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Ask HN: Best way to find a mentor
While the aspiring techpreneur tries to make things and hack projects together, what are the best ways for he/she to find a mentor to supplement the learning?
contact@ teddytruong7@gmail.com Twitter handle: teddytruong blog: teddytruong.posterous.com
Whatsup HN!
Hope a good portion of you is reading this. My friend and I just recently had an urge in our stomach to actually MAKE something. We've been reading for the last several months and just got tired of coming up with ideas for fun. Besides, it's all in the execution right?!
This is a pretty functional version of our website. It's far from anything spectacular and is certainly not even what we envisioned in our minds, but hey it basically works. It's our first attempt at making something. YUP!
We are very interested in programming, hacking, and making applications and websites. The problem is we have essentially zero experience or background with any of this material. Lacking someone technical we want to work with, it's become clear to us that we have to learn how to make things ourselves. Even if we do happen to work with a technical whiz in the future, we figure understanding some programming can only help.
We figured one of the best ways to learn was to have a project and dive right in. Over the past week, we've learned an incredible amount in making this website. Every problem we hit was frustrating, but they've served as great teaching tools. A week and a half ago, simply navigating the database was a challenge. But along the way we've learned some basic HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, and MYSQL. Obviously, there's still millions for us to learn. We really love this stuff, and actually working on something helps both solidify the abstract coding and make things even more exciting. To us, the next step is clear - doing another project. We'd love to hear your guys' take on this approach and our website in general. Any tips or pointers on making websites, order of languages to learn, good coding practices, blogs to follow, or just straight up advice on anything would be greatly appreciated. Also, we welcome any criticisms to our code since we have only had a week or two of knowledge under our belt.
Thanks Break things and move fast!!
http://www.whatthehappy.com
Is it technically possible to download my "browsing history" basically as a text file and upload it on the internet?
For example, to show people what I've been browsing?
Also, is there any way you can make exceptions to what I want to add to this "downloaded list" so I don't completely share everything I browse?
If so, what languages would I need to know? If you want to know more about it, feel free to contact me.
Thanks so much
Appreciate ALL input!
In the last five months I've been reading through the discussions here at HN and right now Hacker News is my homepage. I absolutely love this place. I love the energy, the intellect and all the ideas that are being thrown around. I've watched StartupSchool, I've read most if not all of PG's articles, and I'm constantly writing down ideas that come up in my head. This has all been happening since my senior year in high school. Then again, I know there is a big difference from doing all of these little things, and actually putting them into play and executing them. In fact, I think I should have already started something up regardless of the time constraints I have with tennis.
A little bit about myself... I'm a college student at one of the U.C. schools and I'm also on their tennis team. It's hard to balance school, tennis and fun-time but I like the intensity of my schedule, the exercise and everything that comes with being a college athlete.
Well, aside from that, I've always been into building things, especially things that involve competition\rankings. I want to have my own startup, at least eventually, or at least work for one before I graduate. I want to know what knowledge\insight\tips you guys can offer me and what I can do as a college student (aside from educating myself) to get myself ahead of the game. I really want to do this, and I'm willing to eat shit, throw away sleep, and make major sacrifices. I know I can.
Right now, I'm an undeclared freshman and I am about to declare either a major in Economics and a minor in Computer Science. Would it be better if I majored in Comp Sci? UCSD doesn't have a business major....(wondering if I would have even needed one)
Well, that's all for now. Thanks much for reading this if you didn't already close the window! Appreciate it guys and I can't wait for your responses.