jrmattox1's comments

Remember "Wired", the Bob Woodward biography of John Belushi? Many who knew Belushi were outraged that it was not an accurate depiction.

In a fascinating Slate article (http://slate.me/Y6ZQqd) Tanner Colby describes the experience of re-reporting the Belushi story "page by page and source by source".

Colby was surprised to find that, broadly, Woodward's book didn't contain outright falsehoods. Woodward just put the facts through a narrative filter that left out important context. What's left is a distorted picture of a person that, while factually accurate, doesn't reflect reality.

Colby: "I say it’s like someone wrote a biography of Michael Jordan in which all the stats and scores are correct, but you come away with the impression that Michael Jordan wasn’t very good at playing basketball."

In the wake of the NSA story, it is chilling to consider what kind of distortions could be created. The Belushi biography was mainly based on interviews. What narratives might be spun from years of calls, emails, and web analytics?

I hadn't heard of nReduce. Very interesting. My take is that if you are accepted to YC and are willing and able to move to SV, then there are clear benefits in doing so: network, external validation, brand, access to capital, etc.

If you are not accepted and/or are unable to relocate to SV, then a MOOC version of YC makes sense for the reasons that MOOCs make sense in higher ed: location & time independent, high quality learning, structured peer review, clear milestones and deadlines, tuition free, and most importantly ... it is far superior to the alternative, which is often doing nothing.

A more appropriate title to the post might be "Become an expert programmer in 10 years."

We seem to focus on the poles: no coding skills vs. expert coding skills. You can teach yourself to code in less than 10 years, you just might not be an expert.

The "learn to code" debate might be more productive if we allowed for definitions of competency at the stages leading up to expert. The post does a good job of defining the characteristics of expert competency. What does it mean to be an intermediate? How many hours should you expect to invest to get there?

In most domains, the learning curve ramps up sharply for the first few years and then plains off for a longer period. For example, you might move up 80% of the learning curve in 3 years with an intense effort, but the remaining 20% of the journey might take 7 additional years ... or a life time.

Awesome. I am your target. I often troll YouTube for "[song name] + acoustic cover" then find myself navigating the spammy chord/tab sites for the music. Bringing it together is incredibly helpful for me. Well done!