Why not learn Node.js? You learned almost everything else Javascript. There's got to be some decent ORM for it. How much time do you have to do this?
Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
61–70 of 161 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
#62Good Luck OP. It's fantastic to see that you're getting many offers of help. I really look forward to seeing what is created.
Some people are suggesting research. I'd be interested in suitable papers and organisations.
One good place is the University of Oxford Centre for Suicide Research:
Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
#63Way to go! Can I send you any books via Amazon to help you out?
Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
#64I would encourage you to write the entire thing, frontend, backend, content, PR releases, etc. Two reasons: 1. You're young and still figuring out what you love doing; no better time to experiment and learn. I still have fond memories over the php site I wrote in high school. You could visible tell which functions were written at the beginning of the project versus the end because you'll improve drastically. [1] 2. T…
If he's already familiar with front-end development, I'd recommend something like Meteor rather than Ruby. Because it's JavaScript, it will seem a lot more familiar than Ruby. And it will hide a lot of the complexity of client-server interaction until the point when you feel like diving into it. It's really perfect for fast prototyping and proof-of-concept sites like the poster is looking to build.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
#65This is awesome. I think the main thing I did when I was 15 was sleep....
I'm actually working on an application (www.happsee.com) for tracking happiness. Somewhat similar, but not exactly. It's already had some huge benefits for me as far as understanding my own emotions.
If you want to chat more about making an app (mine is for android), machine learning (predicting stuff from other stuff), or building a backend, let me know. Email is in my profile.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find your reaction... odd? He's won a grant to develop a tool that has the potential to help out people with a real problem. Why should that disgust anyone?
Does he have any experience with suicides? Has he lost anyone or felt suicidal himself? People who have know how difficult it is. The app was described as a "social network". As someone who has experience with suicide (both from my perspective and from losing people), I have to question what a difference that will make. How exactly does it work? If he can't explain, perhaps a mockup of the UI might answer a lot of qu…
I expect it works like this
a) run an awareness campaign about suicide prevention disguised as a competition among young people to get them talking about and thinking about suicide prevention. Probably do some education in there labelled as 'how to come up with good ideas for our competition', with increased interest due to a potential 'win money!!' hook.
b) who knows, maybe you'd actually get some worthwhile ideas, or something useful could be created. Not really the point, more of a bonus if it happens. But the winners will continue to be aware of the problem, possibly become evangelists, and you can get some more publicity when they release their thing later = more awareness.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
#67Suicide prevention /app/? You don't stop suicide with an app. You're 15 and you have a grant for a gimmick. I'm 22 and I'm unemployed. I'm already depressed but this makes me angry, too, so I just made an account to let you know that this disgusts me. Empty words. At least your resume looks better with this.
It isn't clear exactly how the app will work, but my guess is it will establish an online support group for depression and encourage communication within the group. Even if it only reaches a tiny audience it could have a major impact on the people who use it. The app itself doesn't directly prevent suicide, but it gives communication tools to a community that does. Sounds like a great idea.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
#68The steps that I'd take in your position:
1) Determine how much back-end I really need (or whether I need one at all). I'm going to assume your grant proposal contains use-cases (or user stories) that describe the interaction with the back-end.
2) Decide what framework(s) your front-end will be using and make a list of the back-ends that you believe would work with the front-end.
3) Define the interface between the front-end and back-end ... an ICD or API document will help you with both sides of the connection.
4) Find a mentor who can get you started with your chosen back-end technology as well as help you out when you get stuck.
I'd use this as a means to learn at least a little about back-end architecture. On the other hand, you could ignore the typical back-end development and go with something you know - e.g. CouchDB uses a RESTful API to store JSON documents, provides facilities for making views, lists (an HTML transformation of a view) and shows (an HTML transformation of a JSON document.
4) Find a mentor who can get you started on the chosen back-end, and help when you get stuck.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
#69You are working on something important, and I was glad to read (and upvote) a lot of the other comments you received, and especially the offers for pro-bono help. One comment below suggested that you read the literature (I presume that means the literature about suicide prevention) and I would second that advice. To expand that advice a bit, I'll note that Martin E. P. Seligman and some other psychologists who have s…
"the "self esteem" movement that took over United States schools after I graduated from high school may have actually INCREASED risk of suicide in the United States"
Yes, "self esteem" is again putting the individual up directly in front of themselves to examine and focus on which only brings existing problems into sharp center-focus. Depression and Pride both have a common denominator in too much self-absorption.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
#70I think you should reach out to those who are experts in the field and find out what they think would work, then build something that does that.
As an example my partner volunteers with a suicide prevention hotline that also has a chat client, I'm sure they'd love something mobile that works with their chat system, etc.