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Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#51

Post by diggan »

thelastparadise wrote: post #38
mrweasel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. I hope not. I have a CS degree, but some of the best and most prolific developers I've had the pleasure to work with have all be self-taught. One of the most talented .Net developers I've ever worked with had a masters degree in philosophy and was a trained furniture maker, when those things failed to pay the bill…

Agree with the general idea if your post but... > Education has almost zero reflection on your ability as a developer. Can we stop using the word "education" as a propaganda word like this? When people use the word like this, what they really mean is "institutionalized education and/or indoctrination."

Isn't that the colloquial meaning of the word "education" already?

In what cases do people use the word "education" to mean something else than "institutionalized education"?

I feel like it's pretty clear what they mean by that, without having to make it into a political statement of "institutionalized indoctrination".

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#53

Post by jhfdbkofdchk »

mrweasel wrote: post #17
kramerger wrote: post #9

> I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this Thanks for making me laugh, I think that's worth a few bucks. I donated every year to Wikipedia until I learned that (1) they have a huge chest of money, (2) their expenses could be much lower if they were not a 500-man SF company.

Yeah, I don't care about the [name redacted], even if it looks like a nice project, but the Wales reference is worth a one time donation.

Haha, same!

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#54

Post by svnsvnese »

This is slightly adjacent to the topic but I think a very important one.

I do not know much about [name redacted] and the creator but after looking at his resume, I feel he obviously has a very marketable skills and with over 10+ year of experience, I feel one should have enough put away for rough times like this (forgive me if I am missing some context about this specific case, but I think this point applies in general to everyone imho)

I've had my own troubles in the past (and learned from it), where I made unwise investment choices and when some unforeseen circumstances came up, I found myself cash-poor and struggling a bit, even though I was employed at that time.

Here's the wiki from bogleheads [0] that gives a good framework on how to think about investing and what to prioritize. First thing to do if you do not already, when the times are good is to build an emergency fund.

[0] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Prioritizing_investments

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#56

Post by janmo »

Here are a few ideas to build the next great analytics tool, these are the main reasons why I build my own little tool for my websites:

1. Find a way to also count users with Ad Blocker. Google Analytics and even Plausible (unless when self hosted) don't track users with an Ad Blocker.

2. Show how many users are using an Ad Blocker, this is a very important metric when a site is relying on ad revenue. It turned out that 30-33% of my traffic was using an Ad Blocker, which prompted me to implement a fallback where I show the user a banner with an affiliate link instead.

3. Offer an unlimited free tier, under the condition that a summary of the stats is visible to everyone, a bit like Github used to work. Users can then hide to make their stats private.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#57

Post by ushakov »

_1kfq wrote: post #55

Thanks everyone! I should have updated this last week as I had raised enough money and I'm starting a job next Monday. So things should be grand going forward for now.

Really glad things turned out well for you!

I'm in a similar position now, so if anyone is looking for a full-stack TypeScript engineer with open-source background (https://github.com/mishushakov) let's chat!

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#58

Post by _1kfq »

mg wrote: post #44

Compare that to Plausible: Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible started in 2019. Not sure when [name redacted] started. Clicking on "blame" for the readme file in the repo, I see a commit from 5 years ago. I can very much empathize that adding a "buy" button is a hump to get over when you just wanna build something cool and share it with like-minded people. I have the same issue with every project I build. I gues…

[name redacted] started a few months before Plausible.

Giving it away for free didn't help, but "making money" was never really a goal as such. I think "being free" is important if you want to be a viable alternative for Google Analytics. €9/month is nothing for a business, but who is paying that for a blog or hobby site (or even some small businesses)?

I already decided a few years ago that "covers hosting" is good enough. It's just that circumstances conspired to put in this rather uncomfortable position.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#59

Post by glimshe »

mrweasel wrote: post #14
nperez wrote: post #8

Reminds me a lot of the boat I'm in - based on his CV it looks like he's self-taught and started around the same time I did. This market right now is killing us, and I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. In the worst case scenario, I have family I can move in with, but I don't know how to function in any other role after dedicating myself to this since…

> I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. I hope not. I have a CS degree, but some of the best and most prolific developers I've had the pleasure to work with have all be self-taught. One of the most talented .Net developers I've ever worked with had a masters degree in philosophy and was a trained furniture maker, when those things failed to pay the bill…

This is not true. There is a fairly strong correlation between formal education and ability as a developer, and I say this as someone with close to 2 decades of experience in the problem space. A CS/STEM degree, as degree quality (where the degree was obtained), makes an enormous difference in the average case.

People who say the opposite are thinking of developers, often themselves, who were able to become skilled without a CS degree. That is indeed quite possible, and I've met many individuals in this category. I'm not going to say the best developers I've met had no degree, but I've met great developers without a degree. But I wouldn't say it is common; most developers without a CS/STEM degree whom I've met were, indeed, mediocre engineers that often had no business being there.

I've also met many poor developers from great schools and great developers from schools with poor reputation. But, as a thought experiment, if I was to pick a developer based solely on whether they have a degree and where they got this degree, lacking any other piece of information, I'd always pick the ones with a degree from a reputable school.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#60

Post by distances »

goat-throwaway wrote: post #42

As a team lead I have a capped budget that I can spend on tools/saas etc. Unfortunately I cant do a donation using this. Indie devs need to understand this, put up a pro plan and a checkout link that sends an invoice so that finance folks are ok. I hope he pulls through this, we need more indie software.

Agreed. A paid plan with a proper invoice is so so much easier to file as a business expense, both at a big business and as an independent. I don't know how to even start doing that with a donation.
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