The Great Code Club

[crazygringo]

This seems cool, as far as I can tell it's more for one's personal education, rather than producing something for others to use?

So I'm curious... is there any kind of "open-source incubator" out there? Like, a site with 500 developers signed up, they all vote on new project ideas, start a new project each month, kind of like a great big collaborative hackathon, in order to put out some really impressive piece of software, that then hopefully lives on?

E.g., an open-source iTunes integrated with bittorrent, complete with iPhone app. A font-design program for amateurs. A keyframed animation tool that outputs to HTML5 canvas. A dynamic texture generator program. A user-friendly neural net trainer. A new lossy image compression format and encoder/decoder designed for resolution independence instead of a fixed pixel grid. I don't know, just cool projects that get people really excited.

I mean, the logistics of organizing such a thing would be a little crazy, since not every type of project is amenable to a large number of developers working in parallel, and you'd need a kind of domain expert and lead architect on each one. But it would be so, so cool...

[bitsweet]

That's exactly what Assembly does (https://assemblymade.com/ideas). We enable everyone to openly collaborate on real products and then share the upside. Every month there is revenue Assembly transparently pays the bills and splits the remaining proceeds with everyone that built the app.

disclosure: one of the founders of Assembly

[blparker]

> So I'm curious... is there any kind of "open-source incubator" out there? Like, a site with 500 developers signed up, they all vote on new project ideas, start a new project each month, kind of like a great big collaborative hackathon, in order to put out some really impressive piece of software, that then hopefully lives on?

There was something posted on here a while back called AssemblyMade. They basically do crowd-sourced development. To my knowledge, ideas are voted on, and then people essentially work in a democratic environment iterating on the development. In the end, the idea is that any profits made from the project will be split.

[vikp]

It really would be. I was hoping that this "coding club" would do something like what you described, but it seems to be more of a pay-for-learning approach.

[britta]

There's a subreddit called "progether" ("programming together") that tries to organize people for collaborating on a series of small projects and coming up with new ideas together: http://www.reddit.com/r/progether/ + http://www.reddit.com/r/progether/wiki/about

It doesn't seem wildly successful, but it's a nice effort, and I heard about it via a computer science student who found it interesting to participate in.

[shurane]

That's a creative and varied set of ideas you have there. Got more?

[asgard1024]

Neat, but I would prefer something similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. A self-support group for people who already have personal projects, want to work on them, but are either lazy or procrastinating or paralyzed by analysis.

Although I would probably not pay money for either.

[zenbowman]

This is exactly what we had going on with our CS reading group in LA - csrg.org

It worked a little too well, all of us got new and better jobs, and we're no longer close enough geographically to continue at the same rate as before.

The perils of success!

[yozhik]

I had the exact same need, so I started a group with some coworkers to provide encouragement. As people shifted jobs membership has expanded to include people at several companies. We get together every other Tuesday and hack on projects, drink beer and network.

[asnark]

Maybe you would be interested in a site like: http://www.stickk.com/.

[alexatkeplar]

We have this in London - at least for JVM devs. It's sponsored by Salesforce, so free as in you get free breakfast and lunch and incredible views (26th floor) over London. I went for the first time this month and I'm definitely going back in Feb! http://hackthetower.co.uk/

[plaguuuuuu]

IMO ... a psychiatrist. If you really have that much trouble starting a personal project then you either need to fix yourself or have someone help you fix yourself.

sorry for bluntness, haven't had enough coffee or sleep.

[lowglow]

We've built exactly what you need.

http://tribes.techendo.co/

If you're in the bay area, ping me and I'll invite you out to our SF tribe in the mission.

[macournoyer]

I'm the creator of the club. Happy to answer any questions about this. I'm just getting started with this so feedback is very much appreciated :)

[protl]

So I get to pay you $30/m to work for you on projects and I get to talk to the other developers you have locked up in your forum and to listen to you do a screencast of unverifiable quality. Sounds amazing, sign me up!

[ricardobeat]

Will it cost $30/month? That last checkbox takes you by surprise.

[mahkoh]

Will the club be focused on web development? You're saying that the presentations will be in JavaScript but that the projects can be done in any language. Since some kinds of projects cannot be done in JS and some can only be done in JS, this seems to be somewhat restrictive.

Maybe you can give us some examples.

[midas007]

I'm confused. Is this being given tasks, showing off existing projects or working together on mutually decided projects?

[evv]

Are you trying to find people who are learning to code, or recruit experienced developers?

Falling into the latter group, I don't see any reason to pay $30/mo for an online community which already takes my time.

[macournoyer]

It's for experienced developers who want to code on cool projects on the side.

I will be producing screencasts, articles and supporting ppl in the club. I think there's a value to this. Teaching other developers online is what I do for a living.

[sdegutis]

A little off-topic, but it makes me a little sad that the exemplar my_great_project it mentions is in JavaScript.

It's not because of the language itself. It's because it's implied that the platform my_great_project would be built on is "Chrome, the new C runtime". This is the "platform of the future" and that makes me kinda sad.

EDIT: clarified

[macournoyer]

I guess it's safe to say that most web dev know JavaScript.

That's why I chose to use it as an example and will also use it to present projects in the club.

[Zikes]

Programming languages are a means to an end. Greatness can be achieved in a variety of environments.

[ihuman]

How come? JavaScript is a pretty popular language nowadays.

[CGamesPlay]

Is this more of a curated program where I am assigned a project to work on and given support towards doing so, or is this a community where people come in with projects and the community works collaboratively towards supporting these projects?

Is it a club or a school?

[macournoyer]

It will start as a curated program. But my hope is to make it evolve to be both. A place to get knowledge, inspiration and motivation. And then a place to get help and support making your own thing when you're ready.

[k-mcgrady]

Nice idea. I don't have the time to do this right now as I'm already working on a few side projects but I'll definitely be checking back in a few months. Not too sure $30 is the right price. $20/25 feels better to me (small difference I know but $30 just 'feels' a little high).

[redguava]

I wonder how much that is just http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring.

If it was set at $20... would $10/$15 have felt right?

[shawndrost]

I know Marc-André and can vouch for the quality of his instruction and his creative, effective class formats. This is a very cheap way to learn a lot from him, and I highly recommend it.

(I teach software engineering for a living.)

[githulhu]

Blocked by WebSense at my work. "Potentially Damaging Content." :(

[coenhyde]

I never have any problems starting something new. I have problems finishing what I start. When I start a new project I do the hard parts first for a proof of concept. Except now that I know it can be done I loose interest...

[jonhmchan]

Nice resource - just applied

[wil421]

This looks really great. I have enough knowledge from school and online courses that I really dont need to take another curated tutorial.

We havent started development on my main project at work and I am itching to use my new skills. Recently I have been looking for something to collaborate on with more experienced devs but havent found an outlet. This looks like something I was looking for.

[mholt]

Cool idea.

And if you're gonna blur an image, blur the image. :)

[ricankng787]

Just applied, very excited to see how this works.

[redguava]

@macournoyer, reading the comments here, it sounds like your value proposition isn't articulated clearly enough. There's a bunch of mentions of the price and not knowing what they are getting.

In your comments here, you mention the importance of your instruction and teaching, which I think is great. Perhaps make that clearer on the website?

Looks like a good idea to me.

[ssully]

I really appreciate this idea and have signed up, but the $30 monthly tag seems a bit much with the amount of information given.

This could really benefit from a trial period, or maybe a demo project. A demo project would be neat; have it offer everything the other monthly projects will so people know exactly what they are getting into.

[codezero]

I'm curious why this even mentions that no credit card is required to apply. Is it required later? Why mention it at all if it's not?

Also, I use Ghostery and it blocks Google Analytics which seems to consequently block the click-through on your Apply button.

[jmduke]

Notice the last checkbox in the application form:

I'm willing to commit $30/mo to become a better developer.

[macournoyer]

Damnit! Just disabled GA tracking. Thanks for spotting that.

There will be a monthly fee to join. I'll try to make it clearer on the page, sorry about that. This is my business, I make a living teaching developers online.

[Baadier_Sydow]

Any idea when it will be launching and do you have plans to limit the size of the community?

[macournoyer]

It should be launching next week or the next week after that at the latest.

Yes, I will limit the size of the community. The goal is to get a core group of very passionate people first.

[rgj]

So.... Your forum is meta.discourse.org with a photoshopped logo and a blur?

[allochthon]

Seems like a great use of Discourse.

[Jack5500]

It would be nice to receive a confirmation mail. I'm quite sure if my application got to you now :)