Learning a lesson the hard way

The media has been good to me for the most part. But these stories are just stupid:

• Business Insider
• Gizmodo
• Huffington Post

All these news stories take a funny anecdote that I shared with New York Magazine and distort it into pageview-generating, linkbaiting, tweet fodder. I’ve come to expect bad journalism from most of the tech press, so I’m not really surprised that they would do something like this. What upsets me the most, is that the most readers will undoubtedly take away the wrong message from the story.

Read the rest of this entry »

How I Learned to Program Computers

I’ve been asked this question a lot lately, especially after I built YouTube Instant. So, here’s the answer, once and for all, for those who are interested.

In short:

I learned how to program by building lots of websites.

The full story:

I learned how to program by working on lots of different website projects starting from a pretty young age. What follows is a full account of all the major websites I’ve built, back to the very first site I made when I was 11 years old. What I hope the reader takes away from this full retelling is the importance of doing lots of side projects if you want to learn to program well.

The best way to learn a new skill is to practice, practice, practice. All the best programmers that I know sincerely enjoy programming — it’s something that makes them absurdly happy to do. And, so they do it a lot. Often, an unhealthy amount. Learning how to program — and how to do it well — doesn’t take superhuman ability. It just takes a willingness to get your hands dirty and build stuff.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the news again…

Over one year after I built YouTube Instant, my little 3 hour project is still getting talked about in the national press.

To me, it’s a giant lesson about the power of programming for the Web. It’s also proof that engaging with the media through blogging, Twitter, and Quora can create a meaningful public discussion and even help you shape a news story.

New York Magazine – “Bubble Boys”

September 11, 2012. Out in Silicon Valley, the last bastion of full employment, the Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerbergs of the future are staying up all night writing code in dorms.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m on Github now!

Follow me on GitHub!

I’ve been using Github for the past year to work on projects with friends (like Instant.fm and iBoard). But until now, I’ve only created private repositories.

I’ve been meaning to open source the rest of my projects on Github, but haven’t got around to it, until now!!

Right now, I’ve mostly posted some small projects, but I plan to use Github for pretty much anything I build, from now on.

Announcing SpoofMAC – Spoof your MAC address in Mac OS X

Download SpoofMAC from GitHub.

Something I’ve needed to do from time to time is spoof my computer’s MAC address. This is useful for debugging network issues or temporarily getting onto the Stanford Wi-Fi network when my physical MAC address changes, such as when Apple replaced my logic board (motherboard).

Read the rest of this entry »