Once again the top story is an embarrassment to News.YC. And unfortunately it is mostly the recently arrived users who voted it up. Maybe it's inevitable that I'll have to turn on some form of vote weighting.

While I don't disagree with the point of the post I think that many hackers should step back and look at how many great marketing people, CEO's etc. they know. The actual programming part is only a small part of starting a company, but many hackers seem to think it is all they need because hacking something together happens to be the first step to creating a great company.

The key insight is that no great company was made by only one guy. It takes both great hackers, great marketing people, great CEO's and great sales people. Hell, maybe you even need a great janitor...

So start showing some respect for each other instead of haggling over who needs who.

More precisely, what if code isn't worth very much when separated from the programmers who wrote it? This notion explains a lot. It explains why source code theft is almost unheard of (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36551) - except, of course, programmers taking copies of their own code with them when they leave a company. It explains why codebases decay so quickly when they're handed off for maintenance, and why rewrites almost always fail when they're not done by the original team. It explains why people don't really buy or sell source code as such.

It also matches the experience of working programmers, which is: most code sucks; other people's code really sucks ("it's all shit", an oldtimer once told me); and it's often easier to write code than to read it.

The best description I've found of this idea is Peter Naur's (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121291). Naur puzzled over cases where, even when code was well written and well documented, other programmers (not members of the original team) screwed it up. His explanation for this is that the program is not the code. Rather, the program is a set of mental constructs (Naur uses the word "theory") that live in the minds of the programmers writing it. Code is merely the canonical written expression of the program, and it's a lossy one: given only the code, you can't reconstruct the theory. Since the theory exists in the minds of the team, if you lose the team, you lose the theory, and with it most of the value.

Viewed this way, the economics of open source vis-à-vis closed source are not nearly so counterintuitive. If code isn't that valuable, then open source isn't "giving away the store" at all. And if what is valuable is the theory of the program in Naur's sense, then open source adds value by extending the theory to a larger base of programmers, something that closed source has tried and failed to do for years.

If open source is value-creating, it's not an economic paradox. It only looks that way because people (especially non-programmers) have a mistaken model of software value. It's not surprising that it would take time for business models and infrastructure to catch up.

Some of the sites that do "gradual engagement" piss me off when they let me believe I'm about to do something and then surprise me with a sign up form. It strikes me as tricky and I very frequently walk away.

I certainly believe it's smart to let users do as much as possible without requiring them to sign up. I think the idea of signing up is pretty ingrained in people though. If you make it dead simple (like this site or reddit) it's not much of a barrier and it keeps things straightforward.

The nature of programming work is not so far removed from what a corporate lawyer or financial analyst does. Yet programmers have a much different public image. I think it's fair to say programming attracts certain idiosyncratic personalities that affect the general perception of the work.

On the same theme as the grandparent post, don't undervalue the soft touch. There are people who bring to the table little more than that they're nice and likeable. I've seen such people in analyst roles responsible for retaining or creating substantial business.

I worked my tail off for a year in China. I had two other founders/partners back in N. America -- I was the only one on-the-ground, and I was also the youngest & most inexperienced.

I basically stayed there until I was physically, mentally, and emotionally sick. I was living in my office and had no salary (expenses covered, nothing more), a tough schedule (mornings & evenings needed to get back in touch w/ N. America), my first experience in management (6 staff or so), and had almost zero encouragement from my partners, because our expenses only increased with time as we realized what we were really getting in to (China is not exactly WYSIWYG when it comes to business) -- and I had no contact with the main decision-maker, who was the only person with any real experience in what we were doing (for political reasons I had to go through founder #2 to get to founder-investor#1).

I was literally stressed out of my mind. I lost a good portion of my short-term memory (until I quit). I could no longer predict what I was able to do in the future -- no ability to manage my own commitments & performance. Forgot why I wanted to live. Took up smoking.

I kept going as long as I did because I believed in the value of "sheer persistence". I wish I'd taken more drastic action sooner.

My experience was probably not typical, and so it's probably not worth drawing generalizations from it. But -- I'm incredibly glad that I quit. Today I'm learning new things and I'm happy to be alive -- I feel like a vibrant human being again. And I'm still excited about startups... but not to the point of self-destruction.

Two of the startups in the current batch were run by single founders when we accepted them. Neither was a startup legend or had any traction.

The odds of being accepted are much greater (roughly 4x) with a cofounder, but it's not impossible to get funded as a single founder.

I notice there's another way to partition that set: we got the things that don't require too much government involvement.

We got the cheap meat-like food, but from an innovation less benevolent than algae farms: factory-farmed meat.

Come to think of it, there turned out to be a similar workaround for the domed city problem: everyone just moved where the weather was good.

What's weirdest about this for me is that 1968 was the year we came to America. I remember 1968. It's kind of crazy to think there were a lot of people walking around then thinking we'd be travelling around in flying cars.