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vandershraaf

24 karma · joined July 6, 2011

I'm primarily an undergrad computer science student at University of Maryland, College Park. Currently interning at Epsilon.

http://www.ashrafishak.com

submissionscomments
vandershraaf··on Ask HN: How do you make sure your servers are up as a single founder?
My applications which are built using Laravel are deployed through Laravel Forge. There is definitely extra charge for it, but having Forge to simplify deployment really save my time especially in case of any issue.

For monitoring, I am using Stackdriver which has easy-to-use health check.

vandershraaf··on Ask HN: What is the best API documentation you have ever seen?
Not API, but Spark Java (http://sparkjava.com/documentation#getting-started) has one of the best Java framework documentation I've ever seen. Fairly concise + it has almost everything you need to build proper Web application using Java
vandershraaf··on How to Get Startup Ideas
I am glad that you have build an excellent business which can grow, unlike some businesses cough in a reality tv show cough. Keep up good job!
vandershraaf··on CS in HS - Read Write Code
This is indeed a great initiative. As many people pointed out, we need to teach young kids for them to make sense of computer science and technology in general. What hinders them from learning this seemingly hard field is the fact that computer science is very abstract. So we have to let them know the connection between loop and data processing, variable and data storage etc. I really hope that this endeavor would do the exact thing. Good luck!
vandershraaf··on World.db - A Free Open World Database and Schema
"please teach him something about database normalization"
vandershraaf··on Show HN: my weekend project, Quotably
I don't always find weekend project to be as fancy but this one is exception. Good job, I really like its simplicity!
vandershraaf··on Happy birthday Debian
(No one does this yet, so I wanna be the first one) Happy birthday debian!
vandershraaf··on I Have 50 Dollars
Thanks, you just get me the exact term I'm looking for. It's hard to explain to "smart" people without using any computer-ish/science-ish/math-ish terminology
vandershraaf··on Diaspora’s (YC S12) Next Act: Social Remixing Site Makr.io
Regardless of how different Diaspora is from Facebook, they still tried to do the "social network" better. I'm pretty sure every startup wants to make stuff less suck.

By the way I remember last time when Diaspora first surfaced as the real alternative of Facebook and I was kinda excited with it. For the first time I can customized everything I want from my social network. But then the project run out of any traction and suddenly just disappeared. So I guess, while we can dream big and aim big, the big stuff would come up eventually and not just boom in the first place (as Google comes out from home garage and Facebook comes out from college dorm). It's a big disturbing how App.net just really booming in its first release but I wish them the best and hope they will succeed.

vandershraaf··on Diaspora’s (YC S12) Next Act: Social Remixing Site Makr.io
I think they are delegating the task to app.net
vandershraaf··on Rob Pike: The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got.
I think the size and complexity of the program is the reason why we need to think first before we look at the code. I'll probably look at the obvious indicators (logs, stacktrace etc) and then the "thinking" could begin. Obviously with a huge program there are more probability for the local fix to happen because there are so many moving parts
vandershraaf··on The money part of App.net is a red herring
Yup, they don't have to be big. Then what's the point of developers to develop on top of app.net API while their user base is small? Less revenue, more "freedom" to develop?
vandershraaf··on How App.net Can Change Everything
It is the hype that has changed everything.
vandershraaf··on Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
Exactly. People would consider a mobile apps outside 99 cents mark as expensive, even more so if it costs you $50
vandershraaf··on Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
To be honest, I actually agree with your points, which is exactly what I've been thinking too. Unfortunately the tone of this post would definitely put some bad image to people outside the app.net circle.

This app.net might not be a nightly success, but what IF (yup, a big if) it succeeds in a long run? At that time people would remember dalton as the savior and YOU as the biggest jerk.

Anyway, fuckyoudalton can refer to anyone. I mean, are you referring to Andy Dalton?

vandershraaf··on Ask HN: Where is the Hostility on HN Coming From?
No, there is a lot of better ways to inform the designer about his mistakes than just ranting about them.
vandershraaf··on "Computer Science" is Not Science and "Software Engineering" is Not Engineering
I thought i was the only one. I'm just so excited to see this ancient site got surfaced again.
vandershraaf··on Here's Why People Are Backing App.net
(I'm saying this from a regular user's perspective and not developer): First of all, what's boggling my mind about this app.net thingy is the vague pitch and description. They should explain themselves first as "a paid social network where users own their own data and without any ad disturbance". Then they can elaborate more stuff. I really had hard time to comprehend the importance of this yet-another-social network and spent a lot of time reading others' people blog/HN posts just to understand what it is all about.

Secondly, I see why they charge for it for access; I mean, we are customers when we pay for it. I get it. However, I still don't think people are willing to pay for it. Social network will forever (well may be not, but we'll see) be free because when the stuff is free, we can be sure that we can allure our close friends, relatives, or whoever in our circles to join the social network, thus the social network itself. Even more so when regular users are pretty content with the existing free social networks we have. If there are less users in a social network, the less motivation any developer to develop application on its platform.

vandershraaf··on Show HN: Makr.io, a creative and collaborative way to play with images
That link should be https://makr.io/pro_tips. But thanks though, thats awesome of you
vandershraaf··on Show HN: Makr.io, a creative and collaborative way to play with images
I was a skeptic before, and the first time i went into the site I realize "Man, why pinterest cant be this fun?"
vandershraaf··on Q&A with Higgs discoverers
Out of curiosity: Even if they discover higgs boson, is there any chance for standard model to be changed again later on? (when somehow we discover yet another component)
vandershraaf··on [dead]
TIL: startups = mobile app + real-time + cloud + social + local
vandershraaf··on If you run a contest as a startup, don't be dishonest. JPEGmini scammed me.
Are you saying they 'accidentally' scammed him? Wow