I stopped going to startup events a year ago because the harassment wouldn’t stop. After the small talk, the inevitable “so, what do you do?” The swarmy sea of strong-jawed business folks circle like sharks. They look for light-wash jeans and faded t-shirts among the crowd, surely a sign that they have found a developer. 30 seconds later, the pitch. 60 seconds after, the invite for lunch and a joke about how finding a co-founder is like dating. Nobody is going to build your startup. Well, except for the Romanian dev shop salivating over the thought of your $15k in… Continue reading →

I started learning how to code and play piano the same week. It looked a lot like this: After a few months of practice, I got pretty good at playing “Let it Be”. I also got pretty good at swearing at a code editor. Why did my piano practice start taking off while my software dreams died in a fire? A New Syntax Music theory and Javascript scare away beginners for a similar reason. Both are new languages that need to be understood, processed, and then translated by an instrument/browser into something that others recognize. When you sit down at a… Continue reading →