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tgriesser | 14 years ago | on: Ask HN: Moving off PHP with Meteor? What are the issues?

If you've not done a lot of javascript, then your first priority before considering doing a framework like node.js should be to learn javascript, correctly.

Read "Javascript: The Good Parts" and then continue on to any of the recommended books/readings from there (Javascript Patterns, High Performance Javascript).

jQuery is great for DOM manipulation and XHR, but it hides a lot of the implementation details from the developer, and it'll be frustrating if you try to do anything advanced in javascript without fully appreciating the language.

So, you should be able to explain and fully comprehend:

  - Variable Scope
  - Object.prototype
  - .call, .apply, and .bind
  - Closures/Lexical Scope
  - Anonymous functions
  - Function Hoisting
Once you get down most of that, then you can consider using javascript as a primary language. Otherwise you'll be very frustrated. I'd personally recommend getting comfortable with something like jQuery + backbone.js with your current stack before diving into 100% javascript.

Also, don't worry much about scale, worry more about building something and then identifying the bottlenecks later to scale.

tgriesser | 14 years ago | on: Single Page Web Apps with Backbone.js

I'm working on something similar to a lot of what you're describing with a custom CMS and the dynamic pushState. I'd be interested in hearing more about your approach. If you want to shoot me an email - tgriesser10 at gmail dot com.

tgriesser | 14 years ago

You can't link to the SaaS purchase directly from the app. If you download Netflix or other services with an app, you will notice there is no option to sign up for the service within the app itself.

tgriesser | 14 years ago | on: Cheap and easy SSL: Heroku + Cloudflare

I believe it's because cloudflare also acts as the root DNS for the domain, so in order for it to work for google and facebook, they would have to deliberately point their nameservers at cloudflare's DNS.

tgriesser | 14 years ago | on: Show HN: My open source form builder

Very nice... how long have you been working on it?

I'm actually in the process of building an open source backend for a robust form builder as a package for the fuelPHP framework. Not sure if you have any interest in collaborating, but I was planning on building a similar js frontend for it, including mirrored client/server side validation and custom callbacks but with backbone.js ...

Shoot me an email if you're interested at all.

tgriesser | 14 years ago | on: Ask HN: Is there a good way to create pseudo-random passwords mentally?

You could try having a base unique-ish password preceded by a site/service specific unique prefix... so a unique-ish base you would remember "pa$$word" on google would be $go-pa$$word on facebook would be $fb-pa$$word and so on.

I guess if someone a) cracked the password and then b) realized you were using some sort of prefix pattern for all sites they could somehow exploit that, but it's definitely better than the same 4 passwords for everything

tgriesser | 14 years ago | on: Ask HN: Best way to organize 3 sites? Startup blog, tech blog, Startup Service

I'd say that you're really over-thinking this. Just pick one of those three site ideas, keep a narrow focus, do a good job executing it, and expand from there.

Nothing "hits the market" as a giant network. It's a process of accumulated growth. Envato, GigaOm, Techcrunch, etc. all started as a single sites which through growth and good content were able to expand into the giant things. If your primary focus is the "service" then just stay focused on that with maybe a simple side blog or something, or an aggregator of different startup news sites with commentary, etc.

Also, there needs to be something that separates your content sites from all of the aforementioned sites. Why would I find the content on your site interesting vs. any of the ones you listed or thestartupfoundry, or sprouter. If you answer that with "my content will be better" then you may need to re-evaluate the market.

As long as you don't decide to completely rebrand the site and call it "quikster," it shouldn't be a problem to separate the content once you see how everything works out.

tgriesser | 14 years ago | on: No company would ever hire Steve Jobs

Think about that for a moment…if you look at Steve’s background and took it against engineering-centric hiring practices, the CEO of the decade couldn’t get a job as a secretary let alone in management.

Conversely, the type of person described in the article that "no one would hire", would also be the last person in the world looking for an interview with a large tech corp, it's a two way street.

tgriesser | 14 years ago | on: Ask HN: Have the non-tech self-employed been abandoned?

Right now I'm working on a startup called Get On Social, which addresses exactly the market you've identified. The premise is simple - reducing updates on Facebook Pages, Twitter, and LinkedIn down to the simplest means possible - a single daily email which prompts a business owner for updates with their business, at a reasonable price of $10/mo. This is a steal in comparison to the hundreds of dollars a month some small biz's are shelling out to "social media consulting agencies" which essentially act as a proxy for their business's message.

We're pretty limited in our features right now, but we've already gotten awesome reviews from the demographic you've mentioned, non-tech self employed who understand that there is a need to keep a good presence online but don't have the time nor desire to learn a new UI's, remember to log into multiple accounts per day, and determine what and how to post.

Some difficulties we've encountered are:

1. The amount of support that goes into something as simple as signing up for a web-app 2. Many business owners still don't trust using a credit card online and 3. Require a face-to-face meeting before they make any decisions on something

It is definitely an undeserved market, but also one that requires more offline networking, development, and explanation - not just A/B testing a landing page and getting good links on popular tech blogs.

Link: http://www.getonsocial.com

tgriesser | 15 years ago

Real world situation, you decide to move your database from mysql to postgresql because you're unhappy with something that oracle is doing and you want to move to a database that is completely free and open-source.

Using a framework, you change the $config['driver'] from "mysql" to "postgres" and you're good to go.

Without using a framework, you need to change every query your application makes. Good luck with that. If you don't have to do that because you standardized it yourself with a bunch of functions then you actually are using a framework, just one you made yourself rather than an open source one.

tgriesser | 15 years ago

The claim that PHP frameworks are not well maintained is completely unfounded. Are you going to seriously say that Zend, Codeigniter, Symphony are not maintained?

The claim that they are more trouble than they are worth is also a common misconception. Yes, in some situations for very small projects, frameworks are probably unnecessary, but it really helps to not reinvent the wheel when it comes to security, form validation, database management, caching, and any of the other repetitive things that frameworks try to standardize.

I'd recommend taking a look at Codeigniter, I've been using it in production for 2 years and have completely enjoyed it. It is very well documented easy to use, and flexible... and since it's been opened up to the community with the codeigniter-reactor branch there is much more development taking place.

I've also started working some with FuelPHP http://fuelphp.com/ which is a new framework but also very well documented and makes great use of the features php5.3

I wouldn't recommend CakePHP though. From what I've seen it is bloated and tries to do too much auto-magically (like rails) but fails to execute as well.

tgriesser | 15 years ago | on: The Economics of Dropbox

Since the changes/uploads of the files are just diff's of the existing files rather than full copies for each version, I can't imagine that the versioning would add too much to the author's rough estimations.
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