Ah, this isn't actually a student writing an essay, this is a high school policy debater. Their topic this year is space. If you aren't familiar with this activity, it has some pretty outrageous elements--300 wpm speed-reading, often surface-level analysis, and preference for gamesmanship over quality of argumentation. But if you put the right kind of work into it, you do learn alot.

The reason the student needs the source is that 'quals' are used to quickly legitimize a person's argument. In policy debate, unrefuted arguments are considered true. Thus, there's little time for intelligently evaluating what a person is saying, as long as they have 'quals' and you can get to the next piece of evidence ('cards'). The most outrageous argument from a PhD might be preferred in debate over a rational argument from an intelligent person, like Charlie Stross. edit: That's why he can't just say 'as Stross says...' like the commenters suggest. As an example, this past year my debate topic was mental health. I often cited Robert Whitaker, who is a finalist for the Pulitzer prize for psychiatric journalism, was the former director of publications at HMS, and has written two books on psychiatric medications. Yet, because he did not have an MD or PhD, debaters sneered at his qualifications, rather than evaluate his arguments.

I also find it highly likely that Stross's article is being used because of this paragraph "Historically, crossing oceans and setting up farmsteads on new lands conveniently stripped of indigenous inhabitants by disease has been a cost-effective proposition. But the scale factor involved in space travel is strongly counter-intuitive."

This is because debaters often don't respond to the other's policy proposition, but rather kritik their position by indicting the philosophical ideas behind it. For example, an affirmative debater might advocate colonizing a planet, and a negative debater could ignore this and talk about how the affirmative is really based on white-power dominance of other cultures, and thus they should lose.

My quals: debater in a different type of debate

Essentially none of those 30kloc were part of the actual product, just set dressing. You could easily launch the same basic product without writing a single line of code, just handling everything through e-mail attachments and a paypal button. I don't believe that the user experience would be significantly worse for it.

In the middle of the article, the OP lists various mistakes he made, but I think he's basically wrong on all counts. His essential mistake IMO was launching too late. In six months of work, he gained no insight whatsoever into the market. He could have learned just as much with a handwritten flier on the college notice board - "Your mock exam reviewed by a postgrad, £10. Email foo@bar.com".

For the technically-inclined, coding is the perfect form of procrastination. It can absorb a near-infinite amount of time and feels quite productive, but it's usually a distraction. Steve Blank's most important message is that in an early stage startup, your job is to learn about the market. Anything which doesn't connect you with your customers is wasted effort.

It sounds almost as if you're saying high schools now teach forum trolling.

It sounds like high school policy debates teach the opposite of rational thought. Authority is a useful heuristic for finding truth, but a good argument (which can in principle come from anyone) overrides authority. Here's a good post explaining the concept: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lx/argument_screens_off_authority/

Great article. I don't think we can repeat this enough:

Hard work != value. Clever code != value. Writing something hackers think is cool != value.

Sometimes I think the hardest part of startups is re-aligning our value system from what we've learned in school and society into something that's actually useful for startups.

I'm worried you've fallen out of one trap (salarymanhood) into another (highly paid consulting). I'm sure you're good at consulting and it's clear from the way you write that you're excited to finally get paid what you're worth for a change.

I'd just hate to see you wake up in a few years in a very similar situation as you were in as a salaryman.

It sounds like you're significantly increasing your cost of living: new apartment, getting married, treating money differently ("whats $2k when my comfort is on the line"), etc. If you're not careful you're going to need to consult full time just to get by. Good bye startup. No time for that. Your new wife quit her job six months ago and that new car isn't going to pay for itself.

My advice: put off the enjoyment of making real money and get back to investing time in AppointmentReminder or something else that will pay big scalable dividends.

That's what I'd say if we were having coffee :-)