Sorry Dan Shipper and other coders, you are wrong.

Doctor: You seem to be in good health, what again did you say you need me to do?<p>BizBrah: Well, I'd like to be several inches taller, and have four arms.<p>Doctor: I don't really, uh, do that sort of thing, if it were even possible.<p>BizBrah: Listen, this is a one in a million idea, I just need someone to implement it. I'm the idea guy, you're the doctor.<p>Doctor: It's not impossible per se, but none of my colleagues would actually attempt such things on a human subject. Perhaps you should read up a bit about the current state of medical science, and maybe become a doctor if body modification research is your calling.<p>BizBrah: I looked at what's available at the pharmacy, but it's all too hard to understand. I love tall people. I love the dynamic nature of juggling many things at once. Am I forever cursed to be uninvolved in the medical community because doctors keep shooting down my ideas?<p>Doctor: ...<p>BizBrah glares demandingly.<p>Doctor: Actually, I <i>can</i> help you out! The kind of doctor you're looking for is called a psychiatrist. I know a good one, here's his card.<p>BizBrah: Bingo! I'm a people person, persuasion is my strength.

Thanks for the reply zipop I really appreciate the other perspective. That said, you said some things in your response that make me think that the way I wrote my post may have lead you to misinterpret the point I was trying to make. Sorry about that, let me try to rephrase slightly.<p>To be clear: I know how tough it is to teach yourself how to code. When I was teaching myself as a kid there was no StackOverflow, no Code Academy, and no W3Schools. It was just me and my programming book, and either I figured out the problem for myself or I had to give up. It was really hard.<p>The point I was trying to make wasn't that you could become a master engineer in 6 months. That's absolutely untrue. The point I was trying to make is that you can teach yourself enough code in 6 months to build SOMETHING, to move yourself along far enough to get to the next level.<p>I know this is possible because I've seen people do it. One of my best friends from school went from not knowing a how to write a single line of code to being the lead technical founder on a YC company in less than a year.<p>The real point here is that it's very easy to tell yourself something is too hard, and that you don't have enough time to learn it when that's really just a personal constraint. The point is that it's easy to get distracted doing things with short term rewards (going to events) rather than doing things with rewards that are played out over the long term (building skill). It's more written as a way to shift perspective than anything else. Again thanks for the response, hopefully that cleared it up a little bit.<p>EDIT: Original post is here if you missed it: <a href="http://danshipper.com/the-now-syndrome" rel="nofollow">http://danshipper.com/the-now-syndrome</a>

I'm a developer with extensive experience in building technology solutions and scaling them at all levels, from Fortune 500 all the way down to hobby game (400,000 lines of C / Lua) with a couple of thousand users running on a single PC. I love all aspects of building up a platform and can't get enough of it.<p>I'm drawn to the <i>idea</i> of being a technical co-founder and even have the financial resources to take a calculated risk on equity over initial income for a good amount of time. I don't live in CA, don't particularly want to move, and really struggle with these online "find a co-founder" sites when it's so hit and miss.<p>I feel like I have decent business sense but would prefer to spend my time building rather than dealing with VCs and fund raising and board meetings and paperwork so I just focus on small sites making "pocket money" and let the bigger opportunities pass by.<p>I guess my point in all this is that it isn't just "none technical co-founders" struggling here. This whole area of "partner discovery" is still wide open for someone to come along and find a better way to do things. Do any of the VC companies themselves do any kind of "partnering up"? If finding a technical co-founder is a challenge for so many people then perhaps there's a way for would-be leaders on the technical side to make themselves known to VCs up front, complete whatever interviews were necessary and let the VCs (or another 3rd party) do the matchmaking at a deeper level than just filling in forms on a site? Definitely open to suggestions in the meantime...

When I was about 11, I bought this book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Yourself-Game-Programming-Cd-Rom/dp/0672305623" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Yourself-Game-Programming-Cd-Rom...</a><p>I had never touched programming before. I read the whole book, and did the lessons, but C++ was just too hard for a beginner.<p>Then I found QBASIC sitting on my computer. QBASIC was easy, it was idiot proof. I learned all the basics (pun) of programming in 1 day. The problem is not that programming is hard, it is that these days there is no easy starting point. To an experienced developer, Javascript might seem easy, but after trying to teach it to my brother for the past few months, you can see how complex it really is for beginners. He took every course at Code Academy and is still struggling.

How much of programming potential is innate? Is saying "I'm not built to be a coder" more like saying "I'm not built to learn a foreign language" (which is implausible and smacks of laziness if you're at least moderately intelligent), or more like "I'm not built to be six feet tall" (which is true for most of the world's population)? I'm interested in the truth here, not in just-so answers based on personal experience. Are there good scientific studies answering this question, and do they agree? And if programming potential is mostly innate, is there a simple test for it that doesn't take 6 months?

I don't think the message us technical guys are trying to get across is that you need to become one of us and strive for the full ability to implement your idea all by yourself. Hell, the less people that are awesome programmers the better, keeps us in high demand.<p>After my experience with a very-non-technical co-founder before, I dont think I would ever again agree to work with someone who couldn't at the very least know how to read the source code and manually tweak database entries. Working with someone who has read the basic rails tutorials makes it infinitely easier to communicate and mutually understand technical and temporal restrictions on a product in development.<p>I'm a programmer, but I sure as hell read Inbound.org, dribbble, forrst, and other sites besides just technically oriented ones so I at the very least can use the same vocabulary to describe and understand what a a partner is doing and why they're choosing to do it that way. I expect anyone I work with to be similarly versed.

I think you make some valid points, and as somebody who self-taught, I get the pain. That being said, I also agree with the common sentiment here "help yourself a little first".<p>If you consider yourself a technology company, you need an understanding of your technology and what goes into making it. You may not be a master at each part, but you need _something_. It doesn't mean you are not marketing, but like marketing a technology implementation has several nuances that can't be overlooked. Tension always arises when these aren't well understood. Times this problem by 10 if you want "magic" / algorithms which little concept of how they will work (note: you don't need computing studies to figure this out, generally).<p>Note that I said 'consider yourself a technology company'. There are many companies based on technology that are not, themselves, technology companies (you can argue either way whether this is the right model, but it works). From my experience, these are the companies hunting less for technical co-founders (and who have less excuse for no traction pre product).

If you have a great idea, and the value you bring to the table in executing it is "sales", start by selling it to a developer. I'm not sure what we're arguing about here.

The OP is replying to this: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4395008" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4395008</a>

I'm a business student and I feel ashamed the rise of non-technical people in the startup field acting like they've got incredibly valuable skills. I learned more in introductory compsci classes than all the BS in my business classes combined.<p>In regards to startups, technical people are so much more valuable than non-technical people. Non-technical people keep on perpetuating this: <a href="http://whartoniteseekscodemonkey.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">http://whartoniteseekscodemonkey.tumblr.com/</a> -esque mentality by saying things like this:<p>&#62;"I am the nontechnical founder of several great startup ideas (I didn’t say startups) sometimes very poorly executed."<p>The founder of an idea? That doesn't mean much in my mind (then again, I don't know much about the author at all, nor could I did up much). Execution is key to a startup - and technical people are largely the ones that get the important shit done.<p>Non-technical people can add value for sure - but I think only a small margin of them have valuable skills that rival technical talent in a startup setting.

Using your own example, you don't go to newly graduated doctors and say, "I have this great idea for a general practice. Let's open a shop together split it 50/50."<p>I think Dan's point is that if you believe strongly enough in your idea, then it ought to be worth the time investment required to personally execute it. At the very least, take it to a level advanced enough to be able to sell the concept (and yourself) to prospective partners/employees and get them excited.<p>If you don't think you have the aptitude to learn the nuts and bolts of the particular execution, then you should probably refocus on another idea for which you are qualified. Alternatively, you could try and convince someone else to execute your idea and hope that he or she takes you along for the ride.

To be a programmer is non-trivial and takes skills and learning. To understand the basics of web development is not. There are too many half cooked coders out there without necessary skill or education to properly engineer complex solutions. That do not mean you can't dabble with coding and still not be a programmer, just like I can dabble with painting - need not be Picasso. That is why specialities exist.

While I can't empathize with you because I <i>am</i> a programmer, I feel like PHP isn't a great language to start on simply due to the fact that you have to coordinate a lot of non-programming things (servers, remote editing, HTML/CSS, etc.). I think you'd be more successful starting with Python or something else with a REPL.<p>PHP might be easier to learn on now than it was for me 8 years ago, I don't really know.

It's not hard to learn to code.<p>Start with Scheme as your language and <i>SICP</i> and/or <i>The Little Schemer</i> as your instruction books.<p>A smart person can become a competent coder if there is as little friction as possible between him and "holy shit, this actually works, aren't I awesome?"<p>When you're ready to try more practical stuff, then it's time to dip your toes into Python.

Ok, but what are you bringing to the table? Coding is hard. Talking people into giving you money is hard. Either one is sufficient for making a demo.

It's because you're a fucking idiot.