
Recommended hacker skills courses for non-tech founders - Mistone

======
weel
Computer Science is an unusually accessible field of engineering for self-
learners. Purveyors of fine computer systems and programming languages market
them by writing oodles of documentation, often free. There is an amazing
amount to be learned just from reading the GNU manuals. All the machinery you
need in order to play around with most of the latest new technology is
available at Fry's.

But I should probably warn you against the idea that you can become a good
programmer simply by learning to use some of the tools. That's like becoming a
chess player by studying the rules of the game, and the mechanics of chess
clocks. If you just want to make sure you can understand your more technical
business partner when s/he talks shop, or even do some simple programming,
surely, you can get a long way simply by knowing the syntax of a programming
language or two and some basic UNIX. I've seen some self-taught programmers do
amazing things. But for most jobs that are actually technically innovative,
you're going to have to sit down and learn some stuff about algorithms, data
structures, concurrency, and so on. (This is what I shall snobistically call
"real CS".)

Fortunately, even "real CS" can, with lots of motivation, be learned outside
of formal academia. I would recommend you start with Structure and
Interpretation of Computer Programs (the book and three different series of
free video lectures are on the net for free). In fact, even if your goal is
just to understand the techies, SICP is probably still about as good as it
gets, and the old Abelson and Sussman video lectures are quite amusing. Other
great resources are ArsDigita University and OpenCourseWare.

~~~
davidw
"Computer Science is an unusually accessible field of engineering for self-
learners"

Isn't it ever! If you all will pardon me for going on a bit more about my site
squeezed books, one of the things that is very frustrating about trying to
learn something about business, economics, and marketing is that you realize
there is this gaping hole in on-line resources compared to what I know and
love - computers, where you can do everything on your own.

~~~
corentin
I'm learning economics, marketing and business as well and there _are_ good
resources online (although, that's true, I'm reading a few books as well, but
it's the same for computer stuff in fact).

Among the resources I know and use are:

 _Paul Graham's essays, like many people here (I prefer reading them on paper
anyway, but all of them are available on his website);

_ Joel Spolsky's blog (joelonsoftware.com) used to have very good articles
(lately it's not as good as it used to be); he had the best of them published,
too.

 _Eric Sink's blog (software.ericsink.com); great articles on marketing and
business for geeks.

_ There are good articles about the basics of business in the Trizoko online
business journal: <http://www.trizle.com/trizoko>

_On changethis.com you'll find a lot of great PDFs on business subjects (very
good resource; there is good stuff by Seth Godin here)

_ For economics, I'm reading the work of Frédéric Bastiat, available online
here: bastiat.org.

~~~
weel
Good old Bastiat... That's definitely fairly remote from "mainstream"
economics these days, although there is a lot of sense to the proposition that
the works of the classical economists are more practically useful than the
abstract modeling you'd learn as an economics major. If you nonetheless want,
for whatever reason, to learn something akin to the modern standard
microeconomics curriculum, albeit with a good deal more game theory thrown in,
I can recommend the free (Creative Commons!) textbook by Preston McAfee at
<http://www.introecon.com>

------
Zak
I assume you're wondering what you need to know in order to be able to
communicate with and judge the skill level of hackers. The former isn't too
hard. Most hackers are happy to start by explaining the basics if you have no
clue what they're talking about. Exactly what details you need to understand
depends on what you're working on. You should understand the overall concepts
behind the design of your product.

For a non-hacker to judge the skill of a hacker is nearly impossible - it's
hard enough for hackers to do it. PG discusses it at length:
<http://paulgraham.com/gh.html>

------
tuukkah
Could you explain a bit more? If there are no hackers in your startup, you
need to learn it all, not just some skills. If there are hackers in your
startup, they can do it without you.

If you want to start your long journey to become a hacker and less annoying to
your co-founders ;-) there's at least <http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-
howto.html>

~~~
Mistone
right, I'm mostly looking to gain mid level of proficiency in some of the
front end areas to be a more well rounded leader. While there is a lot of
stuff I do not really want to learn, having the skills to create live mockups
and make tweaks on my own will save a ton of time as well as give me more
control of the final look/feel/function of the product.

~~~
tuukkah
<http://www.uie.com/articles/prototyping_tips/>

Perhaps your team can introduce you to the basic architecture and syntax of
the web framework they've chosen, as well as the everyday version control and
deployment steps.

------
litepost
There's always Academy X in San Francisco, and related courses/institutions
around the world (especially the US):

<http://www.academyx.com/training/san_francisco/programs/web-developer/>

LAMP in 3 months for $2000. (Sounds about right to me?)

@Zak & @pg: "For a non-hacker to judge the skill of a hacker is nearly
impossible - it's hard enough for hackers to do it. PG discusses it at length:
[http://paulgraham.com/gh.html"](http://paulgraham.com/gh.html)

This isn't necessarily/always true. A person can always be judged by their
prior work, as in any other field. The actual quality of the "hacking" may be
difficult to discern, but the overall quality of the product/s should
typically be visible rather easily/immediately.

If someone's built a product that works and/or sells reasonably, that's
usually a good sign!!

------
Mistone
Has anyone taken a course from O'Rielly Univ:
[http://oreillyschool.com/?CMP=ILC-
KW1330595132&ATT;=learningjune](http://oreillyschool.com/?CMP=ILC-
KW1330595132&ATT=learningjune)

