I started programming when I was around 12. My teacher told me about how he learned BASIC in school...so I went home and looked up BASIC. I had a lot of fun messing around with qbasic/qb64 and finally FreeBASIC. Semi-related but one of my favorite books of all time was Creating Adventure Games On Your Computer by Tim Hartnell. It's wild to think how much of an impact that book and FreeBASIC had on me. If I could upvote this a thousand times I would.
Thanks very much for this book reference. Our son (10yo) is learning to code and after quite a bit of research (and to my own huge surprise), I've pointed him to QBASIC (via DosBOX).
I'm just a hobbyist, and approaching 40, so maybe this is pure nostalgia. But I do think text adventures (especially writing one yourself) are still a great way to teach coding -- and the whole keyboard-centric paradigm of computing. As a side note, being a non-native speaker, I learned quite a bit of English with the legendary adventure games by Sierra and Al Lowe. Great teacher, extra credits for his quirky and naughty, but yet so intelligent humor, of course. :)
I think it is really well thought out and structured; looks like a great "more traditional" introduction to programmer's way of reasoning for kids around 10-12. I also like the empathetic language the author is using -- he has clearly put some thought into how to explain things so that a 10-or-so year-old kid would understand it while reading on their own.
I am actually in the process of translating this tutorial to my language (Estonian). Most of it is already done, and I can confirm that our son is doing really well reading it and trying out the examples entirely on his own. The QBASIC IDE is IMO still really good due to the instant feedback the child gets while messing around with it.
Haven't tested it out myself, but after we're done with the QBASIC book, we might move over to this one, actually. The manual looks great, might be quite accessible for a 10-12yo kid's self-study:
https://lowresnx.inutilis.com/docs/manual.html
It is definitely strange to reach for BASIC as a teaching language in 2023. But, this is an argument that has been echoed on HN as well, today's popular languages do seem somewhat overkill for a child's first independent explorations. But, again, I am just a hobbyist, no intention to grow a programmer out of our son. I would actually just like to teach im thinking skills, and a way to have some intellecual fun.
The QBASIC/QuickBASIC IDE was also quite good for its time. Either way, there's still nothing quite like it on modern systems. There are a few terminal text editors with intuitive TUI's and key bindings, but none of them provides the full IDE featureset and easy access to documentation that these tools had. (Hopefully we'll get there at some point. Perhaps by starting from the codebase of a modern GUI editor like lapce and providing a TUI frontend to expose the same features.)
It's a very close look-a-like and it works quite well in practice but the codebase is quite messy, with many things still being based on old MS-DOG and its quirks. Would need a ton of refactoring to make it more extensible on modern systems.
I started programming with QBASIC at about 10 years old, too, after randomly coming across a book called “Practise Your BASIC”. It’s a great book and Usborne recently released it for free: https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books
Oh, I don't recall anybody ever explicitly saying something like this to me. Makes me happy for sure, especially considering that I actually did not learn the English language at school back in the day; we had German. Many thanks!
Those Sierra adventures probably did have a considerable, even huge impact on my early encounters with the English language, though. Basically, it was "learning by typing" [1], so it must have greatly contributed to the grasp of grammar and spelling early on.
This is actually a reason why I still consider text adventures a great learning tool for children. The child is playing a game (or coding their own), but because it is so text-heavy, they also improve their language and writing skills, without even noticing it. Leisure Suit Larry style jokes are not a compulsory part of this syllabus, though. :)
The Ted Felix tutorial reminds me of the beginner's guide I got with my VIC-20 -- easy enough for a five-year-old (me) to read and follow, and it got me thinking of the kinds of programs I could build on my own.
This is exactly what happened to our son (10yo) as he went through the chapters. He would start seeing everything around him (and, particularly, in his Minecraft environment) in if-else statements, etc. It was quite fun to observe.
I remember the same thing and eventually seeing DarkBASIC in stores and PureBASIC on a few shelves as well in the 90s. I gravitated towards BlitzBasic because the developer (Mark Sibly) was genuinely interested and improving his system, forging a good community and making some cool looking stuff along the way. For years I wrote BB, B3D, and a few other dialects of BASIC for doing game-related and demo-related things.
I'm so excited about this because I first got interested in programming via the same book that was for some reason on a shelf in my primary school's computer room!!! They did show us basic computer literacy stuff which was already ahead of its time but no programming or anything like that.
I remember not really understanding at the time and then years later coming across Visual Basic and the name ringing a bell, and then I was off to the races! So much fun.
I found that book in a library as a kid -- or maybe a similar one, it's hard to remember now. I do recall typing in long listings from the book and then trying to "fix" the compile and runtime errors by randomly trying things.
Thanks a ton. I do have some questions based on your feedback.
What do you mean by experience? As a consumer or moreso experience that the particular solution is viable?
A story on the product or of the founder(s)? I feel like I've got the latter covered. I have plenty of stories of when the product would have been very useful and a couple friends to vouch. Does that count?
Another question. Does it look bad when you can't bootstrap? Doing development in my spare time is fine. This particular idea though can't be done totally in my spare time nor could I bootstrap unless I was a lot wealthier, although it's not as high as I make it out to be.
When is too early to plan a pilot? I've got the majority of a pilot planned already because that's just how my brain works. Designed it to be as minimalist as possible so I could test the waters. Would that be a good sign? Do they really care about this level of detail? Or does the idea of a pilot turn them off because there's no substance yet?
Basically, how can I go in with as little as possible and get enough to run that pilot? "Little" in this case being "hey, I believe in this, but there's no way to do this other than to show you".
I'd be able to answer more specifically if I had more info on your experience and startup, but I can also answer higher level and hope it's useful for you.
Experience - are you deeply familiar with the problem you're trying to solve and the current options for solving it. Have you lived this problem? Have you been a consumer of the solutions? Why do you care about it? Why can you solve it better than anyone else?
Story - the answers to the above question will naturally help create your story. Friends can vouch probably won't hold up.
Bootstrapping - not everyone can bootstrap, but investors want commitment. If you signal any lack of commitment then it will tank the perception of the investment opportunity.
Pilot - do you mean MVP? At seed stage or pre-seed you don't need a product, but having a working demo or something tangible helps make your ideas more real for other people. Having some traction helps them place it in the real world.
Generally fundraising isn't so cut and dry. There's a spectrum of outcomes ranging from getting a great deal on great terms with a great fund that will probably get you in tech crunch, to raising a fine deal, on ok terms, with a 3rd rate VC fund, to failing to raise at all. The probability for better outcomes depends on how well you cover the bases of what VCs actually want to know, but also on how much they believe that you, specifically you, are the right bet for this type of solution/category.
When they invest in you it means they can't invest in other solutions that are similar (they can but they shouldn't and good VCs mostly don't).
Often VCs will already have a thesis or belief about the market you operate in. It will be high level, but they're going to have some opinion about the way the wind is blowing. They take a position on a macro trend and then find the best possible exposure to that trend in a great founding team and vision.
This is great feedback. I really appreciate it. I'd love to give you the short of what we're doing. If you're interested, my email is in my HN desc. Not sure what I could offer in exchange for your time but willing to figure something out.
Good points. I agree that employees shouldn't need to pay to find work but I feel it's more competitive than you think for a lot of people out there right now. Just looking for solutions.
Also, it's one of those things where you don't have to do anything. If you want to pay to get some advantage, then you can.
Thx for the feedback. I'm going to have to think on all of this a bit. Perhaps the "agent" route isn't the best solution.
My advice: You need to clearly spell out the value you bring to the candidate. If you're going to ask for payment, what would I, as an applicant looking for a job, get from you that I can't do myself? Or I can't pay someone overseas $4/hr to do for me (submit a lot of applications)? What's your specific value proposition?
Saving time submitting applications for applicants has some value perhaps, but the goal is to get a job, or at least an interview, and that's probably only incidentally correlated to number of applications submitted.
I think there are opportunities in the coaching and resume/cover letter tailoring niches. You can find plenty of people offering that but they mainly come from an HR background, not a tech background (probably because tech jobs pay much better -- those who can, do, and those who can't do, teach, in other words).
If I was looking for a job I might consider paying someone who clearly had great industry/geographic contacts, inside tracks, and advice. But then I wouldn't have to pay for that -- I would try to identify the top recruiters and get them to place me.
Exactly! That's my problem with recruiters. They get paid to place "someone", not "you".
As far as me not really expecting to get paid is that I'm hoping to try this for a little while and see what the right business model is. I'm hoping it will be easier to get some tests done if it's at no cost/risk to the client.
I definitely plan on being clear with numbers/pricing once the service is more defined.
It might be a lot quicker to find your model through cost exploration.
1. Put up a landing page that talks about your service, and has a 'buy now' link at the bottom
2. The 'buy now' price should be a price that you think is fair
3. Clone that page and play with prices. One page could be priced half of what you thought was fair. Another page might be double.
4. Load balance those pages. If you see an even amount of people willing to pay $100 as $20, then you KNOW $20 is priced too low. Your optimal price point is after the point you start losing customers. If you can sell it for $500 to 10 customers or $50 to 100 customers, you will have made the same amount of gross revenue, but it is much easier to deliver service to 10 customers than 100 customers.
Your best price point may be 10 times (or more) what you think is fair. It may be 10 times less. If more, well then you have opportunities for establishing an agency, as there's overhead to delegate the work and still make profit. Or you can discount it to those who need some help. Or you can play with different cost models (e.g., "I will get you hired in exchange for 10% of your first 10 paychecks" type of arrangements).
> That's my problem with recruiters. They get paid to place "someone", not "you".
That sounds good as a sales pitch for your service but I don't think it's accurate.
While true that recruiters get paid by the employer to place the right candidate, reputable recruiters generally do not submit multiple candidates for the same position at the same time. In other words, the recruiter is working to place you if you look like the best candidate.
If a recruiter "spams" their customer (the employer) with unqualified candidates their customers will stop using them. Employers who use recruiters expect the recruiter to screen and qualify applicants, separate the wheat from the chaff, then put their best candidate forward. Good recruiters will bypass the application and HR steps and get their candidate in front of the hiring manager. That's why employers use recruiters -- they're outsourcing the resume scanning and initial screening process.
People who have had bad experiences with recruiters often blame the recruiter and that whole industry when they should reflect on their own shortcomings. If multiple recruiters aren't putting a candidate into interviews that may indicate the recruiters are incompetent or that whole industry is parasitical and useless, or it could indicate that the candidate is not attractive or competitive for the available positions. I think it's obvious that recruiters will focus their efforts on the best candidates they can find because those people will most likely result in a successful placement. That's the only way recruiters get paid. They don't make any money submitting applications for candidates who don't stand out or get through a phone screen, or who can't write a competent resume tailored to the job. We have job coaches and counselors for that.
The more I think about it the more I agree that what I said isn't accurate, actually. Agents can spam too and get paid for placing "someone", not one person. Also, if everyone had an agent, we're basically at the same place. So I don't think this is the solution.
Also I generally agree with what you're saying about recruiters. Still trying to think of solutions. The problem needing to be solved is it's very hard for lots of engineers at various points in time to find work. It's a real problem because of how it affects those people in that situation.
I didn't see the problem until I decided to quit my job this year, at the height of the layoffs. I used to be able to get offers for every one out of three interviews.
That isn't the case anymore. At all. Farrrr from it.
There IS indeed a problem but I don't think the solution is becoming an agent. I'm still going to keep it open to get more inspiration and testing.
I understand in some sense that the job market really tightened up. I've survived a few downturns in my long programming career (40 years now). I have a son facing a terrible job market. By "in some sense" I mean that senior people with lots of experience and professional contacts aren't having the same problems finding jobs.
Recruiters and agents will only take on candidates they believe they can place. If they can't put a candidate (or freelancer) into a job quickly they lose money. That means recruiters will focus their efforts on the highest-quality candidates they can find (which individual candidates will perceive as "ghosting"), and agents will only represent people they can consistently keep busy. Analogously, Hollywood and sports agents don't represent everyone who wants to act or play basketball, they represent people who already have careers, and a few people who look very likely to succeed.
In this market that means, unfortunately, that people with less experience and fewer marketable skills, fewer professional contacts, will struggle to get jobs. And those same junior people got laid off at higher rates. That increases competition for fewer jobs (for the time being, anyway, mainly because of interest rates), which will affect both the juniors and the people a little farther along who have to compete with a large number of less senior people looking for jobs who may cost less.
Disclaimer: 10X Management, an agency for tech freelancers, represents me. My opinions, not theirs.
Also, If you aren't willing yet to pay someone to apply to jobs for you, then you are not the target audience. But let me know if there's anything related you'd pay for. That's how the idea came up for me. I was like "damn I wish I could just pay someone to do this".
For me, the value of a recruiter is that they're well-connected and can help with negotiations. It's icing on the cake that the company is paying them, not me. I would consider paying for this service if you were able to negotiate for me, and then I'd pay a percentage of the negotiated increase to you.
I don't really place much value on someone just applying to jobs for me - that part isn't hard. Now if you could do interviews for me...
That's a great idea. Thank you! I'll take it into account with the next iteration. The interviews part is going to be hard though. I don't know if that's allowed. :-)
I'm a resume submitter with technical knowledge and the applicant pays what they want. I'm okay with you assuming I'm less well-connected BUT it's in my best interest to get you offers. It's in their best interest to get someone offers. That's the big distinction. And no, no one else would be paying me. Maybe that's something to pursue? Who knows. YC talks about doing the manual stuff to validate and to learn and to research. So that's what I'm doing.
You're not being blunt. You're asking questions. That's ok. :-)
That would be pretty dramatic but everybody is going backwards by some amount. The median household income in America has been declining and the poverty rate is soaring at a rate not seen in more than 50 years. I saw JPMorgan predicting that in the next year 99% of Americans will be worse off financially than they were in 2019. It's a race to the bottom.
