Ask HN: How can a non-technical/non-CS graduate enter the high tech business?

You have to ask yourself what a CS degree would make different. You have an idea, you have a prototype. That should be enough for angel funding or recruiting a more technical co-founder.

Also, a pet peeve of mine is when people call their programming code "a code". My poem isn't as pretty when compared to a words written by a guy that is related to Shakespeare.

It helps to have a CS background, but you can still thrive. I was in your position a few years ago, but I had enough time in college left to get a CS degree.

Some thoughts: 1) You develop a deeper appreciation for the "simple" stuff. It's like this: you turn a wheel around slowly to study its intricacies, appreciate its design, see the structure of the spokes, etc. Now, when that wheel is in high motion, you can thoroughly appreciate the motion and the wheel. So, yes, a CS/engg degree may help you in this respect.

2) Pair/peer programming. You can learn so much from observing a good coder at work. Even more importantly, get a big picture idea of data structures and algorithms even if you don't understand it completely. Ask your CS friends to explain it to you. Now, explain what you learned to your non-CS friends. Teaching someone else forces you to get to the core of a problem/question.

3) Funny thing about code prettiness. Share your code on Git Hub and ask your friends for comments. Or pick a simple open source project and write your own code. Then, compare it with the source and see how you could have refactored it.

4) Repeat 1-3.

Well, it seems as if you are comfortable enough with yourself to admit your true capacity. So, go out there and find yourself a technical co-founder someone smarter than you. Chances are very likely that you don't necessarily need to know how to write a kernel, nor does your co-founder. The only thing that matters is that you are smart enough to figure things out and aren't afraid of reaching out to people who do AND can point you in the right direction.

Well, if nothing works from above, sometimes it's just better to stick with something you are working on and iterate. Whether that sticking to maybe your startup software framework or improving your prototype, just start with the fundamentals and iterate!

Definitely not.. I have a CS degree myself but some of the best coders/entrepreneurs I know did not get a CS degree.. I might add that it's more important to understand what the technology is capable of than how to make it work. You can always find someone to help you make it work later on after you've fleshed out your idea.

Excessive education seems to be at odds with a lot of successful entrepreneurs.. If anything, going back to school to get a CS degree will just slow you down. I'd dive in head first. I think the best entrepreneurs are doers and not passive learners.

Build to learn, don't learn to build as the saying goes.

How pretty your code is has little to no impact on how successful you will be.

All of my early projects were horrendous code-wise. Nevertheless they included a game with a decent number of installs (>250k) and one of the biggest social networking app websites (this was pre-facebook era so only ~300k users). The later was a huge mess hacked together in php full of global variables and flat files.

Keep coding, keep learning and find a co-founder.