

Ask HN: Founders from Non-IT/Programming Backgrounds - zengyro

I am curious as to how many web-based startup projects have got off the ground by people whose software development/programming skills were either self-taught or were perhaps spun out of a hobby project.<p>I am never short of ideas, but I would imagine that as a self-taught programmer myself, there must be certain implementation practices that would be obvious to a professional, but not so much to an amateur like me.<p>What are your thoughts?
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eliot_sykes
Many coders start out self-taught like you. I did, and then studied for an IT
degree and got professional work.

Here's a few things that I wasn't exposed to until I studied /turned
professional - maybe some of these are the practices you are talking about?

\- Version Control (Git, CVS, Subversion, etc.)

\- Database design

\- Performance optimization

\- Caching

\- Design Patterns

\- Object oriented design

\- Unit testing

Maybe you know these things already, but not knowing these things isn't going
to stop you, none of those are worth losing sleep over, you'll pick up what
you need on the way.

However, if I had to pick one thing out of that list that I wish I'd
encountered sooner it would be version control.

~~~
pascalchristian
so according to your experience, does going to college and getting an IT
degree worth it? or should non-tech founders self-taught and continue with
their startups anyway?

~~~
imp
I'm not the OP, but I'd recommend reading Founders At Work. I can't remember
any specific examples, but I'm pretty sure that there's a mix of both self-
taught and traditional CS founders who have been successful.

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apowell
I'm self-taught -- bought Frontpage in 1998 and a PHP/MySQL book from
Sitepoint a couple years later and did all the examples. Building a successful
web business has very little to do with how well you know the newest
languages, fanciest design patterns, or fastest algorithms. Those
considerations are way, way far behind 1) does it work 2) is it usable and 3)
did I ship it?

Things that were non-obvious to me in the beginning: version control, database
normalization, query optimization, and the importance of reliable
infrastructure and testing your backups.

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hga
My advice is to read the literature; that's what I did when I quickly realized
the limitations of my initial high school programming class (punched card
FORTRAN IV on an IBM 1130 in 1977).

That plus mentoring by the more experienced for a few years got me to at
journeyman level in less than a decade. More reading, thinking and developing
got me to master about two decades after I started.

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pascalchristian
Wow, I did not read this, I just started a thread very similar to this one. I
am a self-taught coder myself, and since I dont live in Sillicon valley, I
really wonder how is the attitude to non-tech founder in valley? From what I
read in HN it seems that PG hates them with passion; how bout other early
stage investors/VCs?

