Louisiana has free in-state tuition, so I'm graduating with an engineering degree debt free. Sure, my institution isn't as highly rated as the others I got into, but they just weren't worth the premium — especially for a degree like engineering which is essentially standard across universities. (Graduating from a top 10 school could easily set you back $200k.) Which is great, because instead of working to pay off the debt in school or worrying about taking a job right out of school, I can take my time and crank away on my startup. Win-win.
I don't like these kinds of questions because more often than not people get it wrong. People who aren't actually performing any of these actions often mislabel and completely misunderstand the distinction, but also we often don't understand it either. It's not very difficult, but I feel being precise is important because it classifies exactly what your skills are and what can be expected of you.
First, a programmer is simply, as the word implies, someone who programs. A programmer can be a polyglot or monoglot — either way, a programmer programs.
A developer is someone who develops. Developers write code, but they do so on a more macro level than programmers. Developers tend to work on whole projects, so they'll start from scratch and finish the project out. This term is pretty commonly applied to people who built websites or web apps.
So the key difference between a programmer and a developer is the scope and length of their work. A developer can be working on many projects at once and only for a short time; a programmer likely works on only a few projects for a very long time.
An engineer, however, is completely different. An engineer is a trained professional with a college degree. Engineering is the long respected art of developing solutions for problems using mechanical devices. Engineering might employ the use of programming, but programmers and developers are not engineers.
I've held each title. Programmer and developer can sometimes be interchanged, but engineer can't. I personally identify myself as an engineer — after a grueling four year degree — and it really gets to me when engineer is just handed out as a title. You're not looking for a 'web engineer,' you're looking for a web programmer. Not only is it disingenuous, it's also harmful to a profession that has been around for centuries. I wish there were more consistency in which titles are applied.
The title of this article is absolutely irrelevant to the actual arguments presented therein. He never argues that a high IQ will kill your startup. He only argues that not working and avoiding problems could lead to the destruction of your startup. Which, of course, is patently obvious, even to someone who isn't intelligent at all.
A high IQ won't ever kill your startup; being a highly intelligent person can only help you. Don't be so sensational with your titles.
His fundamental argument is logically flawed on a very basic level. It's simply insane to think that an ecosystem that has been operating in a certain manner for its entire existence will suddenly change directions and begin operating in a massively different manner. It's not going to happen. Betting on a platform that may in the future become awesome instead of voting on a phone that you admittedly think might be the best phone on the market is as crazy as betting on a horse that looks like it has the potential to win instead of the horse that is winning. It just doesn't make any sense.
There are many legitimate reasons to switch from iPhone to Android. He hasn't convinced me this is one of them.
> It's simply insane to think that an ecosystem that has been operating in a certain manner for its entire existence will suddenly change directions and begin operating in a massively different manner.
Are you talking about the future of the Android market?Continued growth is hardly operating in a "massively different manner." Expecting something as fluid as a marketplace not to change is far more unreasonable than expecting change.
> Betting on a platform that may in the future become awesome instead of voting on a phone that you admittedly think might be the best phone on the market is as crazy as betting on a horse that looks like it has the potential to win instead of the horse that is winning.
The author thinks that the iPhone might be the best "overall", but that Android is a better fit for him personally. Your horse analogy doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either.
Consider the next two years (typical smartphone lifespan) a horse race. Right now, Apple's horse is ahead, but Google's horse, while taking longer to accelerate, is now moving faster than Apple's horse. Which horse do you bet on?
Sounds like you're as much a Steve Jobs (or maybe just Apple) hater as this guy is a Steve Jobs lover. Maybe the article is a tad ridiculous, but at least some of the quotes are really good.
One I went to high school with, another I found at TechStars for a Day, another was a designer I worked with on another and the final one I knew through a blogging network from when I was like 12 and we recently connected in the past few years.
There's another site that I've seen that does something similar: http://www.prodigyhealthinsurance.com/