I think the best thing to do in your situation is to work on a project you really enjoy on the weekends. It'll be the equivalent to or replacement of games or other forms of entertainment. Try to write a blog relating to your project on the weekdays, even before you launch your product. By the time you launch, you'll have a good audience. Even if your project doesn't get traction, you technically didn't waste your time for nothing, because it was an enjoyable experience. :)
Check for mistypings because there is a large amount of people in there, I don't know if you mean it is full of idle people but it is a pretty active channel last time I was in there.
1. Interacting with people through text is different from interacting with them in person. People are just naturally wired to express themselves better in person. That's our opinion.
2. Ah, the grammar nazi in you is strong. Your correction sounds better to us (cheesiness aside).
Loved your post. Definitely great advice. I made the decision yesterday to start learning to code, but your post made me feel I really made the right decision. Thanks. :)
As a complete beginner, I've found both to be very accessible, although the CS50 course is much more rigorous and much more of a pain since it's mostly taught in C99. While I can zip through chapters in Chris Pine's book, which teaches Ruby, I spend days working through each of the CS50 problem sets.
At the beginning, the biggest surprise was how hard it was. It sounds obvious, but programming is about thinking like a machine. If you're like most normal people, this is going to be hard because you just don't naturally think like a machine!
After a while, the framework of approaching a problem becomes more second nature, but it's still hard, especially if you're learning by yourself. I remember showing off what I thought was a completed program to my girlfriend. She played with it for about 5 seconds before breaking it by putting some input I hadn't planned for.
If I started again, I would have enrolled in a community college for physical course just so I could have peers check my work and people to talk to when I hit a wall. I quit my job to learn to code so I'm fairly motivated, but even then, working by yourself has a way of a eating that away. I'm moving to New York City next month and the first thing I'm going to do is get plugged in.
Go and give money to a couple homeless people (choose wisely). This will help you in several ways. It's good karma, it gives you a sense of purpose and it will remind you of how lucky you are to have food and shelter. ;)
After that, you should go to a coffee shop and work or do some planning if you need to. You're so lucky you can code. I'm barely learning html and css. sigh
I read the whole article, however, I didn't think it did a good job of getting to the bottom of everything that does matter. The article needed to give people a better sense of the situation of the poor, by providing more insights. Otherwise, people who've never experienced poverty would not understand why it's so important to help these people out. The best reporter on an issue like this is someone who actually made it out of poverty and is actively trying to help their own people.
Thanks for the great post! I don't think you'll ever quit until you succeed. I think the key to creating that one successful company is about trials and errors. "Learning doesn't happen from failure itself but rather from analyzing the failure, making a change, and then trying again." Don't be afraid to fail early and fail often, until you hit the nail right on the head. One thing I didn't understand from looking at your project is, why did you feel the need to get funding to begin with? It doesn't cost much to keep a website alive, and you have the support of your wife in order to continue developing for Notifo or a new project. I'm also a co-founder myself, so I'd like to know if there's something I'm missing here. :) Another thing I'm curious about is, why you're so set on sticking with Notifo, instead of moving on with a new idea? Is it because you already have tons of users and you need money to expand your company? I've only been involved with one website and I'm still learning, so it'd be great to learn more insights so I know what to expect ahead of time. :)
Why raise money? We wanted to expand and move faster by hiring and finding office space. That takes a big chunk of money. Also, we are paying ourselves meager salaries in order to pay rent/bills, which also takes money. If we hadn't raised a Friends and Family round early last summer, we would already be dead. Raising another round was supposed to help us grow.
