it pretty clear to developers that you don't believe in your idea enough to commit your own time to it (other than, apparently, thinking really hard about it)...but you'd be really happy to have someone else commit time to it and share the results with you. Hell, with the quality of modern tools, if you started today, you could have a proof of concept running in a year, even if you've never seen a terminal or a text editor before. Python, Ruby, Perl, and even PHP, make developing simple applications, well, simple. Sorry if I seem to be dismissing you without knowledge of your idea or your actual work in the field, but this is what you're facing in trying to get someone to write your software for you, for free. This is what you have to overcome, and I hope I've made it clear that the way you are presenting it is not going to do that. What you think you're saying, and what an engineer hears you saying, are apparently two very different things. I suspect you think you're saying, "I've done all of the legwork and research and hard work leading up to actual development, and now I just need a technical person to put these well-researched pieces together." But, an engineer hears, "I've done nothing but have super cool ideas for the past six years, and now I'd like you to implement my vague and over-reaching specifications into a product, for free, and share the results with me." You can't really blame them for not signing on, right?
tim2 19y ago
> progress has been so slow. Friends have drifted away Same here....

by NSX2 19y ago

aswanson 19y ago

If I give up and sell out, at least I'll have a comfy position at a respectable company where people smarter than me would respect what I have to offer because I have 6 years worth of thinking about the problem on them. No they won't. You'll be a part of a dispirited bureauacracy, and nobody will care. They probably won't even finish the project. Your best bet is to get a bunch of young college age programmers to work with you. They are unemployed and are ready to hit it out of the park. If I was in NYC I would hear you out and try to help. Start looking for talent where the people are hungry.

NSX2 19y ago
> our best bet is to get a bunch of young college age > programmers to work with you. Columbia couldn't seem to care less, and the entire NYU structure has so far gotten ... hold your breath ... 2 resumes. Only one of which was remotely relevant, but not experienced enough to take initiative on this. And since I'm not a programmer, I don't have the experience to provide guidance in that department. I don't know why, but NY is not very start-uppity at all. People here fantasize about going to work for the IT dept. of Morgan Stanley or something.
- trevelyan 19y ago
  Give up. You're six years into a development project that requires programmers but you don't have any programmers. You seem to think that a company will hire you because you have experience - if your work is really that valuable why haven't they hired you already? Get a job and continue to work on this in your spare time. Fund development and be smart about making what you build as generally-useful as possible (an enabling technology rather than a solution). If the market pans out for this other company, there will be opportunities for you... assuming you executed.
- aggieben 19y ago
  It strikes me as odd that you've been noodling for 6 years an idea that needs programmers to implement, but you haven't become a programmer yourself in all that time. Do you have any idea how many "Learn X in 21 Days" books you can read in 6 years? :-)

epi0Bauqu 19y ago

If you have valuable knowledge that no one else has (or can easily get), and you need programmers, why don't you share what you can here and see if anyone wants to join you? Presumably you can share enough to give people an idea of what you are doing?

NSX2 19y ago
If I could find some programmers who won't dismiss my value after I've transferred my insights, I'd gladly do it. But judging from the thinking processes of what I see on posts here ... Just to give an example, a few days ago a "bored developer" posted a post saying he was looking for good ideas. Whenever I see MBA/Financial-types posting on Hacker News looking for programmers, the response is usually, "Why should I partner with you - what value do you offer since you can't code?" So I asked a simple question on this post: Suppose I share some ideas with you that you wind up developing. What do you offer in return? I was hoping maybe an arrangement like "I'll code on the weekends for your idea if you share an idea I like enough to pursue" or something. Instead everybody kept downmodding my post; last time I checked it was in the negative something range. So if I can find people willing to go it on equal terms ...
- SwellJoe 19y ago
  You've made the mistake of believing an idea has value. It doesn't. An idea plus a good execution of it has value. If you can't convince a developer that you bring needed value to the execution of that idea, and you can't pay developers to work on your idea, then you have nothing. In six years you could have learned to program well enough to build a kickass demo--the fact that you haven't makes it pretty clear to developers that you don't believe in your idea enough to commit your own time to it (other than, apparently, thinking really hard about it)...but you'd be really happy to have someone else commit time to it and share the results with you. Hell, with the quality of modern tools, if you started today, you could have a proof of concept running in a year, even if you've never seen a terminal or a text editor before. Python, Ruby, Perl, and even PHP, make developing simple applications, well, simple. Sorry if I seem to be dismissing you without knowledge of your idea or your actual work in the field, but this is what you're facing in trying to get someone to write your software for you, for free. This is what you have to overcome, and I hope I've made it clear that the way you are presenting it is not going to do that. What you think you're saying, and what an engineer hears you saying, are apparently two very different things. I suspect you think you're saying, "I've done all of the legwork and research and hard work leading up to actual development, and now I just need a technical person to put these well-researched pieces together." But, an engineer hears, "I've done nothing but have super cool ideas for the past six years, and now I'd like you to implement my vague and over-reaching specifications into a product, for free, and share the results with me." You can't really blame them for not signing on, right?

tim2 19y ago

> progress has been so slow. Friends have drifted away Same here....