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Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

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Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#511
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I pay $600 per month for housing, food and bills Is that in the US? Sounds really low...

>smaller town and down sized everything You can very much pull that off in lots of small towns in the US, but yeah, you're living a close to thread bare lifestyle.

it's incredibly how much you can spend on take out, drinks and useless knicknack/gadgets. It was easily $300-800 for me before (camera geek).

But made an active choice to cut them out. And it hasn't been a loss for me, instead of take out I make exactly what I want (and no stress now that I have time to cook), instead of drinks out invite friends over and have a drink (cheap) at home, instead of useless things try to realize that you don't actually need them. Also living in a place with public transport helps, but I mostly bike everywhere.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#512

I worked on two cool open source music technology projects called ListenBrainz [1] (basically an open source version of Last.FM backed by the MetaBrainz Foundation, the people behind MusicBrainz) and AcousticBrainz [2] (a project trying to crowdsource acoustic information about music and release it as public domain). We released a beta for ListenBrainz over the summer and I've been working on data dumps for both List…

Both projects look fantastic! How does listenbrainz differ-from / compare-to Libre.fm?

We wanted to take our own shot at building a reliable open service with new tech. We're also much more focused on providing open and easy access to the data we have as conveniently as possible, so that people can build cool stuff with it. Right now, we provide a Google BigQuery dataset [1] that you can run any queries on. It has around 70M listens from 1300 users.

[1] https://blog.musicbrainz.org/2017/08/05/listenbrainz-data-is...

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#513
post #499

Worked on a dating app http://crushhourapp.com as a side project with a friend of mine. It took almost 1.5 years to complete, Backend APIs were done with Django, iOS app with Swift. The concept is dating app for London commuters. I created the whole London Underground maps programmatically in the app. The final result was ok, unfortunately dating market is already saturated, and our market is only limited to London,…

How do you feel about RxSwift and MVVM so far? Do you see it becoming increasingly more widespread in production code?

I think RxSwift and MVVM architecture work great together. I know some large companies that would keep it simple, would not use any framework. Some are stuck with legacy code, that requires lots of effort to change, but most of the time you will be asked about different architectures during an interview.

I would say it does not really what architecture is used, as long as it is easy to test, simple to add new features, any architecture will be fine.

From my point of view, I probably have a bit different approach to MVVM where we have Service layer (similar to Java Spring), below View Model, stick to the simple rules like single responsibility, separation of concerns, define your rules about communication between the architecture layers. RxSwift makes the communication between the layers so much easier, the old alternative would be using delegation pattern, notifications. In a large project over 30k lines delegation pattern will become painful to manage. Choose the right architecture for your project and don't be scared to add additional mechanisms, layers, because there is no solution that fits all.

With RxSwift concurrency is handled for you, you can do the heavy duty tasks in the background, observe on the main thread for ui updates. You can run multiple tasks in parallel and return the combined result. Things like these, become trivial to work with. Another benefit is that you will strive to write more functional code, functions that return observable that does one thing, and chain other observables, It wont be pure functional since most of the you will have side effects, which is fine. But still it is a good fight between the Object oriented paradigm vs Functional programming paradigm, finally you will settle with both and find a good balance.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#514

1) Got engaged :) 2) I built my own invoicing web app(breakdeck.com). 3) Developed an Electron app aimed at developer's productivity that I actually use 4) I published my first native Electron/Node.js module https://github.com/bithavoc/node-desktop-idle 5) Read 4/7 books I intended to read throughout the year. 6) Visited a new country

Excellent! Couple of mistakes on BreakDeck website - SuperHey is linked to SuperKey.com - SuperHey website's Contact us link can be improved What is the best way to reach out you?

hey, thanks for the feedback, I guess linking to my product can be considered as soft-launching it(both my company website and invoicing app at the same time). I fixed the typo, the contact form is on the works. You can reach me out by email: im at bithavoc dot io

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#515
I worked on various toy projects mainly in Scheme but also in Python:

- Scheme: I learned more ReactJS+Redux and implemented a similar framework using BiwaScheme and snabbdom. Here is an example app: https://github.com/amirouche/scheme-todomvc

- Python: I started a project but without a good idea of where it will go. It's based on asyncio, aiohttp and a custom ReactJS based framework inspired from my Scheme work (read the point above). The project served me well, as template for asyncio+aiohttp based projects: https://github.com/amirouche/xp-socialite

- Scheme GNU Guile: I slowly improved my search engine, I reworked the database schema and querying algorithm: https://github.com/a-guile-mind/Culturia

- Scheme GNU Guile: I create binding for termbox and made a tiny editor https://github.com/a-guile-mind/azul.scm

- Scheme GNU Guile: I added ffi to Guile JavaScript backend https://gitlab.com/amirouche/guile/tree/compile-to-js-2017

- Scheme: I started a dynamic blog engine (a la wordpress) https://github.com/a-guile-mind/presence

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Moral of story: don't announce genuinely amazing new initiatives without taking the time to get the donation links working first!) Curious how/why something like PayPal/Stripe integration couldn't be done in a short amount of time. Not as a criticism, just "is this actually technically hard?" (or is it just a time issue?)

1. I was genuinely sharing what I did this year, was not hoping for any positive financial outcomes. 2. Integration with non-profits donations is not trivial. After registering as a non-profit, it takes some time for the list of registered non-profits to propagate through to donation tools (facebook, gofundme, etc). Sometimes, I have to fax in documents to prove legitimacy, and it takes a few days for that to process…

I see. Thanks for the clarification, very interesting.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#517

I nearly ended up a pancake when my steering failed heading into a turn in February, the day before my birthday. I realized the circumstances that led to me not being able to fix it before it led to near disaster weren't going to change on the path I was heading down largely by habit, so I finally set some priorities. I decided to focus on making a business out of music. I'm far from where I want to be, but it's been…

Music is sooooo hard to make a living at. I burned through my savings and am getting back into engineering. I love music, but it won’t feed 4 kids, even if the music is stellar. Cheers to you!

I'm more on the tools and services side. I make melodies, synth presets, sound effects, and stuff like that. Still hard, but less of a gamble. I tried the other side before, and you're right. I just barely made enough to pay for the headphones I use for mixing.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#518
post #377

I wrote a few free SaaS-like services that combined have over a million users. Sadly, due to the nature of them / the "niche" that they're in (LOTS of competition in this space...), monetization is incredibly hard so I don't profit a ton - maybe a few hundred dollars per month.

Sorry but could you be more specific and perhaps tell us what kind of Saas app they are and what services they provide.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#519
post #284
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I've used it for a few months. That's the reason I've started working on my thing. I felt that it didn't have the features that I needed the most (hyphenation, dropcaps, ad removal etc.) and I would have felt like a jerk to ask for these things from the developer. These are not common needs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They're my needs haha, I sent you an email to become a beta tester

do you need any more beta testers?

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#520
post #36

Landed a new job in a new (to me), hard to enter industry making 2x what I used to make. Also achieved 2 new certifications. Personally I finally have a good management of my migraines and starting toward veganism.

What causes your migraines? For me it was stress. I could always kind of tell but since I've been working for myself for the past few years I have had hardly any migraines. An acquaintence gets them very often and they are extremely severe---incapacitating her for a day or more at a time. She has been battling this for decades and has been unable to find any causes. Edit: does the veganism have anything to do with th…

It’s a daily learning and reacting experience. The latest neurologist has me on Botox (for migraine), a sleep aide, and muscle relaxers. Many of them seem to be a muscle spasm in my trapezius, but not all. The muscle relaxers have done an amazing amount of help for me. Also learning the “crocodile” yoga position. That pose relaxes the trapezius muscle seemingly immediately.

Headaches are incredibly complex. They can be related to sleep issues, stress, hormones, muscular, and probably many more things I don’t know. I’d suggest your friend find a neurologist who specializes in migraines.

Veganism, I think, helps. Apparently there is a tie between the gut and the brain that can trigger migraines. Personally I’ve had severe migraines seemingly resolve after a sudden sharp stomach pain, for instance. That, I think, has only happened once or twice. I’m going vegan primarily for unrelated reasons. My bet is it probably helps as a plant based diet (for me) stresses the body less than meat/Dairy.

I hope your friend can get her migraines under control. They robbed me of a masters degree and many other things through the years. Let me know if she wants to compare notes with me on this.

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