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Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

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Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#121

Post by Silhouette »

simonw wrote: post #106
guelo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Github is an "obviously" unless you have an open source project. It's really not that hard to set up a git ssh server

The GitHub web interface is SO much better than running your own repository. Pull requests are awesome for code reviews, the code browsing interface is best of breed, and if you use their issue tracker and/or wiki everything links together fantastically well.

The GitHub web interface is SO much better than running your own repository.

And all you have to do is trust probably your second most valuable asset to an external service outside your organisation... What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#122

Post by redguava »

casca wrote: post #116
garrettdimon wrote: post #22

I've been assembling a list of these lately for a book that I'm working on. ( http://startingandsustaining.com ) Some of the categories are fairly loose as some apps don't fit nicely into categorical buckets, but hopefully this is a helpful list. --Browser/Email Testing BrowserStack ( http://www.browserstack.com ) Litmus ( http://litmus.com ) --Bug/Issue Tracking BugHerd ( http://bugherd.com ) Lighthouse ( http://lig…

Great list, thank you. For people looking to use apps, please consider the likelihood and impact of one of these companies disappearing overnight. Some of them are tech startups without a sustainable critical mass and they could shut down at any time. If your landing page provider stops providing service, it's probably easy to recover if you have copies of all the email address collected. If your planning and project…

I'd look for companies that are not funded in that case.

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#123

Post by rickyc091 »

garrettdimon wrote: post #22

I've been assembling a list of these lately for a book that I'm working on. ( http://startingandsustaining.com ) Some of the categories are fairly loose as some apps don't fit nicely into categorical buckets, but hopefully this is a helpful list. --Browser/Email Testing BrowserStack ( http://www.browserstack.com ) Litmus ( http://litmus.com ) --Bug/Issue Tracking BugHerd ( http://bugherd.com ) Lighthouse ( http://lig…

Performance / Load Testing -----

* BrowserMob (http://www.neustar.biz/enterprise/web-performance/how-load-t...) You can upload selenium scripts and they'll run it on X physical / Y virtual servers for a given period of time. It's a great tool to stress test your servers.

* Blitz.io (https://www.blitz.io/) Basically just a DDOS on your server.

* BeesWithMachineGuns (https://github.com/newsapps/beeswithmachineguns) You can set this up with EC2 and DDOS your own server with it as well. This gives you a bit more control than blitz, but it requires a little work to get it up and running.

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#124

Post by ajross »

jerryr wrote: post #105
st0p wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pivotal: Horrible, abysmal tool. Hate it with a passion. No clear overview at all, UI is full of shiny colors but is messy as hell. I'm really glad we've switched to Jira[1] after fighting with pivotal for a couple of months. YMMV ofcourse :) [1] http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview

Pivotal is an agile planning tool; JIRA is an issue tracking and classical project management tool. While each can be coerced to the other's function, it's really comparing apples and oranges. I'll admit that JIRA and Pivotal continue to muddy the differentiation with afterthought additions like JIRA's Greenhopper and Pivotal's time tracking. But JIRA is a good tool for issue tracking and Pivotal is a good tool for a…

I still can't read "tool for agile planning" without crying inside my head. We really need "tools" to "implement" "processes" in the spirit of a 6-line manifesto, do we? Sigh.

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#125

Post by casca »

redguava wrote: post #122
casca wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great list, thank you. For people looking to use apps, please consider the likelihood and impact of one of these companies disappearing overnight. Some of them are tech startups without a sustainable critical mass and they could shut down at any time. If your landing page provider stops providing service, it's probably easy to recover if you have copies of all the email address collected. If your planning and project…

I'd look for companies that are not funded in that case.

I'd agree that this is one criterion, but being funded is neither necessary nor sufficient :)

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#126

Post by gatherknwldg »

Silhouette wrote: post #121
simonw wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GitHub web interface is SO much better than running your own repository. Pull requests are awesome for code reviews, the code browsing interface is best of breed, and if you use their issue tracker and/or wiki everything links together fantastically well.

The GitHub web interface is SO much better than running your own repository. And all you have to do is trust probably your second most valuable asset to an external service outside your organisation... What could possibly go wrong?

Your cash is a valuable asset to your startup, too, but people don't store that in-house.

Who do you trust more, github or Wall Street?

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#128

Post by chris123 »

garrettdimon wrote: post #22

I've been assembling a list of these lately for a book that I'm working on. ( http://startingandsustaining.com ) Some of the categories are fairly loose as some apps don't fit nicely into categorical buckets, but hopefully this is a helpful list. --Browser/Email Testing BrowserStack ( http://www.browserstack.com ) Litmus ( http://litmus.com ) --Bug/Issue Tracking BugHerd ( http://bugherd.com ) Lighthouse ( http://lig…

Yikes, that's a long list.

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#129

Post by lunaru »

redguava wrote: post #122
casca wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great list, thank you. For people looking to use apps, please consider the likelihood and impact of one of these companies disappearing overnight. Some of them are tech startups without a sustainable critical mass and they could shut down at any time. If your landing page provider stops providing service, it's probably easy to recover if you have copies of all the email address collected. If your planning and project…

I'd look for companies that are not funded in that case.

If you look at the list above you'll notice that there are plenty of well-funded companies as well as bootstrapped companies. Zendesk has raised $85M. On the other end of the spectrum, you have Tender and Lighthouse from ENTP, which are not funded at all.

Unlike consumer internet startups, I think there's only one criterion for whether or not a SaaS product will be around in 5 years: Does the product work well?

Most of these companies don't/can't rely on network effects to grow, so there's very little winner-takes-all action. That's why you'll see plenty of breathing room for big players and small players alike in any given category.

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of a bootstrapped, profitable company, so I'm probably biased toward bootstrappers.

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