d_luaz

No bounty for bug report? Should at least have a nominal fee of $100 (else no one would bother to report it).

I believe so. React Native is the beacon of hope, where it would take at least a year to stabilize and be able to do most things easily. PhoneGap had been around for a while, no mainstream adaption yet: Viable option with a but. Native is still relevant for performance reason. I can't tell what will happen 3 years down the road. If you need to develop a reasonable mobile app within a year, native is still a good choice.

it seems to me people here are pretty mean.

If every "bad" thing should be illegal, then tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, prostitution, lobbying, protectionism, should be banned. Then again, we have to argue what is "good" or "bad".

Because NLP is more interesting? We suck at community building? Not enough content? No HN Luck? Perhaps it's neither interesting or good enough yet :)

1) Tech/HN centric links and tags/categories 2) Besides bookmarking and tagging, it also support list (a collaboratively editable list on topic such as SEO tips)

http://blog.gcdc2013-hackerio.appspot.com/what-is-hackerio

Tagging of links (mostly hn), without the NLP. http://gcdc2013-hackerio.appspot.com/

This is my pet project (as well as submission for gcdc2013), hope you will find it useful.

hackerio is a web app of resources for hackers: tagging of web links, bookmarking, list of things (optimization tips, favourite quotes, etc), startup database, etc.

I believed Hyper V is more suited if the machine is a server hosting the VM, where client remote into this server from another machine (correct me if I am wrong; perhaps Xen works the same way as well).

It would be nice to get some suggestions on Minimalist/Lightweight Host OS to run VirtualBox. Lubuntu?

It seems like the purpose of Vagrant is to easily and consistently create VM environment: either multiple VMs for testing, or sharing the same VM setup with others. (based on what I read, no experience here)

Is there a particular use-case for Vagrant where i) I already setup my VM environment ii) Not much sharing or duplication of the VM environment is necessary iii) I actually code within the VM, not just as production/testing environment

For those working on GAE, try this handy template: https://github.com/kamalgill/flask-appengine-template

Sometimes I truly wanted to tell the customer, "give me the money and trust me". But I guess trust is not easy to come by, especially with new customers.

But I do agree, should not under-charge.

It's easy to get started with smaller clients, with more manageable scope (for newbie) and to built up the portfolios.

Many local clients (especially from non-IT companies) are not sophisticated enough to use services such as elance, thus they are fairly happy to found a programmer which they could work with locally (my customer still expect face-to-face communication).

Eventually I did landed on a semi-government job, where they pay is probably 3x more lucrative than smaller clients, but longer duration + more politics + more stress to handle the human side of things.

The worst is "uneducated" clients, meaning they don't know how custom software development works, and asking why you charge 10x more than off-the-shelve accounting software and still deliver a product "full of bugs" (you should have tested vigorously and solve all the bugs, right?).

The only marketing I did is word of mouth: friends & family, those are usually the good paymaster due to our "relationship". Yup, returning customers are the best.

I didn't try any elance stuff, because I felt it's a race to the bottom price with programmers from India.

I move on to develop a restaurant review website (sort of lifestyle business): http://food.malaysiamostwanted.com/

I wish the customers at this part of the world (Malaysia) are sophisticated enough to accept the concept of "time & material". Most of them will refuse to pay if they are not satisfied with the work (in regardless of the completeness); and a partially completed work is of no value to a typical customer (especially non-IT customers).

You are right about the "he can have partners who will make your life a living hell" part. My judgement might be incorrect, and I can't predict what will happen next as well (e.g. the project got taken over by someone).

Lifestyle business vs Growth startup :)

If guess it means we should resist the temptation of money and do the "right" thing, whenever we could. It's a tough call (to reject money and so-called better prospect), but it's equally painful to work in something which you don't believe in. Though it might not make economical sense, but it makes perfect human sense.