
Instead of Learn to Code, Learn to Hack Sh** Together - jprocopio
https://medium.com/@jproco/instead-of-learn-to-code-learn-to-hack-sh-together-661cca89a6e0
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diegoperini
Am I the only one who opposes this? Of course "learn to code" and don't brag
about it once you can.

Mathematicians don't brag when they do arithmetics, and they never, ever
advise each other that arithmetics is useless. Lawyers don't brag when they
read and write long text documents, and it is a useless idea to dismiss the
importance of such patience. There is no a few hours quicker way to do a heart
surgery for a surgeon even if she is so used to doing it.

Please, for the love of your craft, accept that it is OK for some things to
stay difficult.

In the context of this article, if you are not gonna learn how to code, then
make someone who can a stakeholder of the project. Or maybe consult to a
professional!

In my experience, someone who can't do a "Hello HTTP" in at least one language
will simply get lost in the huge dashboard of AWS or any other similar cloud
service. Even when your solution doesn't involve novel technology, sticking
existing components to each other will require coding skills. You don't want
to paralyse your dev schedule due to a never ending SQL query which is quite
likely to happen to a newbie "hacker". "Undefined is not a function" can mean
48294839 different things, which will scare you to death if you don't know
what you are doing.

~~~
jprocopio
Totally get your point. To be clear, I'm not against learn to code.

If your goal is to become a tech entrepreneur, then yes, learn to code.

If not, and if you're coming from zero, chase your idea down with HST to prove
it's viable before spending all that learning curve time coding it.

~~~
azdacha
Then it's all throw away because noting makes sense, nobody understood what he
has been doing, and a proper company that would have to host, manage and
maintain the said software would simply ask to re-build the said soft from
scratch because it would be cheaper.

These people would have better time building up sweet and clean prototypes ;
at least they would have a professional competency at the end.

Because yes, hacking shit together is not a job. Those little hackers that
existed 10 years ago all went on to college to learn architecture and what not
and are now recruited either for data job, management, or devops / security.

I get the point, I passed trough this "phase" ; but let me be clear :
everybody told me it was pure bullshit and shitty software.

Iterate on architecture rather than feature. At some point you gotta be lucid
about what you are doing, and hacking sh*t together doesn't help you master
the service you are going to expose.

ps : Hacking stuff together is still a lot of fun for newbs or "fun" prototype
; nothing professional or client worthy can get out of this kind of mess.

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LandR
Most professional developers don't really learn to code, they actually just
learn to hack shit together.

~~~
jprocopio
Ha! Love it. There are degrees of course. I used to be a coder, now I'm a
professional Hack Shit Togetherer.

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Kagerjay
Getting access to developers is not hard. It's not even that expensive to
build an MVP in most cases, you can find great quality outside the states.
Just go on upwork (or similar). If you don't have the skills qualified hire
someone to do it.

If you want to build something quick with no knowledge - learn to market,
hire, vet, document, and delegate tasks effectively. The fastest way to learn
this is through case studies on upwork IMO in tandem with a course on
outsourcing. Search open jobs, filter by amount paid + number of reviews, you
can see what someone who has spent $100k+ on the site vs someone who's spent
$0. This information is all public. You can come across some really
interesting case studies/data, e.g. how Disney analyzes ride wait times with
actual data, or how mechanical turk is used for UX feedback.

You can leverage conversations between different developers to learn insights
about things you need to do. It's similar to this - you have a terminal
illness, you'll want to go to several doctors before choosing one. You weigh
options effectively this way.

In parallel you can always learn to program, so you can communicate and vet
better. And hack shit together on your own. But really you should treat them
as two seperate entities. A top down approach (delegating, hiring for real
world work) and a bottoms up approach (learning to do things via toy
projects). You can take the halfway approach and use prebuilt tools as well
(zapier, wordpress, etc), it just depends what the project scope is.

Pick 2 of 3, do it fast - do it well - do it cheap

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flatfilefan
The author goes quickly to the wishful thinking territory. Save time, hack
software systems together but don’t spend any time learning to code at all.
How to properly work with aws sql api as he proposes when you have no idea
about coding? And as soon as you have at least some coding skills who can say
you didn’t learn to code?

