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Kevin Systrom and Programming

10 points by OafTobark ↗ HN
Because of this answer on Quora (http://www.quora.com/Instagram/What-is-the-genesis-of-Instagram/answer/Kevin-Systrom), there were reports after the Instagram acquisition that Kevin had to learn programming at night to do Instagram because he didn't know how.

Per this interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nld8B9l1aRE), he took CS classes in high school and had some mentoring from his uncle early on.

My friend also met with him recently and asked how he learned out of interest and asked if he took programming courses at Stanford, which Kevin said yes, but his interview in the video above doesn't line up with that response (albeit I heard this second hand so I can't verify the convo).

So what is the truth?

3 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 18.6 ms ] thread
skadamat
Honestly who cares.

Based on his Stanford eCorner video, he learned a lot on the side / on weekends. If you look at the MS&E program that he did in Stanford, you do take some basic CS classes and some math as well.

Building the prototype of Instagram didn't need a CS degree so I'm not sure why it's important

OafTobark
That's not what I was saying at all. I'm not implying that that was enough to build the prototype for Instagram or not. This isn't about how he learned to program, or any of that stuff. Was more on the lines of is he lying or not. The context just happens to be programming.
freshfey
In the foundation interview he did with Kevin Rose (and somewhere on Quora I believe) he mentions that he took some CS classes, but didn't really excel in any of them. So it's probably the influence of Google (where he worked on the Marketing team) and ODEO (which later became twitter) which got him into "side-projecting-with-programming".