

Ask HN: Go with what I got, stay the course, or learning the wrong stuff? - relaunched

I got into startups as a sole 'business founder'.  Even back then, those were slimey words to say to a coder, so I started writing, what I now know was bad, php in order to have something to show and convince real developers I wasn't another 'biz' guy w/o a clue and get them to join my team (for no money).  And it worked.<p>I've worked on my own startup projects for a few years full-time, building quick and dirty front-end mockups, wire-frames and writing middle-ware that needed to get done, to hit deadlines; while doing the biz dev, sales, customer dev, etc.<p>After a few years, a few projects, a lot of project management of small / agile teams and tons of customer development, product development and product marketing, I haven't made it on my own.  But, at best, I've become an okay, but unsuccessful startup founder.  Turns out that while lots of startups claim they want entrepreneurial people, after working for an early stage startup, turns out that I make a better co-founder than 1st employee.<p>I'm trying to figure out what to do next and I've started teaching myself how to really code.  I gave up OS X and Windows, and am going cold turkey to Ubuntu.  With that, I've been coding exclusively on VIM (which is amazing &#38; amazingly complex) and learning to use an MVC, the right way.  But, I'm still coding in PHP (when I feel like I should be learning Python).  Coding is something I've always enjoyed, but I figured I should get better at it.<p>I've always been interested and really enjoy coding / building stuff.  However, am I wasting my time trying to build up my skills to get a job as a coder?  Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm currently so low after my startup experience, that I'm pre-maturely giving up on using my product &#38; startup skills to get a job at either another startup or large company.<p>Advice?
======
eof
if you have the luxury you should learn something other than php.

you likely won't find the transition to python too difficult.

if you are already really productive in php; it probably isn't a huge
priority.

another thing to think about is looking at something like haskell/lisp/clojure
which is probably more a difficult task to pick up; but will eventually (in
theory, and if you can grok it) lead to even greater produtivity; probably not
the route to go if you are looking for a job, but as an entrepreneur it is
probably a really good use of time, if you've the luxury.

