Founders who can't code - <AUTHOR> An advise to founders who can't code
If you are a business/idea guy and looking for a technical co founder, stop. Stop right now. Take 6 months off and go learn how to code (day and night, weekends including).
Most web apps do little besides save, show and update data. No, You will NOT become an engineer, programmer, or web developer, but you will be able to put a prototype of your idea together and maybe get one or two beta users for feedback. At this moment it will be much easier to recruit a technical cofounder.
The reason why most technical cofounders can create great products is not because they have a deep domain knowledge or they are great hackers. The reason is (beside passion for the problem) their cost is time. Your cost is money. They can spend one year working after hours to create a product. Can you pay someone for one year to create a product? They can fail 23 times and still find time to build their next idea. Can you convince your best friend to work on your 4th idea, when the previous 3 failed?
Here is the thing, 1 year from now, you will still have plenty ideas. But are you going to have ideas and the ability to implement them (or parts of the solution), or are you going to post one of those "Revolutionary Disrupting Idea  with potential to make millions. Need Someone to build. Will give 15 % of revenue".
Stop and go learn. Worst case scenario, your future technical founder will respect you for trying, and you in return will truly appreciate their skills.
Note 1: If your idea is to build something truly technically challenging, then scratch my advice.
Note 2: Off course all the above would mean little if I wasn't the marketer/business/idea/support/whatever guy who spent the past few months learning. Email me if you are learning, maybe we can keep each other motivated. <comment><USER5> _You will NOT become an engineer, programmer, or web developer, but you will be able to put a prototype of your idea together and maybe get one or two beta users for feedback..._

You will also be able to have an intelligent conversation with a developer.

I get sad whenever I encounter a business person with no technical bullshit filter. Not because I'm judging them, but because if I can bullshit them, any other developer can. Which probably means there's a problem somewhere that will hurt all of us.

I'll make a point to have a cursory understanding of financial statements, market segmentation, and project management if you do the same for the basic building blocks of software applications. Then the two of us will be able to talk about almost anything. OK?

<comment><USER6> +1 on this.

If you learn enough to do a bad job building your prototype, you will learn what you don't know. Right now you don't even know what you don't know.

Also, you can't hire someone for a job you know nothing about. Doing (even a poor) job on your prototype will teach you to evaluate a technical co-founder.

<comment><USER7> That's one scenario.

The other is you muddle through, learn a bit and do an OK job pulling together the prototype. Sure it doesn't look exactly right but you can log in, see some records, make some updates and it's all fine in demos and pitches - <USER2> you've even stuck it on the web for friends to poke and prod.

You now think it's all straight forward and you're nearly there. The whole this isn't secure, is held together with sticky tape, updates aren't transactional so when something does go wrong the data is left in a mess, it has no error handling or referential integrity and won't scale beyond half a dozen users which is all it's ever had to put up with as a prototype but you've only been coding for six months so you hardly understand that these problems even exist let alone understand what's involved in solving them.

Personally I really really don't want to be the tech lead who has to then deal with someone who knows way less than they think and is being told that the thing needs to be rewritten and by doing so is not only delivering bad news but is also having to criticise the persons own personal work.

Some CEOs will benefit from this sort of knowledge, others will be damaged by it - there is no simple rule.

<comment><USER8> Some CEOs will benefit from this sort of knowledge, others will be damaged by it - there is no simple rule.

Sure, but that's a pretty good test as to whether or not you should work for them.

<comment><USER7> I see that as an startlingly programmer-centric view of the world. I've worked with some great CEOs and not one of them could code or had any interest in coding. In no instance I have ever experienced have I looked at a CEO, good or bad and thought, the best thing you could do for this company would be to spend six months learning to code.

A good CEO shouldn't have to have every skill used by their organisation and I don't see how coding is any different to accounting, legal, sales or any other skills in this respect.

The mark of a good CEO is to be able to build good teams, be trusting enough to let them do the work they need to and smart enough to see when the wool is being pulled over their eyes.

If you need to be able to code to trust your developers, you've either got the wrong developers or a trust problem, neither of which are likely to be solved by programming.

<comment><USER9> You're missing the point here, I think, which is that _if_ a founder (not the same thing as a CEO necessarily...) puts a few months into learning the basics of coding and attempting to build a rough prototype, they may end up:

1) with a greater appreciation of the talent/experience required for good development, a better BS detector arond technical issues, and a stronger understanding of what they don't know OR

2) a false impression that proof-of-concept = product and an over-inflated idea of what they've learned.

I definitely agree that founder #2 here is someone to be avoided. Not because either one of them would be expected to contribute to the actual development, but because founder #2 is showing flaws of perception, ego, etc. that are serious red flags, and will affect their execution of non-development tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a big difference between the HN stereotype and "real" business people. REAL non-technical co-founders:

\- Can raise funding and know funders well

\- Have a massive network of people to tap into

\- Can cold-call like no-one's business

\- Know how to negotiate a deal to the point of paranoia

\- Have deep domain experience and connections

\- Make plans for the future, but can pivot on a dime

\- Can talk enough tech to understand well beyond buzzwords

\- Know how to keep themselves and the tech side accountable

\- Let the tech side concentrate on what they do best

<comment><USER11> All those things are awesome after you have a product and or money to hire.

The people the comment was targeting were "idea people" who I must conclude are useless without any muscle/blood/sweat to turn an idea into a product.

<comment><USER12> This claim is the reason so many developers work their asses off to make something, only to realize that no one wants to buy it. You do customer development before you build the product, not after. Step 1: find need, step 2: find out if people will pay $ for it, step 3: make it.

"Real" business people are very good at steps 1 & 2\. It's not fair to call them "idea people" if they have useful executional skills to make those things happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> FWIW Jason Fried, one of the original founders of 37signals, still doesn't know how to program ([http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2540-no-more-drive-by- teachin...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2540-no-more-drive-by-teaching)) but that obviously hasn't prevented the company from being a success. But then 37signals started off as a web design firm, and he had the good fortune to hire DHH.

<comment><USER14> I think Fried is sharp enough to identify talent and bullshit anyway, so he overcame the necessity of this advice through that and the fact that the above advice isn't entirely applicable to his case.

<comment><USER15> Nope this isn't accurate. It's true, but it's not accurate. You have to remember Fried is a web designer. So while he can't design, he _has_ had experience working on things, launching things, talking to developers. And he's willing to put his money where his mouth is - he hired DHH to work on Basecamp, but only after he asked around, looking for help in learning to try to code it himself.

<comment><USER16> I saw Fried speak at Chicago CocoaHeads, a very technically skilled audience, about two years ago. His presentation was almost entirely a sales pitch for 37signals products, which I thought was very condescending and a missed opportunity.

<comment><USER17> I think you have me confused with someone else. I haven't spoken at a Chicago CocoaHeads conference.

<comment><USER16> MEETING: Chicago CocoaHeads / CAWUG Tuesday Jan. 13th, 2009 Agenda: - <USER3> Apple Store Presentation: Jason Fried, founder of 37 Signals - adjournment to O'Toole's When: Tuesday, January 13th, 7:00 PM Where: Apple Store Michigan Avenue 679 North Michigan Ave. (at the corner of Huron & Michigan Ave.)

(Everyone in the audience was a developer.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was working with a business partner on a startup a while back, and what really impressed me was their prototype, consisting of a 'database' of static pages, and updates done manually using the forms-to-email system.

The fact that they had a functional prototype, regardless of how horrible the technical implementation was, showed me that they were serious and I'd be able to communicate technical aspects to them much easier.

The takeaway is that you don't even need to learn to code to get that far, even WordPress with the right plugins can build a convincing prototype and quickly show a proof of concept to a technical developer that can take it from there.

<comment><USER19> Exactly! Idea guys are pretty good at getting mockups and stuff done, showing off the ideas. They can pitch it and make it impressive.

<comment><USER20> Y'know, us developers are also "ideas guys" in addition to being developers.

<comment><USER21> It seems like the pervailing thought is that developers are not the same as the idea guys, but I can't for the life of me understand why not.

marknutter is 100% correct. I can't imagine founding a startup that had a non- developer "idea guy."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I know this is a popular opinion here, but I couldn't disagree more. You're saying that it's good for everyone to try to learn to code. Far from it. Some people are just not cut out to be coders, they suck at it, they hate doing it, and they don't WANT to do it. More than half of my intro CS class was just like that, and they dropped out.

If you're a non-technical founder, and have money, it's perfectly ok for you to hire a developer or a team to implement your idea (full disclosure - I run a company that does that, link in profile) instead of learning how to program yourself. Here's a very good article by Derek Sivers on steps you could take to make that happen: <http://sivers.org/how2hire>

<comment><USER7> I agree.

I'd almost argue that it can be a bad thing - I've lost count of the number of times I've been stitched up by someone with a small level of knowledge who extrapolated incorrectly from it. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing as often as it can be useful and in 6 months that's all you're going to get (actually in six months coming from nothing you're going to know way less than most graduates and how many people consider that a decent skill level?).

Good founders should bring intelligence and an ability to learn quickly to the table, they should be willing to trust the experts they hire, but I think saying that they should be able to program is a very programmer centric view and no more valid than the sales guy saying you should go sell for 6 months, or the account saying you should be a book keeper for 6 months.

Sure these things are useful but it's perfectly possible to be successful without it and I'd suggest that it wouldn't be close to the best use of 6 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This isn't accurate. Most of this is true, but not for the reasons the thread author gave in his piece.

Why should a business/non-technical founder learn to code? The answer to this is simple: so that you have better ideas. Or, put another way: learning to code gives you the ability to _implement_ your ideas. And implementing your ideas forces you to recognize, after some time, what works and what doesn't.

Hackers who start their own projects tend to have a framework in their heads for figuring out which ideas are good/may work, and which ideas won't. And they know this because they've failed enough times to figure out what isn't good for a project. Whereas most business 'wantrepreneurs' I know don't have that. They don't have that because they've never implemented anything, and so how do they know if their idea's a good one or not?

It's interesting to note that you don't have to learn to program to get this framework in your head. Learning to program is simply the most efficient (and cheapest!) way of doing it. Prominent counter-examples come to mind: Steve Jobs never really learned to code, but he grew up in the valley, and chose to mix around with hackers (Malcolm Gladwell, in his book _Outliers_ points out that as a teenager Jobs approached the CEO of HP to ask for parts). So it's probably safe to assume Jobs absorbed such a framework by osmosis - <USER4> enough time around people who make product and you begin to see for yourself what works, and what doesn't.

Jason Fried has also been brought up in this HN thread. And I suspect that it's no different for him: Fried is no programmer (though he's a web designer). But he was willing to pay people to implement his ideas. He paid DHH, after all, to build Basecamp. And that's another hack - you don't need programming ability to learn the framework - in this particular case all you need is implementation (which you can pay for). And if the project fails, you learn from it. Either way you gain things to add to your internal framework. (Derek Sivers also springs to mind - he hired contract programmers to build CDBaby, if I'm not mistaken).

Gaining that framework for sussing out ideas is likely to be the most important reason a non-technical founder should learn to code. Because it's going to help in so many little ways - you learn to detect technical bullshit, you gain a feel for what features to implement when and why, you attract better programming talent - because how else are you able to attract co- founders if you reek of incompetence and/or naivety?

<comment><USER23> Nop, the less you know of a system the more you can think out of it. Which is a big part of innovation.

<comment><USER15> Justify your assertion. Because otherwise this would the most ridiculous defense of ignorance that I have ever seen.

<comment><USER24> Groupthink + confirmation bias = arrogance and selective blindness

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wrote a blog post related to this yesterday. I agree with the author 100%. I can't remember how many times some business guy tried to pitch me on some stupid idea without an inkling of knowledge about programming or how the web works. The worst part is that they generally have no money either. If you have a good idea with some idea of how to implement it and a clear vision, you may be able to sell me. If you have a half-assed idea and are just trying to jump on the internet millions bandwagon because you think it doesn't involve real work, go to hell.

<comment><USER26> Could you update your profile with contact information (the email address field is not public). I'd love to read the post you described. It sounds like I've recently came to the exact same conclusion, except I'm actually the business guy who used to pitch stupid ideas (ah the naivety).

<comment><USER25> Updated profile with a link to my blog. It's less of a fully thought out post and more of a rant/anecdote. Enjoy regardless :)

<comment><USER26> Thanks, a rant indeed. I remember seeing this blog posted somewhere a few days ago, best of luck! I can definitely relate to your "F __* it, I'm just going to do it" attitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So the reason is to 1\. Create a prototype, and 2\. Get respect from developers.

Re: #2—Let's reverse this, specifically for marketing.

Developers (and pretty much anyone) who know a little marketing can be _harder_ to work with than those that believe they don't understand it. They over-rely on cliches and stereotypes without realizing it.

And what about the scenario where you end up with a person with limited technical knowledge micro-managing a tech worker? Not a good thing.

Re: #1—I find creating mock-ups shows functionality more accurately and in much, much less time than creating working prototypes.

I'm a business/marketing guy who loves coding. I usually avoid it because it's incredibly time-consuming to do even half-assed well, and you can re-use little of what you learn when it's just a one-off experience to creating something to show. (I realize that if you are always learning and creating things, your experience builds in more reusable ways.)

</comment><comment><USER28> "Can you convince your best friend to work on your 4th idea, when the previous 3 failed?"

Any business/idea guy worth his/her salt will have more than one great idea. This is why I am learning how to code; so I don't have to go through all the trouble to get a technical cofounder every time I come up with an idea I really like. This way I can build a prototype and be a lot more credible when I approach people to work with me.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think this is a very common problem in any business. If I want to start a restaurant, and I'm a "business guy" I could maybe try to find a "chef" co- founder, which many people obviously do when they start restaurants, however if I know little to nothing about the culinary arts, food preparation, and what kind of cuisines matter to people in a specific area, my "skills" as a business person are of limited utility and give me no competitive advantage over the dozens of other restaurants in the area I'm trying to start one in.

This very same pattern is the same in many other industries, not just software. But I couldn't agree more. Know your domain knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER30> Peter Theil, co-founder of Paypal, would probably disagree. In the book Founders at Work, you'll find that many co-founders of large, valuable companies claim that having another co-founder understand the business side was invaluable. (Note: I'm not trying to stick up for them because I'm a business guy; I'm a coder guy.)

<comment><USER31> That's true, but it's not like learning to code a little makes all your business knowledge fall out of your head. And the point of learning to code isn't that you'll now be the CTO, it's because founding a successful tech company is hard, let alone founding one when you don't know the difference between Java and Javascript. You can still be the business guy, but now you understand at least a little of the core of your business. Not to mention that if you're just a business guy with an idea and no money, few good developers will be interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I did this as well - I quit my job, started reading Ruby books and wrote the Alpha version of Pikimal.com. I did this because I'd been the CMO at another start-up where I'd really not understood the dev process well enough and had thought that it had real costs so I have a pretty good sense of the benefits.

We're pretty busy, so let me cut to the chase:

The good: I'm credible to our tech folks. I understand when to slow down to integrate a library, and I'm more than willing to find time to re-factor. I learned that pair programming can be awesome, that bringing on new people slows you down, and a lot of other things that probably seem obvious to technical folks but are non-intuitive when you imagine software as assembling widgets.

The bad: Ultimately, we gave up 3-5 months that we could have been hiring, fund-raising, and building software. On balance, I think that this was good for me and bad for this start-up.

The ugly: As soon as I'd hired people, I think that we should have thrown out most of the code I'd written. We kept it because it worked and was fairly fast, but I'd made A LOT of newbie mistakes that have slowed things down.

So, tl;dr? I'd suggest learning to code but I'm not sure that you should do it for your current start-up. At the very least launch something more sophisticated than a CRUD app and THEN get started on your small biz.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've gotta say I really do disagree, the reason we do business/idea/marketing is because that's what we ENJOY and are PASSIONATE about. I believe that that's what's most important, being passionate, and enjoying what you're doing.

And frankly, I can only code for so long before getting bored, and losing interest. But when I'm marketing, brainstorming partnerships, and discussing potential leads with a company -- i'm in my element, and loving it. I never get tired of it.

<comment><USER33> I don't want to sound harsh, but that's at least in part because talk is cheap - everyone enjoys talking and brainstorming, but at some point you have to put your head down, get your hands dirty, and get through that last 10% of work that invariably takes 90% of the time.

There's nothing wrong with what you enjoy doing - it's very valuable to have someone good at it - but there is a difference between a good sales/marketing guy and a good founder, just like there's a difference between a good programmer and a good founder.

<comment><USER19> So you're saying that doing hardcore marketing and biz-dev isn't 'putting your head down'? If a fantastic technical founder programs a fantastic app, but no one finds out about it, what value is it? It needs to be in the hands of users!

I believe that it's just as valuable (i'm not going to say 'if not more')

<comment><USER34> I think true sales _is_ 'putting your head down'; cold calling is at least as manly as debugging Ruby. But I think "biz-dev" is often, well, spinning bullshit fantasies, putting them into powerpoints with nice colors, and calling it work. Not always, but often.

I guess that's why proven coders and proven commission salespeople (and proven accountants) can always find jobs, while "big picture" folks are left unemployed, wondering why companies can't see their brilliance. Or, if they're lucky, they sue Zuckerberg because he was able to do make an actual product which never got past the great-idea-over-beer phase for them.

(Ducks...)

<comment><USER35> What you say isn't _wrong_ here, but it's one-eyed.

Specifically, it's much more true in consumer than B2B. In B2B, biz dev is building partnerships, channels, distribution, obtaining resources you need at prices you can afford, all that good stuff. It's the absolute engine of your business.

If you're writing a B2C app, doesn't matter about the platform, then what biz is there to dev? In a similar sense, you need marketers, not salesmen, because your problem is getting a call-to-action out to your potential market as effectively and efficiently as possible. You can't do that door-to-door at scale.

But if you're doing enterprise software, the converse is true. You need biz dev to shape your proposition, and you need a sales force to go and hammer down doors and melt the copper in the phonelines.

Different problems, different solutions, different solvers, that's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Note 3: Don't do this if, after a week, you don't _like_ coding. You'll go insane.

</comment><comment><USER37> I strongly disagree. Learn code if you are interested, but what ill advice is that you have to learn code?! Consider your advice from a designer perspective, should founders/coders learn design because "worst case scenario, your future designer partner will respect you for trying, ...". The same goes for scaling, you should stop and learn how to scale if you're a front-end developer because the reasons you gave?

</comment><comment><USER38> Honestly, I can't see what the fuss is about. There are plenty of examples of successful companies with founders who could all code, or a mix, and even a couple instances where no founders could code.

Do these sweeping generalizations do any good? No doubt, it helps to know at least some coding in this business, but isn't that just common sense? And even if someone disagreed with that sentiment, would they take this to heart anyway?

This is one thing that bothers me about HN. There is a lot of advice here that seems to be just that. I love checking out people's work, the sharing of actual trials and tribulations, and learning about developments in the industry; but you know what they say about opinions and assholes... everybody has them.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't think the standard CRUD web app is necessarily what will make an exciting startup. That would more likely be some new twist.

Also, I can feel with business types who say it doesn't make sense for them to learn coding. In a way I am in a similar situation, as I am constantly extremely hampered by my lack of design skills. Should I try to become a designer? I admit to trying now and them (decided today to go through the inkscape tutorials, bought the occasional book on design), but honestly, odds are very low that I'll be able to compete with real designers. And the graphics design takes away much needed time from coding.

<comment><USER40> When you strip away the scalability infrastructure, isn't Twitter just a CRUD app? For some people they would seem to epitomize an "exciting startup".

<comment><USER39> The problem is that without the scalability infrastructure, it doesn't work. Although to be fair, the Twitter people probably didn't know that in the beginning, either.

So you could have built a crappy prototype, true. However, while Twitter is an exciting startup, a Twitter clone is not (anymore).

Granted, you might be able to build the occasional CRUD prototype for something that could become an interesting startup. I doubt it is true for all kinds of startups, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Thanks for posting this. As a entrepreneur I couldn't agree more with your opinion. Previously although I work in a technology field, I was pretty functional. That is, my knowledge of coding began and ended at SQL and HTML. But on the same note, years of doing custom applications with developer teams educated me on the 'lingo' and what could and could not be done (at least, not easily).

Over the past year, we had many 'business' persons who offered to help out, and while that was awesome, what we really needed was qualified technical people. For a 'business' person, one can usually get an unpaid college intern and not have to sacrifice any shares in the company.

Also, I think as functional person you are somewhat "over the barrel" if your developers dont perform, and can do nothing except complain. I do believe it's better overall if you can build your own product. At the end of the day, we decided to educate our own team in Ruby/Rails rather than bring in outside developers. I think this was a smart decision, and also a more cost effective solution.

I definitely suggest other start ups do the same.

</comment><comment><USER42> Interesting that the threads in here actually are more vocal than I expected behind the non-tech guys. Helps that jasonfried, a prime counter-example to this post, weighed in himself.

My take on it is simple: I passed this article along to my co-founder as a token of appreciation. See, he started along the way without any coding experience. He taught himself (with some pushes in the right direction) how to program, design, and even do some database stuff. He's decent at it, but that isn't necessarily what matters. What matters is now I have someone to discuss things with, someone who understands at least the basics (and has basic experience) with different design stuff. That's not only helpful for productivity, but morale as well.

So, yeah, maybe learning to code isn't a requirement for a guy who can do everything nickpinkston listed. But, as the technical guy, it sure as hell makes my life better. So here's to you, jonesy!

</comment><comment><USER43> I disagree with, "Note 1: If your idea is to build something truly technically challenging, then scratch my advice." If you want to build something technically challenging, you absolutely must learn the basics of whatever field it's in. You will not make a prototype this way, but you will be able to talk to someone who can without sounding like an idiot. You should study until you can prove that your idea is "challenging" rather than infeasible.

As a corollary, be weary of AI. If you are solving a problem with AI that you don't understand, assume the AI won't work.

On another note, maybe the real advice should just be "pick an easier project." I have a technical background but consider myself a hybrid business/hacker going forward. My current project is highly technical; I don't think I'd consider taking on a co-founder who didn't have some tech background.

</comment><comment><USER44> Instead of taking time off to do this, I'm doing it on the fly while my startup is up and running. I fought this fight for just about 2 years, outsourcing much of our web development during that time. And I don't regret outsourcing - it can get you up and running faster than learning, especially if you're building something that borders on complex. But in the end, we really needed to start bringing things in-house, from both the standpoints of protecting our IP as well as enabling us to become more nimble in terms of making changes on the fly etc.

We haven't completely weened off outsourced web development, but I can now see a path to get there, and it all started by learning how to become more self- sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've been doing web marketing for about 8 years now (SEO, PR, product, SEM, viral etc) and I'm currently the CMO of a great small internet company... and I completely agree with you. Even if you're not going to strike off and start a company within the next year, you'll still be able to understand basic structure and constraints of programming. I've done this myself (with decent, yet limited success) by taking advantage of the free Harvard course offered at CS75.tv Watch the lectures (they're entertaining), do the projects and if you catch up now you can even participate & interact with the class... democratization of knowledge at its best.

</comment><comment><USER46> Note 1 is pretty important. If you're non-technical how do you know if your idea is technically challenging or not? In many cases you don't, even technical people often misjudge how challenging and idea can get.

If it is challenging, you get too deep into code, things take too long, get discouraged, etc.. Or settle for some gimmick that you can execute within a reasonable timeframe.

It's a good theory, but it assumes that non-technical people will try ideas that are minor improvements over existing ideas, like twitter, groupon clones. But they may also read up on magic new tech and come up with ideas based on that, not knowing how hard they'll be to prototype.

</comment><comment><USER47> I also got sick of feeling like just an ideas person, so I've been trying to follow this advice for the last 2 months. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

I started with Python, using a combo of MIT OCW, Learn Python the Hard Way, and How to Think Like a Computer Scientist. I then started going through an online course on dynamic websites that touches on HTML, CSS, PHP, XML, MySQL, Ajax, and Javascript. I've been using w3schools.com and the online manuals to learn more about these.

Does this make any sense? Should I try to learn more Python? If so, which resources should I use? Are these all worth my time? Am I missing anything?

<comment><USER48> I'm in the same boat, a little further down the river. Also started with MIT OCW and How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (in addition to the O'Reilly Python book).

Best thing for me was to escape the textbook-like examples (quadratic equations, rock paper scissors) and actually [attempt to] build real things. Once you have cursory Python knowledge, pick up "Practicel Django Projects" -- you'll build a working CMS by page 28 and feel really good about yourself. By the end of that book I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable I was writing other programs, even if I am slow as hell and have a reference book open in my lap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't know any developers so I have to learn to code myself. I also have not business related experience so that's a double whammy. But I can generate good ideas like a mofo.

While building my prototype I mostly feel like I have no idea what I'm doing but slowly and surely my site's starting to function, grow and work. Its amazing what persistence can accomplish.

I realize I'll have to find a technical co-founder eventually though. I won't be able to hack together a smoothly running and awesome site on my own. I also have no idea where to look for a technical co-founder and how to approach them. Interesting times ahead.

</comment><comment><USER50> I agree with this so much. Taking the time to learn, just the basics, will save you so much money. Even if you never implement the final project it will leave you in a much better place to negotiate. And if your a coder, take the time to learn about online marketing, same principals apply.

Whatever other skill set you have above all learn to write, if you can write you can express yourself, you can create a business plan, write a blog and write marketing copy and grow your idea on the cheap.

Sean <http://seanclark.com>

</comment><comment><USER51> Ughh. I really wish topics like this didn't exist. Every situation is different.

I haven't touched code in 15 years, but I understand web technologies, constraints, possibilities, etc. People love our product and UI. I own the product roadmap and UI direction - have since the beginning. I write the specs, I do the wireframes, I refine UI, etc.

Why would I learn to code? What impact does it have on my business? I have 10 engineers who are extraordinary.

Every time I see this argument, I cringe.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm that founder learning how to code right now and I couldn't agree more with you.

Been hacking away for a 1-2 months so far with a friend who is a developer. It's totally worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, Malandrew. It always helps to have someone to help you go through it. Email me sometimes, we can update each other every now and then on our progress. Cheers,

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Its a really fascinating tell, when programmers think that the solution to a given problem is that everyone become programmers.

</comment><comment><USER54> I think in general it is far easier for a programmer to quite productively spend a day on web design (steal/copy), building a nice user interface, some copywriting or attracting funding; then it is for the non-programmer to spend a day on making software.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's sad you can't team up with people to create a greater product while you do your business work/innovation/generalistic work/legal/accounting etc. etc. you know the stuff a business man should do.

I'm in the same situation as you. Maybe you lack the business man part?

</comment><comment><USER55> True! Usually people run around looking for co-founders and they look like people saying, "Build this for me, and hey you are a co-founder that means I don't pay you. Your time is at risk not mine."

And there is no way they can get a co-fonder that way, anyways.

</comment><comment><USER56> Yes, as others mentioned, there are good tools to rapidly prototype things, and using them shows you are resourceful and committed.

If you really can't do that, at least put in the time to create a detailed spec.

</comment><comment><USER57> I disagree with the above post. Engineering offshore resources are cheap. If anything learn elements of good UI design. Design elements will cause you failure more often then coding.

</comment><comment><USER58> I think that's inline with Derek Sivers history (as told on TechZing) <http://techzinglive.com/?p=443>

</comment><comment><USER59> Great points. Thank you.

It is better to learn the task yourself, before hiring the person on that task. I believe this mantra works in most situations in a start up.

</comment><comment><USER8> So what would your advice be to someone who could, once upon a time, code (COBOL, C) but hasn't written anything in ~15 years?

</comment><comment><USER60> Turn it around: if you only know how to code, stop right now. Take 6 months and learn how to market/deal/plan.

</comment><comment><USER61> If I were to start a clinic, do I need to learn medicine?

</comment><comment><USER62> advice for coders who can't found: have an idea, learn to talk to people.

now we can all be single founders.

</comment><comment><USER41> cofounder learning to code! agree absolutely!

</comment><comment><USER63> I disagree. Time is money. But which opportunity cost is greater? Do you have access to more time or do you have access to more money?

If your primary skillset is in business, marketing, or sales, stick with that. Don't deviate from your specialization.

<comment><USER64> If you're applying for a job, then I agree.

If you're founding a startup, then a business guy needs to be able to clearly and quickly communicate with the developer(s).

<comment><USER63> One needs to clearly and quickly communicate requirements.

<comment><USER65> just a list of requirements doesn't cut it. There are a lot of ways to fill in requirements, a lot of bad ones and very few good ones. When you ask an author to write a 500 page roman about some dramatic lovestory you have written down in a 5 page requirement document, there are still a lot of things that will be unclear when he is writing it. When the author hits an unknown he can send you an email, make an assumption or call a meeting. 1 and 3 breaks his workflow, 2 doesn't.

now speed this proces up a 100 times faster and you've got a programmer in the 'zone' with a 5 page requirement list for a fairly complex project. It won't end very well unless you have very short communication lines for the entire duration of the project (or the programmer is reading your mind)

<comment><USER7> Here's another idea. Instead of saying that the only way someone could possibly communicate with a developer is on the developer's terms by learning to program, why not employ developers who can communicate with non-developers?

Yes it's important to create the best possible working environment for a programmer and give them the best information, but in this example the founder / CEO / visionary is actually the scarce resource and the aim should be to get him working as effectively as possible. Six months of his time to learn to program is a huge and expensive (in opportunity terms) commitment when part of that should be picked up by the programmer spending time filling in the gaps.

It's not how you get the most out of the programmer that matters, it's how you get the most out of the whole team and sometimes that's going to involve individuals having to work in ways which are to them non-optimal.

<comment><USER65> I suppose it depends on the main expenses of the companies, optimizing programmer workflow is a very good idea in a tech-centric environment because its a major part of your operational costs. However, if the quality of the technology is not an important business driver then I suppose you can afford to be average about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> If your a hack what are you doing reading hacker news? jj :-)</comment>


I Didn't Want To Lean Out - <AUTHOR> http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/i-didn-t-want-to-lean-out

<comment><USER2> I can't believe things are still like this.

Back in the 1950s, my mother had to put up with being told "women don't belong in math". By a professor. I had presumed that we had moved on since then. It grates on me whenever I hear something like this.

I'm not in that world. I can't do much to fix it. But I hate that this still happens.</comment>


No Clues - <AUTHOR> http://www.unwinnable.com/2013/03/29/no-clues/

<comment><USER2> As someone who had a grandmother with dementia, I can sympathize with this somewhat. She was a strong, feisty lady that I always loved to be with as a child, and it was always hard to spend time with her after she started to lose her mind. It wasn't anything large, but always the little things that got me. Asking me the same question after a few minutes, small changes in personality, etc.

I consider it a blessing to have known her growing up, and am happy to know that she's with the Lord now after having a massive heart attack in a nursing home. I consider it merciful, in a way, that she didn't have to spend many years experiencing "just years" as the post described. (it sounds cruel or oxy-moronic to most to call death a mercy, but it is definitely very different as a Christian)</comment>


Noob to Ninja Programmer. Possible? - <AUTHOR>

Hi. First post here. Please go easy on me! :)
I know nothing about programming. I wouldn't know the difference between Ruby on Rails and Python if it hit me in the face (remember - go easy! ;) )
I'm wondering if it's possible/feasible, for me to teach myself enough programming to start making some software/website prototypes? This is from a starting point of knowing _nothing_ other than a little HTML and having some laymans appreciation of MySQL databases.
Thing is, I feel like a frustrated programmer. My actual training is a PhD in genetics (so I'm not thick, innit!). This is intensely annoying, because I keep having "internet start-up" ideas.
I know my ideas aren't too bad - as most of the time when I start researching them, I realise someone else has recently started the same thing! However, most of them are the sort of thing, where if I could programme (should I be saying "hack"?), I could make it in my spare time and then test its potential. As I can't programme, all I end up doing is getting frustrated - kinda like a burning feeling inside.
I have, kinda by accident, worked as a project manager on the re-design and re-launch of a "business intelligence" tool - essentially a reasonably complicated database with business information in it. I do enjoy all kinds of web-geekery, and I think I have a good appreciation, if not understanding, of the technical aspects of web-apps, web-design, databases and, to a much lesser degree, actual programming.
I'm trying to persuade the programmer, with whom I worked on the above project, to join me in a start-up, but I'm not sure he's that keen. If he doesn't want to do it, I don't know any other programmers and I'm left with these ideas burning a whole in my head.
I just wish I could do it myself. Oh If only I'd been born 10 years later I might have taken an interest in computers as a kid!
So... in your honest opinion, is it possible enough for me to learn in my spare time, enough programming, to make a prototype start-up website? I don't mean some crappy HTML page, but something database-backed with some sophistication. Should I just forget it and try to persuade my programmer friend, or just ditch the ideas altogether? If you think I will just waste a year and then not be able to produce anything do say. I do realise that good programmers have it in their DNA and have been hacking since they were knee-high to a jumpy thing.
If it is feasible, where do I start? I've seen plenty "beginners guides to <<insert language>>" etc., but they are all for people who already code. Not complete noobs off the street!
If it's not possible (which I doubt it is), where does a man with ideaz and no skillz turn? If I had a bunch of cash I would pay someone to create my visions! <comment><USER2> Every programmer started as a 'noob' so it is absolutely possible to do so. The question is how much time you have to devote to it.

It sounds like you really want to do this so I encourage you to try. If I were starting out I would just focus on a single language and not worry so much about a Framework. For example learn Ruby, not RoR. Personally I prefer PHP, but I know Ruby is just so popular.

However, it takes brilliance or years of experience to really be able to build things well. In the short to medium term I think you could expect to build working prototypes on your own, but if you want to build scalable systems fit for users it will be a challenge. That said, the more you know the easier time you will have working with other tech people.

Good luck, Jer

</comment><comment><USER3> It can be done, it depends mostly on how you like to learn. You will never see a lot of hand-holding in programming.

Manuals and references for programming languages tell you about the syntax and major features but demand endless curiosity on your part to answer your own questions. Tutorials may give you how-tos for certain specific problems but usually fail to explain basic concepts. College courses usually give both how- tos and conceptual information but are usually targeted towards the abstract. In all cases you have to provide the "sweat equity" of writing stuff, failing, testing, retrying, etc.

The most well-rounded introductory literature I've seen is in textbooks. Other programming books are aimed at existing programmers that are transitioning to new languages, learning new concepts, etc.

My suggested starter set for someone intending to write web apps would include several textbooks, a book on SQL, the reference to the web language you wish to use(don't fret too much about this, it's almost a coin toss when you haven't tried using any), and a book on web frameworks for your language. The textbooks will often want to use languages that are not popular web languages, but that can be a benefit, as it teaches you what is really different between these languages, and how to focus on the concepts.

You can start by making sense of the things described in the textbooks and rewriting their examples in the language you want to use. Gradually the frameworks will look more approachable and you can start working with the examples in those. At that point - some months down the line - you may be able to get serious about your app.

</comment><comment><USER4> Of course it's possible!

But recognize the uphill battle you are going to have.

To get to the level to be an actual real programmer in an actual real startup producing code that doesn't suck, if you start now, and spend at least 4-5 hours a day every single day coding, and you really happen to be a genius .. optimistically, you will get there in maybe 4-5 years.

The "real" hackers took much longer to get to their skill level .. I would say most start around middle school? Guys you agree? (I started when I was 12) so that was when I was a kid and could sit in front of the computer for 10+ hours straight .. I am guessing as an adult you don't have that much time but you have also the intellectual maturity of an adult so you can get there faster than the kids.

I don't think it's a DNA thing .. although some argue that understanding recursion is a "talent". I think you just have to allow yourself to think in new directions and you can do it.

If you just want to hack out a quick me-too webapp in Rails you won't need that long. it's theoretically possible, if you have a really good idea, for you to come up with a website that works well enough for you to make some money. Then you can hire someone to do the real work.

Just understand what you are asking to do is equivalent in terms of amount of work to the kind of commitment it would take from you to get another phd. If you aren't willing to make that kind of commitment maybe you can trick some programmer to do it for you ..

</comment><comment><USER5> I am going to tell a real story about someone that I know to refute the general conception that "You are too old to learn new tricks".

He is a friend of mine. He was a jazz drummer when he was young and a professional recording engineer. He only has a GED but he has been self educating himself all his life. He masters logical reasoning more that most C.S. students due to his love for philosophy. And he has two kids to raise.

He wanted to learn computer programming and he went to a tech school like Chubbs institute. His first programming language is Cobol at the beginning in 1998. He was close to his 40th birthday then. But he wrote all exercises and was a responsible student. Then he learned C/C++ and all sorts of Microsoft Windows programming skills. He event wrote programs in his spare time just for fulfilling his curiosity about chaos theory, cellular automata and all sort of things. He is now a very excellent software engineer in his 50s in building Windows applications for his employers. Though he is not as well versed in Algorithms like those fresh out of school Ph.D. in CS. But he is capable of fumbling out pretty good algorithms after he worked through some basic algorithms, operating system concepts textbooks and grasped the essentials.

Back to your question: I think it is never too late to learn programming.

But consider your story, you have some business concern I need to address:

So if you have time to spend, you definitely can learn a skill to materialize your vision. But if you really think your idea is a "if you don't do it now then some else will do it sooner or later". Then you may need help from others. The dilemma is you have no idea what others is doing unless you have done it yourself! So you will have higher overhead in communicating out your ideas to others and vice versa. And because you don't know the skill, it will also be hard for you to evaluate your partners.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for the comments guys. Much appreciated.

If I'm honest with myself, I'm probably going to have to accept that everyone has strengths and weaknesses. You have to play to your strengths and find solutions to your weaknesses. My strengths are ideas, passion and a good business sense. My weakness is... well... hacking!

I think I will still give the Ruby a go. I did download "it" a few weeks ago and played with another tutorial. In the meantime, I'll also try to broaden my hackers network!

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's really easy to learn django. Just do the my first django app tutorial and you'll be on your way. Google for _first django app_

It also helps to have a good friend to review your code. And do reviews early and often.

I learned this way and produced my first blog in a weekend, and I was a noob then - about 2 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know this may seem very childish, but give this a shot: <http://poignantguide.net/ruby/>

edit: my contact info's in my profile, don't hesitate to bug me with questions, no matter how silly you might think they sound.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://norvig.com/21-days.html> (with tongue quite near cheek).</comment>


A Review Of Bitcoinin – Bitcoin's Unique Online Retailer - <AUTHOR> http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/27/a-review-of-bitcoinin-bitcoins-unique-online-retailer/

<comment><USER2> It'll be interesting to see if more of these bitcoin only retailers pop up. I know Bitcoin store wasn't quite hitting the revenue they had hoped for.</comment>


Ask HN: Is the Pebble Time Too Far Behind Apple Watch? - <AUTHOR>

I understand that they might serve different customer segments, especially since Apple Watch is not available for Android phones. But I would love to get everyone's thoughts as well. <comment><USER2> I have the old chunky Pebble, and I really like it. It does get a week of battery life, and I can charge it while I'm wearing it (the charger is on the side). It's actively supported and will even get the new "Timeline" interface that's been announced for the new Pebble Time. Oh and it's $100.

They've explicitly positioned themselves as the anti-Apple Watch. [https://web.archive.org/web/20141001213546/https://getpebble...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141001213546/https://getpebble.com/)

Edit: In addition to all that, we haven't even seen the custom sensors third parties will make for the Pebble.

</comment><comment><USER3> TBH, after spending about three months with a Pebble, I'd ask the inverse (not that sales of the Apple Watch won't eclipse the Pebble, event at 17 mil for the Time's kickstarter). I just have some pretty big issues with the app architecture for the Apple Watch.

Every interaction with the Apple Watch apps has to make a round trip to the phone and the workflow for what can happen on the watch has to be figured out design/build time, which kind of limits the things you can do and gives me concerns about latency. These things might not end up being issues, but IMHO, I think Pebble has a lot more potential to do interesting things.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think there are plenty of iOS users that can appreciate week long battery, always on clock face and visibility in strong sun light.

I doubt that sales numbers will be close, but I think there is plenty of room for pebble.

<comment><USER5> I have one, and I actually don't like the week long battery, or at least it isn't actually helpful for me. It's silly really, as I could just as easily charge it every night, but since I don't have to I don't. Then I forget and it eventually runs out. Charging the Apple Watch every night won't be a problem for me. It'll just be a thing I do alongside my phone.

<comment><USER2> The low battery indicator turns on with 20% battery left, that's a whole day to remember to charge it. And it only takes 2 hours for a full charge.

<comment><USER5> and yet if it's in the middle of the day i'm going to dismiss the notification and go on. Since it's not part of the routine, I still forget to charge it that night.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


John Resig uses this - <AUTHOR> http://john.resig.usesthis.com/ <comment><USER2> I thought the most interesting part was his wish list at the end.

"I wish my MacBook had built-in 3G capabilities, I wish it was easier to type on my iPad, I wish Chrome was a better browser, I wish SABnzbd+ was smart enough to not re-download files, I wish my iPhone was faster, I wish I didn't need a dongle to do a presentation with my MacBook, I wish Boxee didn't crash so much, I wish my car accepted audio input, I wish Dropbox could backup my Google Docs and Mail."

<comment><USER3> Regarding typing on the iPad, a thumbs layout keyboard as previewed in this Windows 8 video would be great - <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13628154> (skip to 00:40). Is there anything like this for iPad now?

<comment><USER4> i tried swiftkeyx on my android tablet, with its split layout. couldn't stand it and went back to a full-width layout very quickly.

<comment><USER5> The split layouts are meant for when you're holding the tablet. If you've got it on a table or such, you're going to find a traditional layout much more usable. SwiftKey has a toggle button for split/solid on the main keyboard because of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I wish my car accepted audio input."

I just used a Grom adapter to add bluetooth to my 1999 daily driver. It doesn't have whizzy features like voice dialing and A2DP audio quality is not excellent but, for podcasts, pop music, and phone calls, it's great.

<http://www.gromaudio.com/>

<comment><USER7> Very interesting, I'll have to check into that! I use a Griffin FM transmitter right now, works OK, but has frequent problems with competing radio stations.

[http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Griffin-RoadTrip- iPhone...](http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Griffin-RoadTrip-iPhone-FM- Transmitter-and-Car-Charger-Refurbished/5229147/product.html)

<comment><USER8> Why don't you just buy a new car stereo? The last one I bought was less than €100 and features a line-in, USB and Bluetooth.

<comment><USER6> Because (with few exceptions) you lose steering wheel controls and thieves become a lot more interested in smashing your windows. Also, my radio is nonstandard size and the adapters are fuuugly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> usesthis.com is such a guilty pleasure.

I pour over every detail of their articles while at the same time reminding myself "it's not about the tools, it's about the person".

<comment><USER10> This is the programmers' version of the celebrity clothing/bags pages with the latest trends : )

At the end of the day, use what makes you happy not because a programmer rock- star is using it.

Disclaimer: I love apple products developing on the .NET framework, it may be ironic that up until last week I was running win7 on a macbook pro to develop for WP7 :)

<comment><USER11> A little, but not really. I've learned about a number of really useful tools that I use every day now from usethis articles. Clothing is just clothing after all, but tools make my life easier and help me become a better programmer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> John is one of the most on to it people i've ever met. He arrived in NZ after a delayed, long flight from the US and went from the airport to a presentation (to over 400 people) without fault.

He'd already adjusted his sleep patterns to match NZ time.

Awesome dude.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was surprised at how lightweight his .vimrc was: <https://gist.github.com/955547>

</comment><comment><USER14> > Specifically for Usenet I use SABnzbd+, running on one of my Mac Minis, > connecting to Giganews, and pulling from NZBs.org or Newzbin

Did he just openly admit to illegally downloading media via Usenet?

<comment><USER15> No, just like saying you like µTorrent doesn't implicate you for piracy.

<comment><USER16> BitTorrent does have many legal uses (it is used to distribute World of Warcract, Linux distros, independent music/movies, et cetera) but there are also many private trackers designed specifically for the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials. If you admit you are a heavy user of one of those, you practically admit to participating in this.

Similarly, USENET is completely legal, and there isn't anything intrinsically wrong with binary newsgroups either, but NZBs.org and Newzbin specialize in illegal content distribution. If you have a subscription to a site like Giganews and need a tool like SABnzbd+ to automate the downloading process then you aren't an incidental user either.

So let's not play games; we both know how the internet works. "There might be one or two legal-to-distribute files on that site." or "Filesharing may not be illegal in his jurisdiction." are good points to bring up in a court case, but in reality we both know what it means when you are "running SABnzbd+ [..] connecting to Giganews [..] pulling from NZBs.org or Newzbin". It's sad that that throwaway240 is downvoted for just explicitly stating it.

<comment><USER17> It's sad that people have to hide their actions. Downloading copyrighted material is legally in the clear in .us and his particular setup sounds highly oriented towards downloads, not uploads.

Additionally, as somebody that highly seeds Linux distros through torrents, I'd like you to go back to your Jump to Conclusions mat.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Downloading copyrighted material is legally in the clear in .us_

[citation needed]? I've never heard that before. Mind you, I'm not in the US.

<comment><USER18> The uploader is the one doing the copyright infringement. I've never heard of anyone being prosecuted for downloading.

<comment><USER19> If you are using bittorrent, you are almost certainly uploading.

I'm also not sure that they never prosecuted anyone for downloading is actually a sufficient amount of evidence that it is legal. I've never heard of anyone get prosecuted for uploading just one song or one movie, that doesn't mean that it would be legal to do so.

<comment><USER20> He's using Usenet, which means there's no uploading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pretty good, but:

"I wish Chrome was a better browser"

John can you elaborate on this?

<comment><USER7> Off the top of my head, three things that've bugged me:

I use a _ton_ of tabs in my browser, in Firefox the tabs go off to the side and allow me to scroll through them (while still allowing me to read the title) whereas Chrome squishes the tabs into tiny micro-sized pills that are completely unreadable.

Additionally I use App Tabs in both browsers - but only in Firefox does it highlight when I've received an update (such as a message in Hip Chat or an email in Gmail).

The lack of integrated extensions in Chrome makes for a weaker overall experience. I use PasswordMaker to manage my passwords - works great in Firefox, can enter passwords into any field, but in Chrome it frequently doesn't detect a password field - and since it doesn't have context menu access I can't fill in my password. I end up having to open up Firefox just to get to my password.

So yeah, I still use Firefox for daily browsing, and Chrome for dev.

<comment><USER22> Have you tried using tree tabs in Chrome? It isn't quite as slick as the Firefox tree tabs, but still nicer than the little nubs that are the default. That's interesting though, I always do dev stuff in Firefox because of how anemic firebug is in Chrome, and casual surfing in Chrome because it feels faster.

<comment><USER23> I find the developer tools in chrome actually better than firebug these days. Do you have any specific features that you miss with the current builds of both?

<comment><USER24> I find they are all lacking in major ways and I have to jump between IE, FireFox, and Chrome. Anyone that swears by a single browser's dev tools isn't making much use of them.

      - Only Chrome lets you set a breakpoint on JS event listeners.
      - Only IE let's you change the next line of execution in JS.
      - You *can't* edit the value of a local variable in the Chrome console!
      - Only IE9 & FF search multiple JS files when doing a text find.
      - IE doesn't refresh the dev tools representation of the DOM without clicking refresh.
      - Only IE has a "format JavaScript" for minimized, obfuscated JS.  And it allows you to set breakpoints on the formatted lines!
      - Only Chrome has tools for finding memory leaks (see dev channel for big improvements in that).

Etc, etc.

<comment><USER25> Only IE (so far) has lied horribly to me in its debugger: <http://cl.ly/012t192A2s3Y1A3b3j3H> . How in the _world_ does that happen? For the record, `FireEvent` doesn't exist, but `fireEvent` does.

And then there's the worthless "{...}" object display from the Javascript console...

<comment><USER24> The horrible "{...}" output for almost everything (and proper callstacks when using named function expressions) are all fixed in IE9. That still puts it dead last for MOST visualizations behind all the other browsers OTHER than IE8, but some things, such as the profiler call tree, are still the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jarek-foksa There is also an entry with RMS <http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/>

I wonder if he is still browsing the web with wget.

<comment><USER26> I find it a bit ironic when RMS chooses to use a Chinese manufactured device to ensure his software freedom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> No, John Resig uses $(this) :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Curious, why vim /and/ TextMate? And on the former, console or MacVim[1]?

[1] <https://github.com/b4winckler/macvim>

</comment><comment><USER28> Not seen the website or concept before but i really like it. Its a very good way of opening people up to new apps and whatnot. I'd like to see more tech celebrities on that site.

I too wish it was easier to write on the iPad, and that multi-tasking was an actual possibility.

<comment><USER29> Feel free to suggest people, btw.

<comment><USER28> \- Andrew Warner from Mixergy is the first one that comes to mind. \- Second one is Derek Sivers. \- The guy behind TheOatmeal comic. \- Salman Khan from Khan Academy

They're all very accessible people from experience.

(i realise they're not ALL true techies, but still)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "I wish Boxee didn't crash so much."

Sadly true. And Plex, the main alternative, crashes as much, but in different ways. No more Front Row in Lion. I think Apple want us to buy Apple Tv...

<comment><USER31> Ever tried using Plex? (Not saying that's perfect, but in 2,5yrs of usage, and 24/7 on, it has yet to crash on me).

<http://www.plexapp.com/>

<comment><USER32> From the comment you're replying to:

      And Plex, the main alternative, crashes as much, but in different ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Short version: Apple! Apple! Apple!

<comment><USER33> That's pretty much 95% of the posts on UsesThis. Which I wrote off at first as being elitist, but the more top tier developers you meet the more you realize that it is actually the norm. The interesting thing is that for those not using a Apple laptop are always on a Lenovo.

I'm working on a infographic, or something along those lines, that shows a breakdown of what it used on UsesThis, but the pie charts are going to mostly be Apple flavored.

<comment><USER34> I assume the reason they're on a ThinkPad/Lenovo is that there is a well- deserved reputation there for running Linux well.

I recently picked up one of the new Toshiba Portege models to run Linux, and stock Ubuntu is giving me flashbacks to the circa-1999 Linux experience -- it doesn't detect when a monitor appears over HDMI, randomly will run up to 100% and freeze (kernel patch coming soon!), power management settings seem basically ignored with the display dimming when that is both disabled and I'm typing... and the worst part? Mentioned it to the local department Linux people, and they just said, "oh, yeah, you should've bought Thinkpad."

<comment><USER35> if you're looking for a mac book like experience with Ubuntu you should buy approved hardware, or from vendors that offer pre built machines like <http://www.system76.com/> or <http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x>

<comment><USER34> Thanks for the tip! I really wish I'd known about the approved hardware thing beforehand.

<comment><USER35> well its less approved and more known to work because hardware vendors provide proper drivers or support, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wish I could afford a MacBook. Unfortunately in the UK even refurbished ones seem to be far more expensive than equivalent hardware :(

</comment><comment><USER37> When i was young i wanted to know every detail of the configs pro gamers used in quake, tried their settings, bought the mice they used, etc. Today its the same with top coders, only difference is that i know now that tools alone dont make you great, but still i can always take a thing or two away from such a list.

</comment><comment><USER38> A Mac user and no mention of Quicksilver?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't use Quicksilver. Spotlight since Leopard has done everything I used to use Quicksilver for.

<comment><USER39> I went Quicksilver -> Launchbar(paid)->Alfred.

<comment><USER5> Alfred is my launcher of choice these days as well. Even paid for it, though it's super-rare that I (knowingly) actually use the paid features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if John figured out a solution to the "Home" and "End" keys not working properly in Gmail for Firefox/Mac. This issue is a bit frustrating and compels me to use Chrome. If anyone has a solution for this it would be great.

</comment><comment><USER41> Did anyone else check out _why's set up? It's an old Compaq Presario V2000.

</comment><comment><USER42> He probably is now looking for a new VoIP service since Microsoft has acquired Skype.

</comment><comment><USER43> "I wish Chrome was a better browser,"

that's easy, just use Firefox

 _whistles_</comment>


How can I create an online database and then sell access to it? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to create a sortable database + monetize access to it.
What's the best way to do it?  Does Airtable offer it? Excel on a webpage? Any other way to do it?
What's your experience? <comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to see some examples too, if you know of any! Thanks so much!</comment>


Several disruptive innovations will soon make life harder for health care's established giants - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/theworldin/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12494662&d=2009

<comment><USER2> I think retail medic clinics like those increasingly found in Wal-mart will be a hugely beneficial development.

There is no reason to pay a doctor $175 to tell one of his assistants to swab your throat for strep and stick it in a machine to analyze when you can pay a technician at Wal-mart $25 to do the same thing.

These services make sense for the same reason you don't take your car to an Automotive Engineer to change the oil or fix a flat tire.

<comment><USER3> Except sometimes when you go to the doctor for that sore throat he notices you have throat cancer.

The Wal-Mart tech tells you it's negative for strep and sends you home with some Tylenol Flu medicine.

<comment><USER2> Well when the Tylenol doesn't help after a day or so you can go to a real doctor as the next step.

If the sore throat _does_ go away (not related to the cancer), then hopefully your real doctor will catch said cancer during your yearly physical.

I'm not saying these places should replace real doctors for everything, I'm saying for the 98% of the time it's a common ailment like strep or the flu, they can save everyone a lot of time and money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another interesting development is primary care for cash, or "direct primary care". Somewhere between retail health clinics at the low end and concierge medicine at the high end, these are doctors you subscribe with for something on the order of $50 a month for a personal relationship with a primary care doctor.

Because of the compensation model, they've embraced conveniences like e-mail, phone calls and text messaging for communication, as well as once-common house calls.

They're also able to better-compensate their doctors and provide longer, more immediate appointments because they don't have nearly the overhead of an insurance-financed medical practice. This could help stem the tide of doctors leaving primary care practice ([http://www.entrepreneurialmd.com/index/2008/11/18/angry- prim...](http://www.entrepreneurialmd.com/index/2008/11/18/angry-primary-care- physicians-are-just-saying-no.html)), a trend which does not bode well for the future state of preventative medical care.

It's a very early trend, but I'm looking forward to seeing it develop. I currently know of Qliance (<http://qliance.com/>) in Seattle and Hello Health (<http://hellohealth.com/>) in Brooklyn. For more, you can check out videos from each organizations' founder: Dr. Garrison Bliss ([http://www.tvw.org/media/mediaplayer.cfm?evid=2008030136C...](http://www.tvw.org/media/mediaplayer.cfm?evid=2008030136C&TYPE=V&CFID=797374&CFTOKEN=98512569&bhcp=1)) and Dr. Jay Parkinson (<http://vimeo.com/2082073>)

<comment><USER5> I would love to have primary care for cash here in Canada. Given the current system, you can't receive a given medical treatment unless you can convince a doctor to authorize it. Even if you are willing to pay out of pocket, you are out of luck unless you can find a doctor who is on the same page as you.

Right now, I'm trying to get a blood test for Vitamin D, but all the doctors I've gone to see are ignorant of the latest Vitamin D research, and don't see the value of doing the test. If I can't find a doctor who will authorize it in the next year or so, then I'm probably going to drive down to the US and pay cash using Direct Labs (<http://www.directlabs.com/>) or the Life Extension Foundation (<http://www.lef.org/>). It's terribly inefficient but I don't see any way around it.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious as to what research you're referencing. I started taking a vitamin D supplement a few weeks ago at the encouragement of my father, and it seems to be making a difference in my sense of well-being, but I'd welcome a few pointers if you have any handy. (Don't mean to impose, though.)

<comment><USER5> The big study on vitamin D that got everyone's attention was this one from the summer of 2007:

 _Vitamin D and Calcium Supplementation Reduces Cancer Risk: Results of a Randomized Trial_ (<http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/85/6/1586>)

There is also a lot of information about vitamin D research at the Vitamin D Council website (<http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/>).

That being said, I don't know if taking a vitamin D supplement would have any noticeable effect on your sense of well-being. I think it's probably a good idea to take one even if you don't notice a difference.

<comment><USER6> > I don't know if taking a vitamin D supplement would have any noticeable > effect on your sense of well-being

Yeah, that was totally unexpected and is purely anecdotal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A generally good article, but the last section, which discussed online medical records, was a bit vague. First, the author doesn't distinguish between enterprise health information systems (which doctors/hospitals use internally to create and maintain health records), and personal health records (such as Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health, which let patients aggregate their health information from different institutions). Although these two spaces are highly complementary (since health data will be interchanged between the two), they are different applications with different business models. Think of it as the difference between the software that Bank of America uses internally to manage its customer accounts, and a personal finance app like Quicken Online.

So when the author talks about VCs investing heavily in stealth challengers to Microsoft and Google, I'm not sure what he's referring to. The main reason Microsoft and Google are moving slowly is that the adoption of personal health records requires a lot of infrastructural changes: affiliations with hospitals/insurers/medical device makers/employers, adoption of standards for the exchange of medical information, and overcoming concerns over privacy and security. As a result, even if these startups emerge in 2009 with technology or business models that beat Google/Microsoft, I think it would realistically take at least a couple of years for them to gain traction. I would love to be proven wrong, though.</comment>


Is the 'paperless' office here at last? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/18/paperless.office/index.html <comment><USER2> Yes, because the paperless office was referring to filing cabinets where every bit of company data was kept on sheets of paper, not transient copies of reading matter.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperless_office>

edit: now that I've actually read the article, I see they cover this in the first half but then wander onto transient paper documents later. But note that they're misleadingly talking about 'archives', not working documents containing data, though no doubt there are businesses where the master copy of all your details are on a bit of paper somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every piece of paper I have was given to me by someone else.</comment>


Lost - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2014/11/21/lost

<comment><USER2> My heart goes out to Marco and his wife. My wife is currently pregnant and we have not told anyone just yet, but we are about too, she is 19 weeks, so this hits close to home for me. This is one of my biggest fears, telling people the bundle of joy you are expecting and then something going wrong. I am a pretty optimistic guy, but once you hear that doppler heartbeat before the first ultrasound, you become emotionally attached to this unborn entity before you have even seen it on screen or in person.

Kudos to you and your wife Marco for staying optimistic and positive even though you have just suffered a great loss. It takes a lot of strength to keep going through an event like this. But take comfort in knowing you are not alone in this.</comment>


DeveloperHub.io: Create beautiful product documentation, hassle-free - <AUTHOR> https://developerhub.io <comment><USER2> SaaS-ifying your docs seems risky to me. Writing documentation is a big investment and startups tend to come and go ("it's been an incredible journey").

$39/mo is much more than what it costs to self-host Confluence, which for all its flaws at least leaves you in control of your data and is super extensible.

Improve the data portability story and it'd be a lot more attractive.

Additionally the actual docs and demo site are not loading in time from Australia. The `main.{digest}.js` file is reliably giving me a 15s download time (not TTFB, oddly) ([http://i.imgur.com/ay6le8H.png](http://i.imgur.com/ay6le8H.png)), which causes the entire page to be blank. I have like a 300MS RTT to the server. Get a CDN and use it effectively.

<comment><USER3> > SaaS-ifying your docs seems risky to me.

It strikes me as a really, really bad idea. Besides the obvious lock-in issues, I've found the only hope of keeping documentation uptodate is to either generate it from the code or keep it checked it in git besides the code.

What's really needed are (1) authoring tools that can produce decent documentation (ideally as docbook XML or maybe asciidoc) for checkin and (2) product guys who are willing to write docs for features before or during feature development and (3) translation services that can actually do a decent job between the big three business languages (English, Mandarin, Spanish).

It's frustrating that 1, 2, and 3 are so very hard to find. Many products live or die by their lack of documentation, but there don't be seem any simple solutions here.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy to hear your feedback @dnomad. I'll be notifying you once we get to these challenges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First of all this looks pretty nice. I'm a docs nerd and as a whole I like this.

However ... It's slow. Docs should be static HTML. I should not ever wait for text content. If you want to async load some images or embeds that's fine, but I was waiting for the title to load!

As an aside I recently had a nice experience making a static docs site using Nuxt and Vue. Nice combination of dynamic development and fast performance in production.

<comment><USER5> I agree, this should have been HTML, not chasing the latest JavaScript fad. They managed to get links wrong. How on earth can you get something so easy and fundamental wrong!? I hold down command and click all the time to open in a new tab. They've got it opening in a new tab _and_ following the link, so you can't stay in one place and open several tabs. This is something a beginner with an hour's experience of HTML can get right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @JimDabell, We just launched the internal links feature yesterday in beta mode to test how the users use it! It is still not announced to the users. Your feedback is amazing and we will be looking to enhance it ;) Cheers, Z

<comment><AUTHOR> And it's fixed now!

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I can verify that's fixed. The larger point still stands though – testing this, it took 29.74s to load. DOMContentLoaded 19.79s / Load 21.13s. Your main.….js alone took 16.31s. A static HTML page would have taken a fraction of the time and it would be easier to get the basics right. Using an SPA for documentation seems completely wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @JimDabell, can you tell me where are you based?

<comment><USER6> From their profile: Based in Brighton & Hove, U.K.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find that the best way to build docs is to use some sort of a static html generator and host the html yourself, which is not at all hard to do. There are free and open source themes available to host your own docs in various site generators.

My personal favorite is hugo. Previously I have built a documentation for a large project [0] using hugo and it gave us 100% control over how we design or host it. Outsourcing a doc to a SaaS seems like something I would never do if I cared about the product/software.

[0] - [https://docs.dgraph.io](https://docs.dgraph.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> @stockkid hey! This works great for small dev teams, but once you get technical writers around and the team gets bigger, static documentation just doesn't cut it and is unable to scale with the demand. Hugo is amazing, but this is the same thing with buying your own hardware and racks, or hosting with Amazon. It's all about the managed service and peace of mind! Thanks, Z

<comment><USER7> > once you get technical writers around and the team gets bigger, static > documentation just doesn't cut it and is unable to scale

I feel that this is not convincing because docs for large software projects are also built using static site generators and git (e.g. docker).

In my case, we had many devs including a full-time technical writer contributing to the doc using Hugo and GitHub pull request and had no problems. I am curious what you think the bottlenecks of static documentation are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats on launching!

I regularly spend time on developer documentation (just yesterday roughly two hours...). Unfortunately, your messaging does not resonate with me at all.

Creating (good) documentation will never be easy, or hassle-free. We have to communicate/teach technical concepts to a wide range of developers, from beginners to experts, from native-speakers to I-barely-understand-english. Having a huge document with lot's of details is bad, because one can't grasp the big picture. Not documenting all details is also bad. Having multiple documents per topic (e.g. a Getting Started/Tutorial and a full reference) is a hassle to maintain.

I believe Documentation Review is at least as important as Code Review. What you think you're communicating, and what others are understanding, may be very different. Having at least one other pair of eyes look over it is extremely helpful. It is also helpful to maintain a consistent writing style if several developers contribute to the documentation.

Some things that may make my life easier:

\- Help me keeping my writing style consistent (e.g. "In this case, foo should be used" and "In this case, you should use bar" are not consistent)

\- Help me keeping my text easy to understand (like [http://hemingwayapp.com](http://hemingwayapp.com))

\- Help me keeping multiple documents in sync (e.g. "You've changed foo_bar to fooBar in reference.md, you should also look at tutorial.md lines 25 and 34")

\- Help with the workflow coordinating multiple reviews (we're actually using Github PRs, and I don't see much room for improvement)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @cnj, Thanks a lot for your kind words. There are two steps for having your documentation online: 1- Creating the documentation service. 2- Maintaining the content.

We provide you #1 on a golden plate, saving you many hours per year of designing, coding, maintaining servers and working on integrations.

For #2, we are still getting started. We have been working with tens of technical writers in small, medium and large enterprises and we understand the problems that exist throughout this step. Look out for some amazing features that are coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I started ReadMe, I tried to buy the domain developerhub.io to use as name... I was inspired by StatusPage.io. But alas, I couldn't get it and went with ReadMe.io instead :)

What do you see as the main differentiators of DH compared to ReadMe?

(Zaid, feel free to contact me! My email is in my profile)

<comment><USER10> Oh hey, I recognise your name :)

I just want to say thanks for your efforts on swagger-inline!

I was actually looking for a tool just like it earlier this year. The project I was using it with was in Python so unfortunately we couldn't justify adding a dependency on Node just for one tool.

It did inspire me to write my own similar tool from scratch, compatible with OAS 3.0. Unfortunately it's not open source just yet but I've got most of the sign off I need so hopefully I can release it into the wild sometime.

In our particular use case, we have a series of microservices that inherit from a shared codebase (controllers etc). Funnily enough, I ran into trouble trying to document controller routes bceause... there were none! They were all inherited, haha.

Anyway, I'm impressed that you're still across a number of repos! Maybe Readme is a bit smaller than I figure assumed?

<comment><USER9> Awesome! I love the idea of keeping the docs right in the code :)

Here's the parent project: [http://openap.is/](http://openap.is/)

I don't write code much anymore, but when I do it tends to be non-production stuff like this. (We're a 11-person company!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Surprised nobody mentioned Slate yet: (probably) not as powerful, but free, open source, self-hosted and fully within your control.

[https://github.com/lord/slate](https://github.com/lord/slate)

What would be the main differentiator of DeveloperHub vs something like Slate or Hugo? I can't figure it out from the DH website copy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Radim, That would be scalability, extensibility and piece of mind. Our unified editor allows technical writers to use keyboard shortcuts or a toolbar to format text, whereas developers can use Markdown. Slate is amazing, but when you project has 30+ pages, keeping up with links and relations gets hard. Plus does Slate have search with average latency of 2ms? ;)

Finally, it is a fully managed service which will save you many hours of development and maintaining. $39/month is less than what a Silicon Valley engineer is paid in an hour!

Cheers, Z.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about using a static site generator and a theme oriented towards docs?

That's what a lot of big sites do, for example Docker's entire documentation[0] is driven by Jekyll[1].

[0]: [https://docs.docker.com/install/overview/](https://docs.docker.com/install/overview/) [1]: [https://github.com/docker/docker.github.io](https://github.com/docker/docker.github.io)

</comment><comment><USER13> There is definitely room for competition in this space. We use Readme.io and find the pricing a little ridiculous. $100\month for the lowest tier plan. How complex is this product really?

Also, one minor thing that really gets to me is they get to watermark all of your docs with their logo. Like that $100\month is doing you a big favor so you have to pay them back with free advertising.

<comment><AUTHOR> @ryanackley, Welcome to DeveloperHub.io! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems cool. I'm browsing your own doc and found one thing i hate tho. Could you please please let user himself decide, if he wants to open next pages(your "Next to read") in new browser tab or in the same one? I hate how every second website doesn't respect this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @masa331, This is a feature that we just added yesterday as a beta, we will be iterating over according to your request ;) Look out for the changes in What's New ([https://docs.developerhub.io/v1.0/support-center/what-s- new](https://docs.developerhub.io/v1.0/support-center/what-s-new)) Cheers, Z.

<comment><AUTHOR> And it's now fixed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see all these great recommendations for static site generators here for documentation! Does anyone have a recommendation for something thats geared more towards mechanical? Essentially I need to be able to show an image and the instructions next to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do have multiple customers using our platform for writing device manuals and such! Maybe give it a try and it can work out for you? Regardless, we will be providing features column later on which will allow you to show an image with text next to it! Cheers, Z.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome timing, I need this exact thing right now. wiki on GituHub was driving me mad

<comment><USER16> ah nevermind too much monies

<comment><USER17> $39 a month for beautiful documentation, and once they finish API with Swagger support it is great value. I can see for open source projects that don't generate revenue the price being expensive, but as a SaaS business owner the pricing feels just right.

<comment><USER18> You know, I think normally the common sense buy-vs-build wisdom would win out here, but this is truly an offering that is _trivial_ to build out and is aimed towards an audience that can forgive the common UX perils of home built solutions.

Not to mention there are great off the shelf open source alternatives that work FANTASTIC and have most of the offerings listed on this SaaS product. I use [https://github.com/Rebilly/generator-openapi- repo](https://github.com/Rebilly/generator-openapi-repo) which took literally minutes to setup.

Here's my workflow:

* I type "npm start" in my docs project repo and load the tab that contains the syntax-highlighting enabled editor window in the browser.

* I modify my swagger.yml to update my documentation in the editor

* I use the dev preview tab (a separate node web dev server on another port) to see how the documentation looks

* Once I'm satisfied, I commit and push everything into the git backed repo.

My api docs exist on a github page so I don't even need to worry about hosting. As soon as I push my changes, they are live on my docs site. I've setup a CNAME record to point apidocs.mycompany.com to the github page and presto, I have a whitelabeled documentation site that I can update on a dime, for free, with absolutely zero monthly charge.

I have a hard time understanding how even the most elementary of developer couldn't manage to do this. I can't imagine it takes more than two hours for a mediocre web developer to get running (at most).

At what point do you have the financial responsibility to reasonably consider implementing an elementary task yourself instead of SaaSifying yet another area of your company? $49/mo is less than my hourly rate, in theory, but doing it once means one less SaaS bill at the end of the month.

In what use case is buying this product justifiable?

<comment><USER19> Would need to see your docs before making a comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How do people find the balance between Agile (working software over documentation) vs enough documentation that you don't have to ask around your team every time you need a config change?

<comment><USER21> auto generated swagger docs. They get generated from the swag specs, auto deploy through CI tooling. its now just part of the developers job, as they spec with swagger, docs come for free

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I used this recently and am pleased with the result:

[https://github.com/Mermade/widdershins](https://github.com/Mermade/widdershins)

</comment><comment><USER23> Congratulation on launching! I built DocsApp to solve similar pain point. For documentation hub, performance is a feature :). Feel free to contact me (email in my profile) to chat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Congrats to you as well! Will do very soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Announcement page looks weird in w3m and docs won't render at all. Readthedocs works fine by comparison. I must not be the target market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @sevensor, I'm not sure which announcement page are you talking about?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For the startup plan and using a custom domain, is it possible to enable https (let's encrypt)?

<comment><USER25> I wonder how this compares to docs written in VuePress? ([https://vuepress.vuejs.org/guide/](https://vuepress.vuejs.org/guide/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is it possible to re-use parts of documentation across different pages?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have this feature to be implemented in the near future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks great, but VuePress is just so simple.

<comment><USER28> I literslly just launched our startups product documentation site with VuePress and had a great experience. \- host the git repo on github \- use github pages to manage the web hosting, it even gives you SSL for free \- VuePress generate beautiful docs too and has a super low learning curve.

The one issue with the above setup is that it's just too techy for the average person. I was looking for freelancers to hire to help me buildout the documentation, annotated images etc. The average writer is far more used to WYSIWYG editors like Word and would have no idea how to use Git. If this solution allows non tech users to collaborate on the documentation, they may be on to something.</comment></comment>