spatx

I'm a little late to this thread, but I agree with others; the 'meet' tab would be an incredible addition to HN. Perhaps it could include features like location-based topic filters or even a 'looking to meet' tag where users can express interest in meeting others with similar interests. To keep things safe and inclusive, maybe we could have a 'verified meetup' system where members can host and vet events before they’re posted. I'll shut up before my brain dumps all my thoughts here.

On a related note, for any HNers (or hackers) in/around Austin, TX that want to meet, I'd be happy to help organize a meetup in Austin, if you're interested in connecting.

That's such an inspiring story! It's amazing how serendipitous connections can lead to something amazing. I had a similar experience meeting my previous co-founder at an in-person event in Austin where I was presenting. There’s just something special about those chance encounters, whether online or offline. I've also met a few incredible folks here on HN discussions in my city. It's one of the things I truly appreciate about this community—never know where the next great connection might come from.

The short answer is - there is no good answer. The best thing that worked for me was to just pick a popular stack that can help me achieve specific some goal. And, possibly one with wide adoption and a thriving community and ecosystem, especially if you are looking for career prospects.

Spend a little bit of time with a couple of stacks to understand what you feel comfortable with.

When I was looking to transition from legacy technologies (think mainframes) while working at an established financial company, I had an itch to build a specific product on the side. To be able to build it, I had the option to choose any modern stack at that time (around 2012), and I chose the Java-Spring-Jquery. I could have chosen any other similar stack for my purpose (PHP, C#, etc on the backend and plain JS or any other library on the front end) that were widely used and had big ecosystems. I tried to build some basic functional products with both Java and PHP based stacks, and decided to go with the Java-Spring stack. These days there are even more options, so it boils down to trying a few and settling on one that excites you.

This is interesting. I’m gonna try it out this week.

I wonder if you have plans to extend this to allow saving to S3 or GitHub or other types of document stores in the backend, in addition to Google Docs.

Thanks. For some reason, I'm unable to see your email in the profile (guess I need more karma or something), so I sent a LinkedIn request.

That's great. I recently started building something similar (although more rudimentary) for a community that I run in Austin. I'd love to connect and discuss more offline, if you're interested. What's a good way to reach you?

Kudos on the launch. The website looks good. Just curious, did you have prior financial experience?

I second this. I try to replicate the UI/UX of the applications that I like (as a user of such apps). Obviously, it doesn't mean copying mindlessly, but using similar patterns/flows where it makes sense in my applications. Even though it's not a resource like a book, in a way, I'm learning from good real-world examples.

Mostly architecture diagrams, data flow diagrams, flow charts, sequence diagrams and ERD. Mostly they are used as an accompaniment for the brainstorming and design discussions and, in some cases, to serve as easy reference for future. We mostly use draw.io and Visio as the diagramming software in our teams.

We use story points in our SaaS product startup. In a larger company that I consult at, whose main business is not a software/technology product (but IT/software is a core enabler for their business), we tried story points, but eventually settled with hour-based estimates. I think the difference was in team sizes, nature of business and delivery timelines.

In the startup, we had a small team where everyone was aware of the agile processes, and the delivery timelines were based on the estimates.

In the larger org, agile processes and story points meant a change in the culture from the traditional waterfall-oriented process they followed. And larger team sizes meant it took a longer time to change the culture and thinking. Also, due to the nature of the business, the delivery timelines are stricter, and sometimes already decided before IT was involved. Projects also often involve multiple non-IT teams (sales, marketing, customer service, etc.), and it is easier to communicate in hour-based estimates to them. We still do agile development as much as possible, but settled on hour-based estimates.

Stackoverflow, Github and plain old Google search. One thing I like about Stackoverflow, Github gists and issues is the discussion around the code/problem/topic. With Github, I also get a chance to see how others solved the same problem in real-world projects, in possibly different ways, and in interesting projects I would not have come across otherwise.

Looks like a good high-level intro for a first-time founder. It would be good to have another section on some common legal policies (privacy policy, terms of service, etc.).

I think there is value in both cases. I've seen many developers that have struggled with regex even with all those hundreds of tools to learn and to build/test regex. This could be useful to them to start with, and they can learn regex according to their time/needs. I see solutions like this as a choice, and the fact that people are using these shows that there is value in having that choice, even if is not obvious to us at first glance.

I agree, I'd like to see more posts like these. While I'm impressed by the unicorn startup stories, I want to also hear from those that did/could not take that path, which is a majority of the startups. One of the most impressive things is that Josh did all of this with a level of transparency few founders would be willing to.

Of course, some posters here are talking about employees getting a raw deal, but it was there for all to see that the company had decided long back to prioritize profit more than growth. Any employee that would have expected a unicorn like exit would have known it wouldn't be the case and would have left long ago. Blaming Josh for that doesn't feel right to me.

It will be very interesting to see how this pans out. In my opinion, it is inevitable that a third-party App Store alternative will emerge in India in a few years, that caters to the local users and developers, better than the Google-controlled App Store. However, who controls it is what I'm a bit concerned with. Rather, I would like it to be an industry-wide initiative than one controlled by any one entity like, say Jio.

I use Google Keep, Google Docs and Trello.

- Google Keep for quickly jotting down new ideas on the go (usually just a line or two so I can remember). This is my temporary record.

- Then, when I have time at the end of day, I add to to my document in Google Drive with more details, description, etc. This is my permanent record.

- When I'm ready to work on something, I add it to Trello with specific tasks, deadlines and reminders. This is my task manager.

One thing I'm failing to consistently do is to revisit old ideas periodically and remove the old ones I no longer deem worthy exploring.

In addition to what others have said, one other avenue is to go to local startup/entrepreneurial/tech events and meetups in your area. I've met my co-founder at a local startup-related meetup. And I know some people that were introduced to their current co-founders through people that they met during such events/meetups.