Birch's Coding Skills Fade

A story about how Michael Birch, the founder of Bebo and an experienced programmer, couldn't participate in coding during a hack week because his skills were outdated.

"Michael Birch, who built Bebo - he was a programmer's programmer. He built 4 or 5 startups that were all interesting and successful. We did a hack week and I invited Michael. I said 'Michael come hang out, don't just be mister investor far away. Come hang with us, we're staying in your cabin.'

When I asked if he wanted to build something - we were all building these little apps - he said 'Well, I don't exactly know JavaScript. The languages I know aren't really used anymore, and I haven't coded in years. My machine isn't even set up to do it, so I don't know what I could build.'

So he cooked us dinner instead. Later he got back into programming - he got his machine set up, started using Python, learned the new languages instead of the old stuff. He ramped up over time and now he loves to code, he codes all the time. But when I put him on the spot when he hadn't been doing it, it was tough for him to just go build something, even though he's an engineer."