4 ms·

Why don't you just learn to code?

• sp332 15y ago
  Solid bi-directional video streaming isn't the kind of thing you can just "pick up" by reading a book or taking a class.
  • joshwprinceton 15y ago
    Yup, that's the problem.
    • hugacow 15y ago
      The problem to me is that the technical parts of a tech startup are usually more than 50% of the company. Maybe it is even 90%. You write the blog post and pose as if you had something. What did you have really? If getting this guy was critical to success and the reason you moved, I think you should focus more on how in the heck you got into the position to consider moving in the first place, i.e. a combination of bad advice from investors that weren't good advisors and you taking that advice. The critical mistake happened when you decided to move out there, not because of the red flags you mentioned. Those were secondary imo.
      • sp332 15y ago
        Actually finding investors and advisors and getting them on board with the project is a big deal. And apparently finding a good CTO takes a lot of time and effort as well.
        • joshwprinceton 15y ago
          Major lesson learned -- getting investors and advisors doesn't get you a good CTO
        • hugacow 15y ago
          One word: vaporware.
      • joshwprinceton 15y ago
        All valid comments -- I think that ultimately team is the most important, followed by product, which is why I moved, and we were basically doing a reset. We had stuff without him, but I wanted to build the company around him/me rather than the team we had...but agreed in part, for sure
  • tom_b 15y ago
    Why not? Video chat is probably a pretty standard multimedia networking class project? Or does bi-directional video streaming mean something different that what I assume?
    • sp332 15y ago
      Here's one of many things you won't learn in that class: NAT traversal http://www.h-online.com/security/features/How-Skype-Co-get-round-firewalls-747197.html http://www.h-online.com/security/features/How-Skype-Co-get-r... Not to mention tuning compression in real time for network properties, echo cancellation, audio/video synchronization, volume leveling, helping users find each other, and privacy settings. I've never done a streaming project and those are just the problems I can think of off the top of my head - I'm sure there are more interesting problems as well.
      • tom_b 15y ago
        All valid parts of the general problem, but I think most multimedia networking courses talk compression, QoS, jitter, adaptive protocols, etc . . . While in no way attempting to say that these issues don't exist or are trivial, what I'm driving at here is that bi-directional video didn't spring fully formed out of the ether yesterday. I saw these issues as part of a multimedia networking course 10+ years ago. Of course, there is also a ton of research still going on in this area, so it's not like the canonical answer has been found at this point either . . .
      • anamax 15y ago
        Yes, there are many problems/things one "should" know, but how many of them are essential for an MVP? More to the point, the fact that there are some "essential for MVP" things that you can't do doesn't mean that you shouldn't work on the "essential for MVP" stuff that you can do. And then there's the "not product development" stuff. There is always something that one can do to move forward.
• joshwprinceton 15y ago
  I can code in rails...what we are doing is a bit on the complicated side, though, as per the other comment