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Ask HN: Give me some PHP project or web app ideas

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Re: Ask HN: Give me some PHP project or web app ideas

#41

Post by scarecrowbob »

RyanZAG wrote: post #36
puppetmaster3 wrote: post #34

One project would be to learn another programming lang so you know something other that PHP. Same advice I would give to Java or others.

Great. Now he knows two different languages and still has no ideas on what to use them on. Terrible advice. The correct time to learn a new language is when your current one isn't meeting your needs or when you've completed enough projects to have learned as much as possible from your current language and can start bringing in ideas from others. Endlessly learning new languages and never using them is completely back…

Just to offer an alternate perspective, I am a developer who spends most of his paid time working on PHP projects, either on a bespoke framework used by a company I work with and a whole lot of WordPress (I'm not a fan, but it is very easy to get well-paid remote work in this system).

In the last couple of years, I have learned a number of other languages and frameworks, mostly whatever the "hip" folks are using (Zend, RoR, Django, Ember, Backbone), and of these the only thing that really is useful on a day to day level has been the python scraping framework, Scrapy.

Each of these systems has brought me new ways to think about PHP and Javascript code that I never would thought about if I was solely intent on solving the problems I had at hand as best I could in the PHP idioms used by WordPress and this bespoke web framework.

For instance, I certainly wouldn't be as comfortable with the map functions if I hadn't done just that little bit of playing Haskell that I did.

So in my case, learning other idioms for programming, even those which I don't apply directly, has been tremendously useful in understanding better ways to work with the systems that I have to work with in a day-to-day situation.

Re: Ask HN: Give me some PHP project or web app ideas

#43

Post by jliptzin »

andycav wrote: post #23
jliptzin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about that great feature where accidentally leaving a cabin light on completely drains the battery so that you can't start the car? Why do so many cars still allow this to happen? I'm no electrical engineer, but it can't be so hard to measure battery life and automatically cut power to the cabin when it gets below a certain threshold.

My BMW did just that: if the battery voltage decreasde under a specific threshold (when the engine was off), any light was switched off. A good idea, anyway. AC

Glad to see some manufacturers finally using common sense.

Re: Ask HN: Give me some PHP project or web app ideas

#44

Post by placementloop »

nate wrote: post #12

My favorite method for generating ideas is this: 1) Find a task I have. If I want to make money later from this idea, this task should probably be something I already pay money for, but if I just want to make my life easier, than forget the money part. My credit card statement is a great place to look for the money making ones. Once I have the task... 2) List out all the steps this task has. Be as detailed as you can…

Services related:

1) Find repeatable operations that distributed users can perform.

2) Achieve scale by helping the users become more efficient (technology) and effective (empathetic).

E.G. Uber, Airbnb

Re: Ask HN: Give me some PHP project or web app ideas

#45

Post by krapp »

Keyframe wrote: post #37
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is actually a problem you currently have, I've heard great things about FluxBB[0], it's built on Laravel and also powers the Laravel forums. [0] http://fluxbb.org/ EDIT: Its alpha 2.0 is built on Laravel and is a complete rebuild.

It's still an old forum-like idea. I built an almost feature complete reddit clone (with some HN ideas along the way) in Laravel over the last month or so. I did it so that I can extend it into direction I need it down the road. We're launching in a week or so and my hope is that we will open source it for others to use as well.

>I built an almost feature complete reddit clone (with some HN ideas along the way) in Laravel over the last month or so.

I've had one running on Pagodabox for a while now that's still only mostly done. I look forward to seeing yours.

Re: Ask HN: Give me some PHP project or web app ideas

#46

Post by yareally »

dysoco wrote: post #13

You can probably do a simple Twitter-like application, it's simple CRUD and shouldn't be difficult (It's used both in Rails for Zombies and the Rails Book as example iirc) A simple blog engine isn't complicated either.

Redis has a good basic tutorial up for building a Twitter clone with it and Php. Doesn't get into doing comet or web sockets, but it covers the foundation stuff.

http://redis.io/topics/twitter-clone

Re: Ask HN: Give me some PHP project or web app ideas

#47

Post by sirsar »

jliptzin wrote: post #17
byoung2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a good example of this at the LA Car Show yesterday. The new Honda Odyssey minivan has a vacuum cleaner built in to the cargo area, with an extendable hose that can reach all the way to the driver seat. Such a simple idea, I can't imagine how no other manufacturer ever thought of it before.

What about that great feature where accidentally leaving a cabin light on completely drains the battery so that you can't start the car? Why do so many cars still allow this to happen? I'm no electrical engineer, but it can't be so hard to measure battery life and automatically cut power to the cabin when it gets below a certain threshold.

Or, why don't the headlights automatically turn on with the wipers? It's illegal to drive with wipers on and headlights off.

Re: Ask HN: Give me some PHP project or web app ideas

#49

Post by awshepard »

sirsar wrote: post #47
jliptzin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about that great feature where accidentally leaving a cabin light on completely drains the battery so that you can't start the car? Why do so many cars still allow this to happen? I'm no electrical engineer, but it can't be so hard to measure battery life and automatically cut power to the cabin when it gets below a certain threshold.

Or, why don't the headlights automatically turn on with the wipers? It's illegal to drive with wipers on and headlights off.

Or, why don't they automatically roll up windows when it starts raining? They already have automatic wipers that use a sensor in the windshield, and they have hands-free automatic windows with a safety cutoff in case anything gets in the way. Rain starts? Windows roll up. Never worry about a summer drizzle again.
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