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paulodeon

60 karma · joined May 17, 2009

Founder of RailsRocket (https://www.railsrocket.app) a no-code app builder that creates real Rails apps.

Looking for early adopters, co-founders and investors, get involved at https://blog.paulodeon.com/get-involved/

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paulodeon··on We Are a Place of Business
While I agree with the sentiment espoused here, as a capitalist and business owner It's not a good look to praise other companies for sacking their workers.

Most likely he's trying to validate his own decision to remove politics from his workforce by praising and aligning himself with Google.

Well done! They sacked some SJWs! Good job boys!

paulodeon··on UK Campaigning to replace the Monarchy with an elected head of state
LOL, given we couldn't even get an alternative vote referendum through, there is literally sub single digit percentage chances this happens in any of our lives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...
paulodeon··on Ask HN: Learning about fundraising as first-time tech founders
As I'm sure you are aware Generative AI is absolutely the hot button VC area of interest right now. This should greatly ease your funding process. That said there will be a number of hygiene factors that your company must meet in order to maximise the number of VCs competing the deal and thus create favourable terms for yourself.

I've been raising pre-seed for a no-code platform for about a month now so very much in the trenches, happy to chat and share my learnings. Email me at paul (at) railsrocket.app

paulodeon··on The next era of no-code
The main points of this article:

1. "no-code platforms aren’t extensible and scalable after reaching production, despite how critical they’ve become to how companies operate."

2. Make no-code platforms developer-extensible and evolvable, and no-code might become the defining movement of our generation.

Both solid points.

And that's our raison d'être at Railsrocket (https://railsrocket.app) we're a no-code app builder that creates real Rails apps which come with all the benefits of code.

paulodeon··on No-code isn’t scalable. Our learnings at FINN going from 1000 toward 100k ca
The real question here: would they have been able to build the successful business they did without no code?

I'd argue possibly not. Nocode served its purpose here.

paulodeon··on Is web dev a career worth pursuing anymore?
Firstly there are good careers to be had now just building apps in no-code.

Secondly there will be a massive need for software development of any kind for a long time to come.

The pay and working conditions are some of the best out there as well, so yes, it's worth it!

paulodeon··on No-code is overrated. I took way too long to start coding, don’t make the same
This is why we are building RailsRocket (https://www.railsrocket.app/) You can get started with no-code but you have no vendor lockin because our apps are real Rails code apps.

You can extend them to your hearts content once you've got the validation or funding to hire developers

paulodeon··on Can I build my SaaS in no-code tools
At https://railsrocket.app/ we are focused on that.

- Easy no-code interface

- SaaS focused modules and components

- Real Rails code output

We are currently in Alpha where we build your app for you in RailsRocket for the monthly subscription fee (cheap!) So if you have a relevant project we could help with do get in touch here: paul at railsrocket.app

Also looking for cofounders and investors so hmu!

paulodeon··on Ask HN: Best SaaS Boilerplate?
We're working on a no-code SaaS app builder that creates real Rails apps at https://www.railsrocket.app. It's not a boilerplate, but it's even better as you can create a full app without writing code as well as continue to make changes to and manage the app.

We're not live with self-serve yet but I'd be happy to give a demo to anyone interested, just email me at paul (at) railsrocket.app

paulodeon··on CSS's !important was added because of laws about font size for some text
This confirms my suspicion that CSS was designed in an ivory tower.

Despite being a "good developer" cut my teeth in C++ etc always had difficulties with CSS. The mental hurdles required to understand various concepts bore no relation to anything else I had encountered in CS.

I'm sure a notable percentage of my grey hairs are attributable directly to its incredible user-unfriendliness.

paulodeon··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2021)
Equity only Cofounder | Growth / Product / CTO | Fully remote

RailsRocket is a no-code app builder that creates real Ruby on Rails apps. Our aim is to make app building super easy while keeping the benefits of open source code. We have an MVP in place and a few early customers. Got through to interview stage for the last YC batch and just reapplied to W22 batch.

Looking for one or two motivated, formidable, investible co-founders to take it to the next level. Here are the roles:

𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 / 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 - Finding, onboarding and communicating with our first customers is key. Scaling that process will then follow shortly. I need someone who’s done this before who is willing to start small but with the experience to scale up rapidly.

𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 / 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 - A strong visual designer who can make the product, website and marketing materials look beautiful. Someone with experience designing and managing technical products - think Stripe or Mixpanel. Happy to take on product management, roadmapping, feature design, managing developers, getting your hands dirty with front end code.

𝗖𝗧𝗢 / 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 - I’m technical and capable of building out the product myself but the scope of the product is large and there’s loads to do. For the right technical candidate I’d happily give up the CTO role. The ideal candidate would be hands on with team-building experience with specifics in Web Hosting, Compiler/Parser tech, and solid RoR and React experience.

URL: [https://www.railsrocket.app/](https://www.railsrocket.app/)

If that sounds interesting or if you could help in other ways contact me at paul (at) tinderfields.com

paulodeon··on Ask HN: Who is looking for a co-founder? (August 2021)
Building https://www.railsrocket.app/ a no-code app builder that creates real code apps.

Looking for a cofounder(s) to help take it to the next level.

I'm looking for the following roles and skills, but if you're really excited by the role get in touch anyway and let's talk.

Growth Marketing / Customer Development - Finding, onboarding and communicating with our first customers is key. Scaling that process will then follow shortly. I need someone who's done this before who is willing to start small but with the experience to scale up rapidly.

Design / Product - A strong visual designer who can make the product, website and marketing materials look beautiful. Someone with experience designing and managing technical products - think Stripe or Mixpanel. Happy to take on product management, roadmapping, feature design, managing developers, getting your hands dirty with front end code.

CTO - I'm technical and capable of building out the product myself but the scope of the product is large and there's loads to do. For the right technical candidate I'd happily give up the CTO role. The ideal candidate would be hands on with team-building experience with specifics in Web Hosting, Compiler/Parser tech, and solid RoR experience.

Fundraising - any experience in fundraising would be a plus as we will be raising a pre-seed shortly.

Marketplace development - Especially from a product development and growth marketing perspective.

Nocode space - Any experience in the space is good but especially any experience working on another app builder would be great.

paulodeon··on The Twitter Hate Machine
You're following the wrong people my friend.
paulodeon··on On navigating a large codebase
"Towel of Babel" made me laugh. Not something you want to dry your face with!
paulodeon··on Toto’s “Africa” Played on Tesla Coils
I saw a live performance using a 12 foot Tesla coil at Burning Man 2017 It was earthed to a 18 foot tall geodesic dome. They played a medley of tracks and then the base of the Tesla coil mildly exploded and started burning. I went by the next morning and the whole camp had packed up and left. Pretty awesome experience. If anyone knows any more about that project I'd love to hear it.
paulodeon··on Show HN: Darken – Darkmode Made Easy
We recently launched dark mode for our email building app Milliner https://www.milliner.app/.

It allows you to build dark mode optimized email, and when you preview the email in dark mode, the whole app changes to dark mode.

Because of this we use a manual toggle instead of prefers-color-scheme.

We picked the colors carefully and changed things like shadows borders etc to make the interface look great in dark mode. Although a solution like OPs could be a quick and dirty way to get a basic dark mode implemented, you'll never get your site or app looking quite as good as getting a designer to look at it.

paulodeon··on Show HN: Milliner - A web app to quickly visually create responsive HTML emails
Co-founder here.

We created milliner to solve a problem we experienced building HTML marketing emails for our clients.

Building HTML emails in 2019 is a bit like building Websites 10 years ago - loads of different email clients with their own rendering bugs and issues.

Getting your email working consistently involves knowing the right incantations (and quality documentation is often hard to find) and multiple rounds of testing.

We knew there had to be a better way so we created Milliner - it has a visual front end which allows you to freestyle add columns and rows, images, text and an engine that converts that to solid HTML and CSS that works in all clients.

What was a process that took several hours (or even days) can now be achieved much faster.

We're two guys bootstrapping out of the London Techhub.

Feel free to ask questions or feedback on the site

paulodeon··on Today I solved a twelve-year-old Outlook mystery
We're building a software tool that lets you create HTML emails visually without worrying about client specific rendering bugs like this.

It's due to launch in the next month. If you're interested email paul.odeon@milliner.app and I'll add you to the list to be notified when we launch!

paulodeon··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer? (February 2019)
SEEKING WORK | London | Onsite/Remote | 3 month or shorter contracts or price work

Full-stack developer/team leader with 15+ years experience with web technologies, 10 years experience managing teams and 5 years experience running a business.

Capable of conceiving, building, deploying and maintaining entire applications from the ground up, as well as starting growing or managing teams.

Currently building an email marketing SaaS and looking for a short term contract, I can work based on a day rate or I could quote you for a piece of work.

Favoured tech stack: Rails, Postgres, Bootstrap, React, AWS, Puppet, Terraform

CV: https://hired.com/resumes/paul-odeon

paulodeon··on Netflix Is Ruining Your Life
"I am talking about 46.5 hours of 100 percent concentration. It could have changed your life."

This is nuts, an hour or so per day of low-quality time in the evening after doing a full days work and various chores, gym etc will never be 100% concentration. The only way it's going to change your life is to burn you out.

There are marginally more productive things you could be doing that don't require too much energy, say reading a business book, but do that for a month of evenings and see how you feel, I guarantee it wont be better.

paulodeon··on The criminal’s guide to upward mobility
Another way of looking at it is that rigorous policing and removal of corruption from the police and law enforcement is a contributing factor in the current decline in social mobility.

The article is not at all forthcoming with solutions but it is a good example of 2nd order effects where removal of one problem (Mafia) leads to the creation of another (lower social mobility).

paulodeon··on Caloric restriction reduces age-related and all-cause mortality in rhesus monkeys
Intermittent fasting is the smart way to restrict calories whilst still enjoying food.
paulodeon··on A Case Against Cucumber
The underlying assumption of this article is that it's easier to read code than it is to read english.

Well even for a developer of 15 years even the most obtuse English can be more easily absorbed than the cleanest code.

The speed of parsing and understanding code is directly related to the amount of time spent writing it and how recently it was read.

English can be read and understood at the same speed every time.

There is also a non-linear relationship between your feature file size and the underlying code they represent, especially if they represent integration testing. A single feature could test code from 10 different files.

For a single developer in an codebase they know and understand well and have recently worked on, Cucumber can act as friction on development.

For a single developer who hasn't worked on a codebase before, or who is returning to a codebase after some time Cuke steps will definitely improve their ability to understand what the code is doing and by providing a regression test suite improve the quality and probably speed of their output.

Code is a language of instruction - not communication, documentation can help, but it is easily forgotten and fails at communicating integration.

paulodeon··on What is A/B Testing?
Scrolls Down...Meet Bob...Goodbye Bob...Clicks back
paulodeon··on Ruby mistakes
My first thought: That's a short list!
paulodeon··on Sendicate: Reinventing Email Newsletters, And More Proof That Email Isn’t Dead
There are loads of great new services for email these days.

Sendicate is interesting because of it's opinionated approach and great modern design.

If you already have a design though you should try Mailrox (https://www.mailrox.com). It's dead easy to upload designs and create email templates which can then be used in Mailchimp, Campaign monitor or other services.

</shamelessplug>

paulodeon··on Googles long-term memory
It's called behavioural retargeting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting and it's becoming a lot more popular with advertisers. I get it all the time...
paulodeon··on How to disrupt Wall Street
I think you have to split retail from investment banking.

Retail is ripe for disruption, bad service, poor websites, limited products etc. Creating a Retail Bank 2.0 could really change the sector.

I have difficulties seeing investment banking ever being disrupted. For one you have to be intimately involved to know what sort of products are needed. A 23yo SV hacker simply hasn't a clue what the mutual fund manager or forex dealer needs to make his life easier.

Once you're in the industry it isn't really radical disruption, if it were, the industry would be being disrupted all the time. Banks are massively competitive and any potential advantage inferred by new technologies and approaches would be assimilated into their business model rapidly.

paulodeon··on Central England temperature dataset: 0.26°C increase per century since 1659
I think the point is that this is simply the best dataset out there, it hasn't been cherry-picked.

The only problem with this article is that there is no mention of how the gulfstream could have had a stabilising effect.

The 30 year periods aren't cherry-picked either, they are picked because they were the ones with the greatest increase in temperature.

paulodeon··on What non-geeks hear when you speak techie
I have to say this part of the passage made me laugh out loud, it's funny and captures what it probably sounds like to non-techies...
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