Show HN: My first software project – a website to set goals and track progress | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My first software project – a website to set goals and track progress

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Two years ago, I started building this site that allows people to document their learning and progress in real time.

The idea is: as you learn new things, you document your progress piece by piece, creating a collection of failures, breakthroughs, and knowledge. Along the way, your friends can cheer you on, and the community can give you tips and feedback. Over time, we'll create a public collection on how different problems were solved.

With each progress, the site prompts you to reflect on questions like, "If you could go back in time, what do you wish you had known?"

This was my first web dev project, and everything was self-taught. It's been both a great passion and a significant learning experience!

All feedback is welcome, big or small. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.

Stack: Angular, Python/Postgres, AWS, PWA service workers for notifications.

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If this really is your first web dev project then very well done! This is a great looking site.

If I could ask: what was your process for learning how to build this? E.g. did you follow tutorials, read books, use ChatGPT, etc.?

EDIT: I've noticed something I'd like to chat to you privately about please, could you please email me? My email is in my bio.

Thank you! It took many, many iterations to get it looking decent and intuitive on first impressions, so I'm really glad to hear this.

My process pretty much followed "build what I need next". So I started with Angular YouTube tutorials, then set up a basic database in Dynamo, using Lambdas + API Gateway. Then as the complexity of the site's data structure changed, I hard pivoted to PostGres (classic). Then I needed to make auth and accounts, so I set up Cognito. I tried to capture a lot of my learning within the site itself in various Goals.

This all happened before chatGPT was around. Then of course when it was available, I would ask it to help me with basic concepts and "what are industry standard ways of doing this?"

What I found to be true 99.9% of the time is, everything I'm trying to do has already been done and solved, I just need to know how to Google it properly. One of the biggest challenges was setting up image + video compression, but even still when I really sat down to handle it, didn't take more than 48 hours to figure out. PWA push notifications were another tough one. Happy to chat about any technical specifics!

Finally, I'll say this. I tried to reinvent the wheel designing the UI many, many times, not wanting the site/posts to look like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Ultimately, I realized there's good reason all these sites follow the same format: it works, and users understand it intuitively. If I had just decided to use what already works from the beginning, I probably could have shaved 6 months off the project.

Sounds like it really was a great learning experience, you clearly are a self-motivated person - well done. :)

Great concept

1. The site seems to be active. How did you grow the current userbase?

2. How is it monetized and sustained? I looked around and couldn't find a pricing page or equivalent

Thank you very much!

1. All the users are my personal network. I'm in the process of figuring out "how do I grow past people I know?"

2. Now that I've emerged from the technical abyss, user growth + sustainability is what I'm starting to think about. I have a few ideas, mostly dealing with using this as a tool for teams or schools, but nothing solid yet. Open to any thoughts!

I've been looking for something like this for a while now! Is this kind of based off the very old, but now very long dead 43things.com?

Great! I'm glad people still look for a site like this.

I had never heard of 43things, but I've always thought my idea for a "goal setting website" is reminiscent of the "old internet". Simpler times. More about doing cool things rather than gaining attention. Their concept looked pretty cool. I've always wanted to implement a lexer but haven't had a chance yet. Maybe will try it soon

How about RSS? That would get you close to 43things 1.0 territory. Yeah, that was a very cool concept! I like making lists a whole lot.

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