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Comment by vuciv1 | Hacker News Reader

Totally understandable. The sign up process is just to store your likes so that you don't need to swipe again on the same movies.

Its also so that you can lookup and add your friends.

I understand the frustration, though. I'm working on a version with webhooks where you can just join a lobby and start swiping.

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> The sign up process is just to store your likes so that you don't need to swipe again on the same movies.

> Its also so that you can lookup and add your friends.

Right, but what about that requires me to type in three magic strings into three (wait, actually probably six?) input fields? Just associate the data on the server with some UUID that you store on my device. Inviting others could work by just sharing a link.

I have a bit more to learn :)

Start from the assumption that you do not need any data from your users, and do not need to form an explicit relationship with them (like by having them create an account), and work from there. Treat it as a challenge - how to make your idea work under such constraints?

Noted. I'm definitely going to do this for anything else I build.

Thanks for the new perspective.

I think the sign-up is fine, but the password requirements should be done away with. They don't even seem to work. Neither periods or colons count as special symbols. Generally, there shouldn't be any requirements. I use a diceware password, which is very safe, but doesn't fit the requirements.

I like the idea. However I think there is a reason why it typically works like this app does.

Now what happens if you switch phones or use multiple devices? The behaviour would be inconsistent. What if I build up a large amount of likes/dislikes? Would they be suddenly gone without way to export them?

Additionally, I actually would like it not to store data. Maybe I want to get the recommendation for a movie next time because I’m just not in the mood to watch that Horror movie right now. Edit: this last bit is actually exactly what elliekelly write more eloquently.

> Now what happens if you switch phones or use multiple devices? The behaviour would be inconsistent. What if I build up a large amount of likes/dislikes? Would they be suddenly gone without way to export them?

I agree this is a likely reason, but I think it’s a cargo cult design that makes sense on the web, but is the wrong priorities for a trivial/frivolous mobile app like this.

I don’t know anything about Android, but with iOS this just isn’t an issue. Everything is backed up and when I get a new phone everything is restored automatically.

Even for the quite uncommon case where a poweruser is switching between iOS and Android, it’s not worth blocking the 99% users who just want to try the app as effortlessly as possible and will never end up in that situation. It would certainly be possible to convert an automatic anonymous user account to one that uses password-based login, for users who care a lot about the data in the app.

Storing likes seems to go against the problem you’re trying to solve: what are we in the mood to watch right now. I might “like” a movie, or even love a movie, and have zero interest in watching it this evening.

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