I called Chet. Chet was the best programmer I knew.

He worked at IBM but we had been in

school together.

One time, from his apartment, he networked all of IBM’s computers together so they would
have the bandwidth to stream the Olympics live on the web. I think it was the first video
streaming.

Chet and I would hang out and he told me about the projects he was working on.

I told him all of that was BS. “Just learn the Internet,” I said.

And he did. He ended his career 23 years later at Google, a very rich man.

Chet’s latest:

One time he did me a favor that saved a business I had started. But that was a long time
later. In 2008.

I offered to give him a piece of the company in return for what he did.

“No,” he said.

“Please Chet, I owe you.”

“Consider the debt repaid that I owe you.”

“What debt?”

“You told me to switch to the Internet. Thanks.”

But that was 12 years later.

Now I was stuck. How could I quickly program this diamond dealer’s website. I didn’t want
to use C to go through his excel spreadsheet and I wasn’t sure how to make the graphics on
the fly.

He said, “No no no no. What are you doing? Use PERL.”

“What’s that.” I was lying down on my foam mattress. I had a phone and a 3 inch black and
white TV in the apartment that didn’t work.
Every night, if I got up to go to the bathroom, I had to jump up and down before opening the
door. That would make all the cockroaches disappear before I opened the door.

“Just trust me. Get O’Reilly’s book on mastering PERL. Get it right now. Call me later.”

I got the PERL book. About eight hours later I called Chet.

“You were right,” I told him. “PERL was the way to do it.”

“Did you read the book?”

“I’m done with the whole project. The website is finished.”

Many years later Chet stopped talking to me. I wrote an article saying no war could be
justified. He didn’t agree with me. He unfriended me and we never spoke again.

I remember one time he stayed with me in grad school. I gave him a novel to read. “Cockpit”
by Jerzy Kosinski.

I’m remembering this because I’m rereading the book today. We were once close friends.

I took the PERL book and here’s what I did and here’s how I learn every programming
language I’ve ever learned since 1984.

It’s sort of how I learn everything I’ve had to learn ever since then.

The key for any learning is: make it easy as possible, then get more difficult.

● SET UP YOUR ENVIRONMENT - Download whatever you need to do to

program, compile, and run a basic “Hello, world” program.
● DOWNLOAD SOME SIMPLE PROGRAMS YOU CAN MODIFY
● PLAY. Make changes in the programs. Simple changes. See if it works.
Then change back. Then Play again, a little more aggressively. Use the book
as reference.

That’s it. That’s the way I’ve learned every programming language before or since. And the
same technique applies to learning everything.

PERL turned out to be perfect for what I needed to do.

I set up my environment. Started playing with some simple programs.

When I made mistakes I used the book as reference. Eventually I modified the programs
enough to make Shlomo’s website.
Years later I wrote software to make predictions in the stock market. It used a new
language I had never used before.

I took a sample program that looked for certain patterns in stock prices.

Without knowing the language at all, I changed the patterns. Whenever I made an error I
would look up the specifics of the language until I didn’t make errors.

The more I modified programs, the more I learned about the language.

These programs became the basis of my first hedge fund.

This is the key:

● get a REFERENCE
● set up your ENVIRONMENT so you can program. This is the key part. Now
you can play, program, learn.
● DOWNLOAD basic programs
● MODIFY them
● START MODIFYING to get closer to your final goal.

MAKE THE TARGET CLOSER

Tony Robbins once told me how he taught Marines how to shoot guns better.

“I was in my early 20s and they asked me to teach these elite Marines how to shoot better. I
had never even shot a gun,” he said.

“But I watched them for awhile and then I had an idea.”

“I put the target very close to each of the shooters. Maybe three feet away. They all shot
bullseyes.

“Then I moved the targets another foot away. They all shot bullseyes. And so on. I kept
moving the target further away until it was all the way on the other side of the room.

“They told me they had never seen a class of Marines learn how to shoot faster then in that
class.”

He looked at me and pounded the table to emphasize.

“Always bring the target as close as possible. Start with that whenever you have to learn
something. Then after you master it at that distance, move it slowly further away.”
(from my slideshare: “Ten things I learned from Tony Robbins”)

——

I delivered the website.

Shlomo was very happy. “So fast?” He was almost suspicious. But everything worked.

He launched the website a few days later. It still exists (although has since been rewritten I
think). diamondcutters.com.

He gave me the $17,500, in cash, in a paper bag.

I took it immediately to The Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street and paid for a year in advance to
live there.

Shlomo was my first client. I started a business making websites. It changed my life.

It began a period that was the worst decade of my life. Life was stress-free and simple
before I started being an entrepreneur.

Many years later, Shlomo died in a plane accident over Namibia. He was looking for uncut
diamonds and crashed.
—

Shlomo had a secretary that I had a crush on.

She had a big red wine stain birth scar that stretched from the corner of her eye, across the
landscape of her cheek, and touched the end of her smile.

I would stare at it when she spoke to me. I would try to make her laugh. To see that wine-
stained smile.