

Why I created MBAHacks.com, or Why I am learning to program - coconutrandom
http://www.mbahacks.com/why-i-created-mbahackscom-or-why-i-am-learnin

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ryanlchan
All great reasons, but there's one I would add as an MBA: Learning to program
makes you a better business person.

How?

Made to Stick has a great story about a math teacher who struggled to convince
his students of math's importance in life. As he put it, math is like weight
lifting. You don't work out to prepare for the day a rogue barbell comes and
traps you on the ground, you work out so you can run faster, tackle harder,
and jump higher. Math is weight lifting for your analytic mind - it helps you
rationally think through problems and establish logical steps to the solution.

Learning to program, and to take it further, learning computer science, is not
about making the best app ever created. CS is mental weight lifting on the
_process_ of tackling business problems. Dissecting an app into its MVC
components will help you understand the business you plan to create, what is
core, and what is fluff. In other words, learning to program will make you a
better business person, even if you suck.

~~~
edcastano
Absolutely Ryan. Thanks for your sharing your thoughts with me.

I also see other parallels between building great software and building a
great business. For one, focus is important for scaling both. You don't want
to be all things to all people.

In addition, whether you're bug tracking or solving business problems, it's
important to get to the root cause. Full disclosure: I used to be a management
consultant.

Finally, it takes a great team to build great software and a great company.

I'm sure there are many others. Would love to hear what others here come up
with.

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weezer
I think the world would be a better place if everyone, especially MBA's had at
least some knowledge of programming. With the state of the job market in the
US, wouldn't it be wise to require even two years of programming in high
school?

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gtani
I used to work with at least a couple dozen MBA's from 1 school, they gave me
this advice for bus school:

1) don't lose your coding skills (I was good at perl/awk, APL, C and Fortran).
This I did

2) concentrate on linear algebra, stats/prob, calculus (this i didn't)

3) take law school classes (this i did, they were gnarly)

tl;dr your 2nd year you can do pretty much whatever you want. You can make it
a profoundly intellectual experience, or start your business, or whatever

~~~
curt
This is exactly what I did. I treat the MBA as just another tool. Started a
business sadly it failed after a couple years, but I just moved out to SF last
week and loving it. As an engineer with an MBA that can code well, does stats,
and took a handful of law classes it's a seller's market.

~~~
Maven911
i dont get it, whats so special about stats ? dont al engineers take a stats
class and then end up not using most of the concepts ?

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ajaycancherla
That's a good idea. My advice: forget the MBA. Just learn to code and start
making contacts in the field you want to go into. Why pay grad schools? YC is
the new grad school, and they pay you.

~~~
oscarleung
lol...yes! out of all the degrees out there...I don't understand the MBA. Want
to start a business? Start it! If you get the MBA you'll be stuck paying off a
$100k debt.

~~~
viscanti
Starting a business is only half the battle (at best). The biggest value of
the MBA is the networking that happens. You're meeting people who will go on
to work in a diverse set of industries. It's not uncommon for an entrepreneur
with an MBA to go a year or two in business only calling on people they met in
school, or fellow alumni. That networking isn't impossible to replicate, but
an entrepreneur who forgoes the MBA route needs to make a concerted effort to
make up for that.

~~~
mikhaill
To follow up to the parent, there is a lot more to B-school then just to
network. From common MBA-bashing that takes places on HN it seems that that
many people fail to grasp the difference between building a product and
building a company. If you want to build a product - MBA may not be necessary,
but if you want to build a good company, an MBA will be a great help along the
way. With all aspects of running a business covered in one class or another,
you at least have an understanding of the issues you'll run into.

An MBA doesn't provide you a road map, it gives you a framework of how to
approach business questions and an understanding how simple decisions cascade
down to all aspects of a company (hr, accounting, operations).

~~~
edcastano
Nice point. You can build a great ruby site without Rails, but Rails gives you
a nice framework to make the process easier. Similarly, you can build a
business without an MBA, but an MBA gives you a convenient framework to help
with important decisions.

~~~
ajaycancherla
True. Good point. So it comes down to - which type of person are you? I stick
by my original point - YC is the new grad school. MBA's learn all the theory
of business, and YC throws you right into it. There's no better way to learn.

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coconutrandom
Edward is a savvy guy not above getting his hands dirty with code.

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stfu
Coming from a similar perspective as the OP, but so far I always failed to go
through with actually mastering a language. Over the years I attempted to
learn so many different ones, from Action Script to Assembler, from Delphi to
C++, but always became either bored of it after a few hours or got frustrated
because the ideas I had in mind turned out to be far more complicated to
realise than I had hoped for.

~~~
eru
That's why great programmers are boundless optimist and masochists.

~~~
edcastano
Great point. I've been accused to being dogged in the past. Truth be told, it
helps to be both focused and determined.

@stfu There are two ways you could try to go about it:

1) Try sticking to one technology and working on a project you're really
passionate about.

2) Work on a tutorial from start to finish.

~~~
stfu
Thanks for trying to help! 1) This is really difficult. Like I tried getting
started with PHP but as soon as potential project ideas became "interesting" I
needed to go at least into JavaScript or Databases/MySql. Like for a seemingly
simple project that I had in mind (e.g. that took data from a form and
generate a pdf file based on that) I needed at least JavaScript to make it a
smooth process. 2) I seem to suck there in the "transferring the knowledge"
part. One of my most recent ventures is into RapidMiner, an (open source) data
mining/text mining software. While I went through each and every tutorial
available I am still unable to understand basic issues like when to use
certain algorithms or how to adopt the knowledge towards a concrete research
idea/problem that I have in mind. But if you have any suggestions for great
tutorials feel free to share. I won't stop trying :)

~~~
civilian
Some web frameworks build wrappers for MySQL. That being said... SQL isn't too
hard either! Google is your co-pilot, always.

This summer I was thrown onto an android project with no experience, no in-
company mentors, and I barely remembered how to write java. The first two
weeks I just did tutorials. I didn't even try to patch them together to
actually make a product-- I just did a dozen tutorials which covered different
aspects and left them all in my code folder. When it came to actually building
my app, I now had a personalized pool of code to grab from! It really helped
to be able to go back and reference it.

Also, I think you are not going to be well helped by tutorials. You need a
freaking textbook. <http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/index.html> You
are required to do at least 50% of the exercises for each chapter.

Furthermore, it is important that you master a single language rather than
dabble. Once you understand a single language in&out, it will make it much
easier to pick up other ones. (My 'mastery' is in python, and I've picked up
java, C#, SQL, javascript.)

