San Francisco Bay Area

[Zharek]

I'm here for the next two months staying with my brother, taking various online courses, and putting hopefully enough hours into my internship that I will be able to attend college next semester. Sweet in-state tuition only goes so far when you haven't done your taxes yet, barring you from a federal loan. But I digress.

Most days its foggy, sunny, rainy, or a combination of all three. A lovely temperate 60 degrees plus or minus some for humidity on average, a climate I'm finding rather ideal. Lots of local non-franchise coffee shops that all have their own vibe. Only one neighborhood sketchy enough to consider it being a mistake to walk through. There's several swing dancing venues, one of which I'm taking advantage of weekly.

So my question to you, anything you've ever wondered about San Francisco? Want pictures of some area? Tell me where to go and I'll see if I can fit it into my schedule and share my experiences.

[Arnox]

Not so much San Francisco as California. How are you dealing with the laws there?

[Zharek]

They haven't really affected me very much. I guess I'm sort of living as a model citizen would. I develop software and take mathematics courses by day and play video games and swing dance by night. Nothing too threatening. I don't really venture into any poor areas at night so I can't justify any sort of weapon for personal defense.

[peskybear]

I heard if you have an idea up there and you tell it to people with money, they will throw said money at you if they like your idea and are unable to steal it from you. Is this true?

[Zharek]

That's essentially true, my previous internship was a two-man startup (me interning as a third person) for a company called Moby Systems, the funding for developing the app was provided by an eccentric rich guy who inherited all his money from his dad and I guess actually used it to acquire profitable assets, and this rich guy is friends with one of the co founders and liked his idea. There was a straight up mansion that he would offer us to stay at but I was never in SF at a time to take advantage of it.

[peskybear]

Hmmm....I guess I need to go up there now. I know 2 dudes that are doing the startup thing and one of them has had some success in his first business. It would be cool to get a real job, there ain't shit round here. Another thing, how much about programming does one really need to know to do it in a start-up type environment?

[Zharek]

It really depends on what the startup is looking for. In my case I got lucky because they were looking for specifically an intern, just someone to take care of the less conceptually hard stuff that they can not pay a whole lot. I had some previous coding experience but had really never used javascript, which is what I programmed in for that one. It's an easy language and everything comes much faster when you have some sort of purpose and deadline, my skills improved extremely fast. With other startups that I've seen, like on linkedin and such, want pretty much just industry veterans with 2 million+years of experience with every language ever ever'd, so it varies.

So I guess a shorter answer is: not much depending on the position in a startup you want.

[peskybear]

Bitchin. There's apparently some startups in the surrounding cities near me so I guess I should try a few of those this summer. I've been coding for a little while now but my skills develop rather slowly, as I have 0 people to work with around me and no real direction/inspiration for any of my projects. I've written 2 tumblr scraping bots with Python but both are still 1.0 and could definitely stand some improvement along with non-useful programs that are kindof fun. We should get some kind of programmer collabs going on here...

[inflnityshock]

why is san francisco like granola?

because once you get rid of all the nuts and flakes, all you have left are the fruits

[5150]

check out Chinatown, the highest up the hill near the tunnel has some hole in the wall spots that sell lo mein by the pound, fried rice is also 2$ a pound , only a couple of places do it that cheap
the toronado is a good beer bar something like 75 taps , been there for like 20 years, dollar off before 6pm daily
stay away from soma area late at night , crackhead central