Disqus - Latest Comments for nbashaw

Re: Would I do this for 10 years?

Nathan Bashaw — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 22:23:48 -0000

Great post! Along the same lines as your "am i learning" question, here are some questions that have helped me:

* Even if this all fails, will it still have been worth trying?
* If we succeed doing this, will I be proud of what I've done?
* When I'm old, how will it feel to explain what I did to my future kids?

These questions all get at the moral core of a startup. To me, the thing that pulls me through is having a purpose that's higher than just making a lot of money. Because lots of times it's very unclear whether that will ever actually happen.

Obviously everyone has to discover their own style of answering these questions, but this way of approaching it has helped me a lot.

Re: Baby Unicorns

Nathan Bashaw — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:29:15 -0000

General Assembly. I'm biased though :)

Re: The Gallery

Nathan Bashaw — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 12:45:39 -0000

Cool animation!

Re: Facebook Massively Overpaid for WhatsApp

Nathan Bashaw — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 15:18:24 -0000

Messenger failed? It's currently the #11 top free app in the App Store – ahead of Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

The problem with Facebook's "build" alternative isn't that they are bad at launching new products, it's that they already have a successful product in the messaging space. Is there really room for two Facebook-branded messaging apps?

Re: The Gallery

Nathan Bashaw — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 19:26:20 -0000

Nice work, Tea! Is there a public github URL?

Re: The Gallery

Nathan Bashaw — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 18:48:49 -0000

Love this! Great job

Re: The Gallery

Nathan Bashaw — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 18:06:20 -0000

tesst spam

hehe

i thought so

Re: The Gallery

Nathan Bashaw — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 18:06:13 -0000

whatup

Re: The Gallery

Nathan Bashaw — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 18:06:11 -0000

howdy

Re: The Gallery

Nathan Bashaw — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 17:58:42 -0000

hey

Re: R.I.P. Google Reader: The Web’s Best News Reader Meets Its Inevitable End

Nathan Bashaw — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:41:05 -0000

http://bringgooglereaderbac...

Re: Google To Close Google Reader On July 1

Nathan Bashaw — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:17:32 -0000

http://bringgooglereaderbac...

Re: How To Learn To Code In 2013

Nathan Bashaw — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:14:05 -0000

Whoa, thanks! I tried to get in but apparently someone needs to approve me as a member. I'd love to see what folks are saying

Re: When and Why to Learn to Program

Nathan Bashaw — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:56:03 -0000

It's a bit up in the air - I'm talking with a few folks to potentially partner with which may change the timeline but something should be out in the next month or two no matter what.

Re: When and Why to Learn to Program

Nathan Bashaw — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:46:06 -0000

re: community size - That's something I hope to solve with http://enoughtobedanger.us!

Re: When and Why to Learn to Program

Nathan Bashaw — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:28:50 -0000

Awesome article! The one thing I'd add is that getting started with Rails is a pretty steep learning curve for most beginners. I'd recommend going with Sinatra first to learn some basic things about how web-apps work, then transitioning into Rails next.

Great point about learning what your friends know, though. I hadn't thought of it that way but it makes a ton of sense.

Re: How To Learn To Code In 2013

Nathan Bashaw — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:26:17 -0000

Thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful response! I really appreciate it. I'm just like you - I don't like random arguing on the internet and I wasn't expecting that I'd want to respond to this, but you present a lot of good arguments so I thought I'd respond.

You argue that fear only works for tasks that require little cognitive skill (like physical labor), and in general I'd agree but we should dig a little deeper into the specifics.

The research you cite is talking about performance-based pay [1]. This is a situation in which you pay people in proportion to their output (like meeting sales quotas, or producing x number of widgets). I'm talking about giving yourself a little motivation booster by finding someone who will pay you to build a website for them.

This is important because the argument against performance-based pay hinges on a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. If you are doing it for the money, you'll be less motivated than if you're doing it because you genuinely want to. If I framed this blog post as "Want to make money? Build websites for people!" then obviously those folks would not very much about coding. But that's not what I did. I basically said, "Do you want to learn how to code? Motivation is a common problem. You can overcome that by introducing a little social pressure into the equation and finding a client to pay you to code a website for them".

I'd argue that the research on Ego Depletion [2] is much more relevant to people learning to code than the research on performance-based pay. Ego Depletion essentially says that it's hard and unpleasant to use our brains, and that we have a limited pool of mental resources to draw upon. Sometimes we can use a nice extrinsic boost (fear of letting down a client) to supplement our intrinsic motivation (learning to code). It is only a temporary hack to get us to the point where we're a bit more comfortable with programming, and it's not so stressful to write code.

Anyway, thanks for responding! Thanks for forcing me to think this through a bit more.

[1] http://www.bos.frb.org/econ...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re: How To Learn To Code In 2013

Nathan Bashaw — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 13:55:00 -0000

That's definitely a good process to go through if you want to learn rails, although I'd advise complete beginners to start by learning Sinatra rather than Rails. It's a lot simpler and helps you learn the basics of how a web-app works before diving into all the magic and craziness that is rails

Re: Web Caching For Beginners

Nathan Bashaw — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 23:57:08 -0000

Thanks! So glad you enjoyed it

Re: Regulatory hacks

Nathan Bashaw — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:55:30 -0000

Reminds me of how Lyft (Uber but with real people as drivers rather than professional drivers) only can let you make a donation to your driver due to regulations rather than being able to charge for their service.

Re: http://blog.keen.io/post/25538748769

Nathan Bashaw — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 12:43:02 -0000

Congrats on your financing and thank you so much for writing this! Instant classic.

Re: How Olark Saved Our Startup…Twice

Nathan Bashaw — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:45:18 -0000

I'm glad you guys are able to use Olark to such great success! Thanks so much for sharing your experience :)

Re: Olark Hatchery | Where new ideas get wings

Nathan Bashaw — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:13:53 -0000

Thanks!! :)

Re: http://bryce.vc/post/2369805856

Nathan Bashaw — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 03:15:09 -0000

There's a really interesting bit towards the end where Jeff is asked about mobile. He basically says the devices suck at browsing the web now and so it's not very interesting but thought that eventually that would change. Turns out, he was right.

Also interesting, he advises the students to just pursue what they are interested in, not what seems lucrative. "If you're trying to catch a wave, you're almost always too late".

Re: Olark Hatchery | Where new ideas get wings

Nathan Bashaw — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:45:58 -0000

Thanks for the feedback! One way you could do that now is by getting Custom CSS and including different stylesheets on your different sites. Kind of a workaround, less than ideal, but it would get the job done. Let us know if you're interested!