gdp's Comments

Feld Thoughts : Desperately Seeking Amazing UX Gurus in Boulder

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:39:21 +0000

Garth, I read that link before I posted that comment. Unless I am missing something, it does not do a good job of explaining the difference. More important, Brad obviously have very specific ideas about what these terms mean, and I'd love to hear his views.

Feld Thoughts : Desperately Seeking Amazing UX Gurus in Boulder

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:05:38 +0000

Brad, you might want to add a few sentences about what you consider a UX and UI developer to be and the differences between the two.

Feld Thoughts : Where Has BASIC Gone?

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:48:10 +0000

Actually, VBA is included in almost all Microsoft Office applications: Word, Access, PowerPoint as well as Excel. (I think other Office apps such as Project also have VBA.) Outlook also has VBA but the VBA recorder does not work as well as the other Office applications. Excel is likely to have more heavy duty users who push Excel to the limits than Word, so VBA is used a lot more in Excel than in Word. In general, the macro recorder is a great way to learn. Just turn the recorder on, do a bunch of things, stop it, and look a the code. A lot of times I will record a bunch of actions, then tweak the code to make it more general, and then wrap loops around the code. In 30 minutes you can do a days worth of programming.

Feld Thoughts : Where Has BASIC Gone?

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:36:02 +0000

The first language I learned was GE Timesharing Basic, the original Basic designed by Kemeny and Kurtz. It had some terrible features: Line numbers Gotos were required for almost anything No If then else Variable names are only one character long Over time, all of these deficiencies were eliminated in subsequent dialects of Basic. Basic eventually evolved into a professional programming language. The problem is that a lot of those advanced features are hard to understand for a beginner. It would be a very unusual 14 year old who would be using recursion and OOPS. What we need is a language with training wheels. I think the best approach would be five levels. Set the level (1, 2, 3, 4 or 5). Each is a superset of the previous level. Start at level 1 and 95 percent of the complexity of programming is hidden from you. Get good at level 1 and then change the level to level 2, etc. Those who are good and motivated can move up to level 5, which has all of the complexities and power that one finds in a professional programming language. The first question to ask is, "How do I display 'Hello World'?" If you have to create a class, or declare a variable to do so, something is wrong. It should be one line -- e.g., Print "Hello World!". Once you got to level 3, I think there would be quite a lot of power available. Microsoft Visual Basic 6 was fairly straight forward. (With VB.Net, the .Net stuff adds far too much complexity for a beginner.) Visual Basic for Applications is basically a subset of VB 6. Get rid of some of its power and one would have a great language for beginners. At the same time, it is important that a teaching language not develop bad habits (e.g., Gotos). James Mitchell www.jmitchell.me

Feld Thoughts : Boulder Startup Jobseekers List

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 02:17:53 +0000

Brad, on the Foundry Group website, why not have a tab at the top that says "Startup Jobs." Have the same tab on each of the partner's blogs, all of which go to the same page. Let each of the companies backed by Foundry Group post their job listings there. James Mitchell www.jmitchell.me

Feld Thoughts : What Do You Hate The Most About Your Mac?

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 23:43:45 +0000

As a die hard Windows user/fan/fanboy, I cannot tell you how much I enjoy reading these comments.

I will add two things I do not like about the Mac. Both are Microsoft’s fault, rather than Apple’s. First, Microsoft Access does not run on the Mac. Second, we use Microsoft DirectAccess (which is vastly superior to a virtual private network) and it only works with Windows Seven.

There are many good things to say about Apple; I will mention only three. Apple has the best designers in the world. The Apple store in Boston is incredible, the best sales reps I have ever encountered. And I love my iPhone.

James Mitchell www.jmitchell.me

Feld Thoughts : Skadden Partner Completes 409A Handbook

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:49:32 +0000

Regina, I trust you understand that the anger is directed solely at those who passed this law. Given that the law exists, it's wonderful that someone as skilled as you are is willing to write a treatise on it.

Feld Thoughts : The Mac Won Me Over

Thu, 5 Aug 2010 14:13:11 +0000

Almost all cloud applications are simple, unsophisticated apps that will need several years to come close to the functionality offered by client apps. (Salesforce.com being the most obvious exception.) Gmail is probably the best cloud e-mail offering but using Outlook is a lot easier than Gmail, and I can use Outlook even when I do not have connection to the Internet. Are you using Skype for phone calls? I would never do that for U.S. calls, since long distance is essentially free in the U.S. Skype is fine for international calls. It's apparent you spend your day differently than I do. I supervise about eight developers. For internal apps, we use Access. It would take about 5 to 10 times longer to develop in any other tool. I have a smart assistant who can write her own queries and reports and even forms without having to interrupt the developers. So tell me, what tool comes close to Access for queries, reports, forms, for slicing and data quickly and easily? There is nothing like DirectAccess. All of us work remotely, we can simply open a file (Word, Excel), make changes to it, and everyone else has access to the file minutes later, without any need to worry about synchronization. It is a lot easier to simply go to our file system, find the right folder, click the file to open it, work on it and close it than to deal with an UI like SharePoint (which totally sucks in my opinion). I have tried about a dozen groupware offerings and it's like having sex with a condom, it's just not the same thing as just opening a file on my file system. I can find a file and open it in about five seconds. When you have reasonably sophisticated information systems, you are going to be someone's slave. I am a slave to Microsoft and for our WordPress sites, to WP and LAMP. People bitch about Microsoft but I think their prices are reasonable given the functionality they offer. (And with Bizspark, I don't pay anything at all.) These are stacks that are durable and I feel pretty certain they will be around 30 years from now, so I don't mind investing a lot of time and energy learning them and maintaining them. With cloud, I will be a slave to API, UI and protocols that I have no idea if they will be around 2 years from now. With Microsoft and LAMP, there are hundreds of good technical books, basically unlimited technical resources. I have a ActionPak subscription that allows me UNLIMITED technical support calls from Microsoft. Yes, I could spend five hours researching an issue through Google, and maybe I will find an answer, but it's a lot easier just to call. The Premiere support people are usually quite good, none of this "I am from India and I am going to read from a script" nonsense. Cloud makes sense: 1. If you need to edit a file at the same time, a totally cool feature with Google Docs 2. If you want the infrastructure taken care of for you, because you don't have the resources to do it yourself 3. If you can live with simple apps that are equivalent to version 1.0 apps introduced in the DOS world in the early to mid 1990s. (With some exceptions, obviously.) Why do I want to go back to the Stone Age? Some cloud offerings will evolve over time to match the power and sophistication currently offered by Windows apps, but in the meantime one would have to put up with a lot of pain and most of these companies will not evolve, and many will go out of business. Why do I want to take the technological risk if I have a safe choice that has all of the power I need? I think you are obsessed with new for new sake, which is probably what a VC should be. I am not a VC, I am just someone who wants to get a lot of work done while taking little technological risk and I really don't want to learn new software packages unless there is a compelling reason to do so. I have seen few cloud apps that draw me in. (No doubt you learn software apps much faster than I do, it takes me a few years to really know a package.) Even the better ones (such as Gmail) just short when compared with Windows apps. I hope this will change in the future; Microsoft does best when it has serious competition.

Feld Thoughts : The Mac Won Me Over

Thu, 5 Aug 2010 04:02:42 +0000

Yep, connectivity is my goal. I always want to work on teams rather than alone, so I can focus on what I am good at and others can do the other tasks. Brad is obviously working on teams and that is why I am surprised he made the move, it just seems so childish in so many ways. "Multiple times harder" -- Would you be willing to put money behind that statement? How much money? How about half of your net worth? Design can be emperically tested. Take two guys of equal intelligence, one knows Windows really well and one knows OS X really well. (I will volunteer to be the Windows guy.) For a week, give each of them dozens of different tasks to do. I would be very surprised if there was any difference at all between the two, if for no other reason than Microsoft has done a good job of copying the Mac interface. When I showed a Mac friend of mine Windows Seven, his first comment was, "This is such a ripoff of OS X!" As Picasso, said, good artists copy, great artists steal. I expect for the next fifty years I will be dealing with relational DBMS and I would sell my grandmother into slavery before I gave up Microsoft Access. If you are an individual user who does not work in teams, and does not need Access, and can live with the vastly more limited choices of software for the Mac, then sure, Mac could make a lot of sense. I did get an iPhone a few months ago and it clearly blows every other phone out of the market. AT&T totally sucks so I am thinking of switching to a Droid so I can go back to Verizon Wireless. But the iPhone is amazing. (I bought a Micro Cell and spent a day on the phone with AT&T trying to get it work. If it did, at least I could use my iPhone in my apartment. So far AT&T has been useless.) Apps matter a lot. That's one reason why the iPhone is such a great phone, it has far more apps than the other phones.

Feld Thoughts : The Mac Won Me Over

Thu, 5 Aug 2010 00:53:19 +0000

If you are a member of a tightly-coupled team, switching to a Mac is simply silly. The server matters as much as the client. Microsoft has a comprehensive set of server software that works reasonably well with the Windows client. On the server side, Apple has essentially nothing. Microsoft DirectAccess, for example, is the next generation VPN. It simply works, even when you are not connected with the Internet. It is hugely valuable having people around the work being able to access the same file folder structure without all of the overhead of groupware programs such as SharePoint. And there is nothing like Microsoft Access as a front end to a RDBMS. No other program comes close, and Access is not available for the Mac. James Mitchell www.jmitchell.me

Feld Thoughts : The Discussion About The Lack of Women In Tech

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:49:22 +0000

There are lots of professions where women face tough choices between career advancement and having kids. Assume a woman graduates college at 21, takes two years off, attends law school, graduates at 26. Joins a big firm where it takes 8 years to make partner. So about the time she is coming up for partner review is also the optimal time to have children. Same is true of a medical career or a college professor in a tenure track job. Software programming is different. You don't need a masters degree, only a bachelors, and every knows a large chunk of the very top developers did not finish college. You can do TechStars at age 22, get funded by a VC the next year, and hopefully make more money than you can spend the rest of your life by age 28. For women worried about having kids and a successful career, programming could make a lot of sense! And if you don't make $10 million, and you have kids but you also need to work, a good female software engineer is much more likely to find a good job where she can work at home four days a week than an equally good female lawyer. James Mitchell

Feld Thoughts : The Discussion About The Lack of Women In Tech

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:39:10 +0000

"We are five years into a 20 year shift." Has there been ANY progress in the past 5 years? My guess would be that if you surveyed women undergraduates at the top U.S. non-technical colleges, the percentage that have any interest in programming is not any different in 2010 than it was 5, 10 or 15 years ago. For software programming, the best time to get girls interested is high school. There are so many things we as a society could do. If you are a female high school student with any intellectual ability at all, you will be automatically enrolled in a programming class. To get out of it, you have to jump through 15 hoops. James Mitchell

Feld Thoughts : Rally Software Acquires Agile iPhone Product

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:12:57 +0000

"If you are an entrepreneur running a company that you think fits with any of the companies I’m an investor in" The startup I am running has, as far as I know, absolutely no fit whatsoever with any of your portfolio companies, any former portfolio companies, any future portfolio company, or any deal you have ever looked at. But if you put enough money on the table, it's yours. ;-) What's $100 million between friends? James Mitchell

Feld Thoughts : Sawyer on Why Bilski Really Means That Software Companies Should Leave the US

Fri, 9 Jul 2010 18:54:04 +0000

Damian, Paul Graham has several essays that deal with “What is the best environment for a tech startup?” Two of his essays are at: http://paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html http://paulgraham.com/america.html He likes to imagine what it would take for a city to become the next Silicon Valley. Reading his essays critically, the answer is clear: At least for the next 20 or 30 years, it ain’t going to happen. First, you need a top university, a technical institute, such as MIT or Stanford. How many MITs are there in the world? How likely is another country likely to create a university half as good as MIT? Graham asked several computer science professors what the top engineering universities were outside the U.S. Everyone said Cambridge (England), and after that, there was a long silence. There really is no great technical university outside the U.S. other than Cambridge. Is Brazil realistically going to create one? Not in my lifetime. Looking at his essays, he lists the other ingredients necessary: lots of really smart nerds, angel investors (as important as VCs, maybe even more so for very early stage companies), VCs of course. And there are things he does not list, such as lawyers and accountants and executive search firms who understand startups. Probably the most important characteristic is a risk-taking mindset. In America, people are more willing to swing for the fences. And if they fail, which they do most of the time, the penalties are much less than in other countries. One reason smart nerds in American are more likely to take the risk of a startup is that we have so many role models. The media loves to write about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckenberg, and people say, “If they do it, maybe I can too.” Who are the role models in Brazil? We can, we should and we do bitch about all the dumb things the U.S. federal government and the states do to inhibit the formation of small businesses. We can fantasize about leaving the U.S. and starting a startup in Brazil. But it’s not realistic. Brazil does not have what the U.S. has and at least for the next 30 years (I don’t think beyond that), it’s not going to. Probably Israel is no. 2 among countries for startups, and after Israel, the list thins out pretty quickly. If you believe our government is making some serious policy mistakes, I agree, and we should try to remedy them. The U.S. Supreme Court has clearly indicated it will do nothing to sort out this mess. But it's not a constitutional issue and it can be remedied through legislation in Congress, assuming we can convince them that the current laws are doing more harm than good. But this “I am going to move to Brazil and start my startup there” talk is childish gibberish. It’s kind of like your kid saying, “I am going to hold my breath until I die.” One point I do not understand in most of the previous posts – You start your company in Brazil where supposedly you do not have to worry about software patents. Are you not going to sell your product or service in the U.S.? If you do, can’t the patent troll sue you in U.S. District Court? One question for Brad: How many startups has he funded that were based outside the U.S.?

Feld Thoughts : Sawyer on Why Bilski Really Means That Software Companies Should Leave the US

Wed, 7 Jul 2010 22:45:00 +0000

Sawyer's essay is a good one as long as you don't take it seriously. Yes, our government screws small business in many ways, with software patents near the top of the list. But anyone with a three digit IQ who is not smoking crack would probably agree that 99 percent of the time, if you are doing a software/Web startup, you should be in the United States. Some like Paul Graham even go further, saying not just the U.S. but particular areas such as Silicon Valley are vastly superior places to start a startup than even Boston, no. 2 on his list. See: http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html Yes, Brazil is an interesting country and no doubt the cost of living is much lower. But let's get real. How many A+ software developers are there in Brazil (we all know the top 1 percent of software developers out perform the other 99 percent)? How many VC firms in Brazil are in the league of Foundry Group? OK, forget that, how many are half as good as Foundry Group? Answer: zero. Do you really think Brad is going to invest in your Brazil startup? Yes, Brad will bitch about Bilski (as he should) but he ain't going to fund you if he has to dial 011 to call you. Is he going to fund a company where he has to take out his passport to go visit the company? How many co-founders can you find in Brazil, the kind of guys who have done it before, who are willing to work 100 hours a week for a 15 percent chance at getting rich? (The fact of the matter is almost everyone else in other countries is incredibly lazy compared to startup founders in the U.S.) How many law firms in Brazil understand tech startups? By the way, do you know how many months it takes just to start a company in Brazil, and how many government agencies you have to apply to for permits? No doubt you have great things to say about the legal system in Brazil, which is well known for fair, even handed justice by smart and fair judges. And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you, because most people acknowledge that half of the judges in Brazil take bribes. (Which happens so infrequently in the U.S. that when it is discovered, it makes front page news.) And no doubt many would argue that the top universities in Brazil are in the league of Stanford and MIT. Well, that's true if you are talking about Spanish literature, but if you are talking about computer science or math or engineering, the top universities in Brazil are slightly better than a mediocre junior college in Nebraska. Let's get real. Despite the idiotic laws we have in the U.S., and the incredibly stupid decisions of SCOTUS and and the Federal Circuit, 99 percent of the successful tech startups will take place in the U.S. The only issue for debate is how many will be in Silicon Valley vs. Boston/Cambridge vs. Boulder vs. Seattle vs. other U.S. cities. James Mitchell www.jmitchell.me

Feld Thoughts : Skadden Partner Completes 409A Handbook

Mon, 5 Jul 2010 20:02:15 +0000

You know how in certain countries a woman is stoned to death if she commits adultery? I don't criticize the lawyers who write books like this one, but I do criticize the Congressmen and Senators who voted in favor of this law. We should gather all of them in a large room and then keep throwing hundreds of copies of this book at them until they die. Don't throw the books too quickly, we want the death process to be unusually slow and drawn out. James Mitchell www.jmitchell.me

Feld Thoughts : Bummed Out About Bilski

Thu, 1 Jul 2010 23:22:17 +0000

Fred Wilson is correct. The courts are not going to provide the necessary relief, and the job has to be done by Congress. People need to make it clear to their two Senators and their Congressman that eliminating all software and business process patents is very important to them and that their vote (and contributions) for that person is dependent on the politician having the correct view. In addition, the pro-elimination groups should compile a list of "Dirty Dozen," the 12 politicians with the worst views on this issue, and organize to defeat them at the next issue. James Mitchell www.jmitchell.me

Feld Thoughts : How MIT Could Help With A Different Approach to the BP Gulf Crisis

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:36:42 +0000

What a great idea. Assuming BP paid for it, the cost of doing this would be about equal to what they are spending very 90 seconds trying their currently unsuccessful approaches. James Mitchell

Feld Thoughts : Outlook 2010 Inbox Zero Bug

Fri, 4 Jun 2010 19:20:56 +0000

Dave, I would recommend that read David Allen: http://www.jmitchell.me/my-essays/david-allen Allen argues your brain is a terrilbe storage device, it should be used only for thinking and processing. Storage should be done by an external system you set up. The goal is get your mind completely free, which you can do only if everything is out of your brain and in some system you trust. With email, the Inbox is not storage, it is "To Process." Every time you look at it, your mind has to scan all the Goddamm emails to figure out which are important. Allen would argue get all of them out of your Inbox and store them in your folder. The only exceptions are the emails you need to process. James Mitchell

Feld Thoughts : Outlook 2010 Inbox Zero Bug

Fri, 4 Jun 2010 19:16:59 +0000

Getting to a zero Inbox is not that hard. Assume you have a billion emails in your Inbox. Create a folder called "Emails to Read When I Have Time." Move every email to that folder. Then keep up with your new emails, don't go to bed until your inbox is zero. And every day, when you have some time, look at your "Emails to Read When I have Time" folder.