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I could do that in a weekend (2016)

danluu.com

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Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#51

Post by MonkeyClub »

adt2bt wrote: post #32
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #8

One other thing he touched on in passing: people are assuming they'd know what to build from the start. Even in relatively trivial applications a lot of work goes into finding the right way to express what you're trying to build. I recently worked on a small app and spent 40 hours trying out different approaches to the user interface. The solution I went with could be coded up in about 2 hours, but I had to do 38 hou…

I had a similar realization with food recently, bear with me. You ever hear how in certain cultures, Mom's food is the best? Now, of course there's nostalgia involved. A hint of home can make your taste buds sing just a bit louder. But also, even for a 'simple' meal, there are so many options a chef can make that subtly change the meal. For example, looking only at one ingredient, you can end up with a dizzying amoun…

> You ever hear how in certain cultures, Mom's food is the best?

Just had the semi-shocking realization that the cross-section between those cultures and the cultures where moms are stay at home is quite large.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#52

Post by MonkeyClub »

bern4444 wrote: post #23

Fun article, but exceptionally difficult to read. I know some people like using plain ol html, but just a few lines of CSS would vastly improve the reading experience. I know its from 2016, but still. Eyes read best when content is a few hundred pixels long. Content should be centered etc. It's pretty terrible as it is

Yep it was pretty horrible, so I hit reader mode that narrowed everything down and increased the font size.

I find it's quite a bother to have to do all the CSS necessary for good reflow on a number of devices, so I too just have everything just spill to the ends, and just do reader mode on devices. But I don't really know much CSS apart from the really basic stuff, and haven't ever sat down to see how it would be done.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#53

Post by marcosdumay »

lhorie wrote: post #9

I don't see nearly as many people claiming Google could be built in a weekend, but I do see that sentiment a lot in threads about Uber. It's easy to think it's a simple app, but there was a great response from a former EM highlighting just why that isn't so[0]. > This reminds me of a common fallacy we see in unreliable systems, where people build the happy path with the idea that the happy path is the “real” work, an…

People make this observation about Uber mostly because they can replicate the thing in a few months (it's never a weekend). And proof of that is that many people did replicate Uber software in a few months, some times even with some commercial success.

Differently from Google search, the hard thing about Uber is not the software. What makes a lot of sense, but leaves the question of what are all those people doing there, what the article answers, but the answer is not trivial in any way.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#54

Post by thehappypm »

nottorp wrote: post #47
pgm8705 wrote: post #5

Similar thing with comments whenever a Slack related article ends up on HN. "I don't understand how a shitty IRC clone is worth billions of dollars!" or "Why would anyone use Slack when Matrix is free!" I often wonder if these folks haven't even bothered to actually use the software and realize how much more it does beyond sending messages back and forth and/or how much detail and thought goes into making it usable f…

It's not a shitty irc clone, it has a lot of useful features (and some not so useful, looking at you threads). Now the client on the other hand...

You don't like threads? I find them useful at times, that's part of what I like about Slack, it has enough potential for customization that you can bend it to your culture. For example, you can use bots that suit your workflows, use threads or not use them, use emoji reactions or not use them, use private threads or small channels, or always large channels..

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#55

Post by irrational »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #8

One other thing he touched on in passing: people are assuming they'd know what to build from the start. Even in relatively trivial applications a lot of work goes into finding the right way to express what you're trying to build. I recently worked on a small app and spent 40 hours trying out different approaches to the user interface. The solution I went with could be coded up in about 2 hours, but I had to do 38 hou…

When I was working on my masters degree project I thought I created a pretty good UI. At least I couldn’t think of a way to make it better. Then I did a 1 on 1 evaluation with a user who knew nothing about the subject matter. She had some recommendations that significantly improved the UI. I changed the UI and then I did a 1 on 1 evaluation with a knowledgeable user. He had more recommendations. I implemented them and then did a small group evaluation and then a large group evaluation. At each step suggestions were made that greatly enhanced the UI. By the time I was finished the UI was much different than what I came up with on my own, but tremendously improved to my great astonishment.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#56

Post by exolymph »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #51
adt2bt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar realization with food recently, bear with me. You ever hear how in certain cultures, Mom's food is the best? Now, of course there's nostalgia involved. A hint of home can make your taste buds sing just a bit louder. But also, even for a 'simple' meal, there are so many options a chef can make that subtly change the meal. For example, looking only at one ingredient, you can end up with a dizzying amoun…

> You ever hear how in certain cultures, Mom's food is the best? Just had the semi-shocking realization that the cross-section between those cultures and the cultures where moms are stay at home is quite large.

What are the cultures where people don't have nostalgia for the food their parents fed them?

Like, people will get weepy over canned veggies. Personally I think nostalgia is the most significant ingredient here.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#57

Post by jacobr1 »

criddell wrote: post #38
tshaddox wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kinda a "gotcha" question, because it's not clear what your definitions are. For example, is authentication (single sign-on, etc.) part of what you describe as "sending messages back and forth"? Are files, screen sharing, video calls, etc. still "just messages"?

I didn't intend it to be a gotcha question. > Are files, screen sharing, video calls, etc. still "just messages"? I wouldn't think any of those as messages that a basic message-only client would have. I guess that's the distinction I was after - was the person I replied to talking about all the complexity of a basic message-only client, or were they talking about the complexity of all the stuff beyond that.

I suspect most people in the "Slack is a just a pretty IRC," are discounting the non-text-messaging features. Beyond both the items already mentioned and the ease of adoption, the major benefit to slack is the integration ecosystem.

SlackOps is a really big thing. Making slack the glue across variety of operational systems to coordinate the activity of a team and allowing that team to communicate about it, provides a ton of value. And importantly, allowing this to happen organically with non-IT staff creating their own workflows (in the way that people invent alls sorts of min-apps in spreadsheets) is pretty powerful.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#58

Post by lucis »

stevieb89 wrote: post #10

Any chance you could add, that wide text is really hard to read body > *:not(pre) { max-width: 600px; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto; } pre { max-width: 1200px; margin: 40px auto; background: #f6f6f6; padding: 16px; }

First thing I did was hitting the shortcut for Safari's Reader. Would love to see that in other browsers.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#59

Post by bern4444 »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #52
bern4444 wrote: post #23

Fun article, but exceptionally difficult to read. I know some people like using plain ol html, but just a few lines of CSS would vastly improve the reading experience. I know its from 2016, but still. Eyes read best when content is a few hundred pixels long. Content should be centered etc. It's pretty terrible as it is

Yep it was pretty horrible, so I hit reader mode that narrowed everything down and increased the font size. I find it's quite a bother to have to do all the CSS necessary for good reflow on a number of devices, so I too just have everything just spill to the ends, and just do reader mode on devices. But I don't really know much CSS apart from the really basic stuff, and haven't ever sat down to see how it would be do…

Yeah, for a site like this, it could literally be just adding

max-width: 700px; margin: 0 auto;

This would make it look great on pretty much all screens.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#60

Post by jacobr1 »

tofuahdude wrote: post #7

We were just having this discussion around the Postman fundraise - various people saying "its just a GUI around Curl!!!" and being all offended at the raise's price tag. There's so much more that goes into building an actual business.

Also folks making similar comments are missing that funding is about the future of the product/business, not just scaling growth (though you do see with later stage funding).

Something like Postman is a bet on enterprise tooling for APIs, both building and integrating with them. Looks like Postman has gone beyond their chrome extension, and leveraged that to add more a bunch more features. But even if all that was easy enough to build, the investment is really about the trend and the business ability to capitalize on the trend. VC investment is always more forward-looking than the current product state.

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