I am sure most of us have some sort of side project that we have worked on and then later left it to die, sometimes completed, sometimes half completed, sometimes just sort of finished, or an unpolished alpha. Some of us like building things a lot more than we like running them, leaving behind a trail of half-baked ideas, poorly marketed web apps, software we have given up on simply because we are not interested in taking the next step.

Why let all that work go to waste?

SideProjectors is a brand new service to help you either sell your completed/half-completed/sort-of-running side project, or to connect you with other entrepreneurs who are looking to get involved.

Ever consider going to college and perhaps majoring or minoring in Computer Science, but don't really have the time to show up for classes, don't really want to go into debt paying for 4 years of college, and really don't want to fuss and bother with taking a bunch of classes that have absolutely nothing to do with your chosen major? (skip things like Psychology, Modern Dance, English Literature, and Art History?)

Maybe you should look into the offerings at Saylor.

They have 2 different Computer Science offerings, depending on whether you want to major or minor.

They use all free materials that are available online, including materials that are unique to their program. Once you have completed all of the materials for each course, there is a final exam that you can take that does count, to prove your mastery of each course.

Once you have completed all of the courses in the program, they will issue you a certificate, free of charge. While this isn't exactly the same as a 4 year degree from a traditional college, you'll pretty much have the same knowledge as someone that paid for their schooling, except perhaps all the unrelated nonsense from courses having nothing to do with Computer Science, that one is usually forced to take. See their FAQ for more information.

And if you aren't quite ready for taking the required math courses to complete their Computer Science program, perhaps need to brush up on Algebra first, or fill in some of the holes left over from a less than adequate high school education, you can go back and take the high school math courses that you may have missed out on or forgotten the material.

I’ve had an unusual number of interesting conversations spin out of my previous article documenting that mobile web apps are slow.  This has sparked some discussion, both online and IRL.  But sadly, the discussion has not been as… fact-based as I would like.

So what I’m going to do in this post is try to bring some actual evidence to bear on the problem, instead of just doing the shouting match thing.  You’ll see benchmarks, you’ll hear from experts, you’ll even read honest-to-God journal papers on point.  There are–and this is not a joke–over 100 citations in this blog post. I’m not going to guarantee that this article will convince you, nor even that absolutely everything in here is totally correct–it’s impossible to do in an article this size–but I can guarantee this is the most complete and comprehensive treatment of the idea that many iOS developers have–that mobile web apps are slow and will continue to be slow for the forseeable future.