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Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

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Re: Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

#31

Post by lucideer »

TheCoreh wrote: post #17
lucideer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We never did and CoffeeScript had no good parts.

Destructuring assignment, arrow functions, shorthand variable syntax in object literals are some examples of good Coffee Script features that made it into ES6

To approach it from a slightly less tongue-in-cheek angle, my main point was that pre-compilation was never strictly necessary. I'm currently using Typescript as it seems to add significant enough value for me to warrant the extra complexity of pre-compilation, but I do think that's quite a big ask. Coffeescript has always seemed very much about conforming to developer syntax preferences, rather than adding functionally useful features.

ES6 arrow-functions add some behavioral change (this assignment) and make some callback patterns more readable ([].map, etc.) but are definitely overused and making a lot of recent code less readable as a result.

Whether destructuring makes code more or less readable is highly contextual and debatable. It does seem to fall well on the wrong end of the "Enabling" side of the "Software Dev Attitude"[0] to me insofar as it definitely allows developers to create very "clever" code at the cost of readability.

Shorthand is shorthand.

Generally speaking - like pre-compilation - these syntactical sugars may be a net positive for some, but they're far from groundbreaking in terms of adding value.

[0] http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SoftwareDevelopmentAttitude.ht...

Re: Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

#32

Post by ThomPete »

Not shure about your definition of big but https://www.ghostnoteapp.com is doing pretty well. Living in NY with a family being the sole provider it doesent work, but had we moved somewhere less expensive it probably could and i am growing both rev, userbase and product

Here is the original Show HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9145007

Re: Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

#33

Post by noir_lord »

devoply wrote: post #19
jen729w wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing. This comment must compare to the famous Slashdot takedown of the iPod. "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. " (Not meant as criticism; we're all horribly naive in hindsight.)

The point being most users are not power users. They just want stuff that they can get to work in 5 mins after a quick download. That's what a lot of geeks that have geeky solutions don't get. No one wants to do anything, they just want their cake for free preferably and they will pay money to eat it.

I am a power user and I still want the 5 minutes after a quick download, the two aren't exclusive and there is too much (IMO) pride in the 'this is difficult to use so I'm special for knowing how to use it'.

I spend way too much time bashing heads with the rest of the software ecosystem these days.

Re: Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

#34

Post by adamlett »

holydude wrote: post #18
TheCoreh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destructuring assignment, arrow functions, shorthand variable syntax in object literals are some examples of good Coffee Script features that made it into ES6

Who is using CoffeeScripts these days apart from github ? I like CoffeeScript but I am sad it did not get the momentum.

Lots of Rails developers. I made a conscious decision to introduce CoffeeScript at me work some years ago, because my experience had been that when back-end programmers dabble in Javascript ("The front-ender is busy, but hey, this seems simple enough. I'll just do it myself"), they make horrible messes because they are unfamiliar with all off vanilla JS's quirks and design mistakes (implicit global, to name one). CoffeeScript protects them from making these kind of mistakes/

Re: Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

#35

Post by drdaeman »

briandear wrote: post #28
zerr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not amazing at all :) I still struggle to find a reason why should I use dropbox over ftp or any other file repository service. I guess marketing and creating artificial buzz played big role in their success.

Explain FTP to your mom and see how long it takes them to figure out how to do it. Also how can you FTP from an iPhone? How do you have local copies on multiple device stay in sync? How do you share a link to your file to a third party? I'm talking about normal people and not experienced engineers.

I did, and dad uses this to share files with friends, privately (I had eventually built a tiny Flask app that does access checks and serves same files over HTTP). It's just a network-connected external drive to him.

Re: Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

#36

Post by sergiotapia »

zerr wrote: post #25
jen729w wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing. This comment must compare to the famous Slashdot takedown of the iPod. "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. " (Not meant as criticism; we're all horribly naive in hindsight.)

It's not amazing at all :) I still struggle to find a reason why should I use dropbox over ftp or any other file repository service. I guess marketing and creating artificial buzz played big role in their success.

I gladly pay $100/year to never ever ever EVER have to hear my wife complaining about me losing the pictures of us and the kids. You can't put a price on that my friend. :)

Same reason I pay for iCloud storage on our family account. Peace of mind.

Could I wire up some rsync contraption, sure maybe - would I sleep peacefully? No.

Re: Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

#37

Post by zepolen »

sergiotapia wrote: post #36
zerr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not amazing at all :) I still struggle to find a reason why should I use dropbox over ftp or any other file repository service. I guess marketing and creating artificial buzz played big role in their success.

I gladly pay $100/year to never ever ever EVER have to hear my wife complaining about me losing the pictures of us and the kids. You can't put a price on that my friend. :) Same reason I pay for iCloud storage on our family account. Peace of mind. Could I wire up some rsync contraption, sure maybe - would I sleep peacefully? No.

Google photos is better for that.

Re: Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

#38

Post by pjc50 »

jen729w wrote: post #12
olalonde wrote: post #2

DropBox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Amazing. This comment must compare to the famous Slashdot takedown of the iPod. "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. " (Not meant as criticism; we're all horribly naive in hindsight.)

No, I think we could have dismissed that one as ridiculous even back at the time.

What power users need to always remember is how important usability by the uninitiated is when adopting solutions. This is why the market for security products is such a problem - they nearly always necessarily either put a barrier in front of common operations, or expose the user to the risk of losing their data by error, or hand all the difficult bits over to a commercial third party.

Re: Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

#39

Post by skuzye »

devoply wrote: post #19
jen729w wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing. This comment must compare to the famous Slashdot takedown of the iPod. "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. " (Not meant as criticism; we're all horribly naive in hindsight.)

The point being most users are not power users. They just want stuff that they can get to work in 5 mins after a quick download. That's what a lot of geeks that have geeky solutions don't get. No one wants to do anything, they just want their cake for free preferably and they will pay money to eat it.

Heck I'm an engineer and I wouldn't want to setup a SFTP server to replace my Google Drive account

Re: Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big?

#40

Post by skuzye »

sergiotapia wrote: post #36
zerr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not amazing at all :) I still struggle to find a reason why should I use dropbox over ftp or any other file repository service. I guess marketing and creating artificial buzz played big role in their success.

I gladly pay $100/year to never ever ever EVER have to hear my wife complaining about me losing the pictures of us and the kids. You can't put a price on that my friend. :) Same reason I pay for iCloud storage on our family account. Peace of mind. Could I wire up some rsync contraption, sure maybe - would I sleep peacefully? No.

I agree. Having them take care of backups has a lot of worth in my book also
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