Show HN: What I built 6 months into learning to code | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: What I built 6 months into learning to code

evemi.com

29 pointspaulbrowneng55 comments

I just joined. I am trying to understand how this is different from Pinterest. If this is indeed different, can you explain it here?

It's one of their first projects 6 months into learning how to code. Who gives a shit if it is like Pinterest.

Haha kreutz - I think the Pinterest question is one I might have to get used to answering but lol thanks for your encouraging response - maybe that should be mine too from now on haha.

Differentiation from Pinterest/other will be one of the key factors in their eventual success. From the emails that I've received, this project is trying to get users and move forward. This isn't merely a demonstration of what has been learnt in 6 months.

As such, debate on the differentiation aspect is fair and useful to the developers.

True jeswin, I am definitely interested in having some people give evemi a go, and I am not afraid of adapting the concept if it means it is more suited to what people want and will use.

Hey jeswin, first of all thank you for joining and giving it a try, it is really cool you giving it some of your time and helping out with some feedback. The question you ask is a very good one, and I guess one I was sort-of expecting, here is how I see evemi and why I think it is unique..

evemi is a platform for hanging out with new people that are similar to you, whereas I see Pinterest as more for self-expression. On evemi you follow the # hash-tag pages over following people (even though this is possible too) and anyone can post to these hash-tag pages too. I see the pages on evemi as individual communities that anyone can contribute to and follow and be a part of.. So for example if you are a designer you can reach out and post to the #design community on evemi and get some feedback and collaborate with other people around the world into design like you. The original idea was that I wanted a way to communicate with new people like me and I thought other people out there might feel the same way.

I guess I see evemi much like the forums we all grew up on and loved back in the good ol' days - it is a place to meet similar people and have a discussion around a shared interest.

Would love to know your thoughts on all of that jeswin - do you think there is something in all of that or do you think I am way off the mark lol!

Thanks. Let me go through the app in more detail and will let you know.

Okay jeswin, looking forward to seeing what you think after a bit of a better look at it.

"Hang out with people that are similar to you" is a great one-liner. You should open with that instead of "follow the things that you love".

Nice point depa, I think I have tried every one liner I can think of over the past few weeks but yeah I think you are right - after all that is what evemi is all about probably over following the things you love, thanks for that point.. Can't believe that after all of the this time searching for a good one-liner lol!

If I'm going to invest the time and effort into registering for an account, I'll need to know what exact benefit your service will be providing, how you plan to position the product and differentiate it from competitors in the same space, and your 6-month roadmap with projected revenues.

I know you're only 6 months into learning how to program, but if you want to roll with the big boys on HN, you're going to need to prove your worth.

Hey kyro, I understand I have to prove my worth, and programming is already something I am becoming extremely passionate about. Your points about understanding the benefits of evemi before you sign up I tried to explain on the http://evemi.com/why_evemi page, have you checked out that page? Regarding revenue, that is really not something I am concentrating on right now, I am just trying to learn as much as I can and hopefully build something maybe a few people might find useful and fun.

From my experience, most people will never visit a second page on your site, or even scroll down to read more text. The best thing you can do is hit people right in the face with a strong value proposition. In your case 'Follow the things you love' seems to abstract, it doesn't really do anything to communicate the product to me.

Hey david, okay thank you for the advice, I also think I need to do a better job of getting the message across straight away on the landing page. depa had a nice idea on here a minute ago to use the line - "Hang out with people that are similar to you", I think he is right in that it spells out to people what evemi is all about from the word go.

'Hang out with people that are similar to you' is a good value proposition. It's a need that many people have that's not met well on the web today. On it's own though, it lacks credibility.

My first reaction would be: 'Meh, whatever. A hundred products already tried to get me to hang out with people like, and I'm using none of them'.

Perhaps it would be useful to consider the problem.

The web is full of places where you can interact with people around topics of interest. Reddit, Facebook Groups, countless chat products, and a sea of specialised communities from Chess servers to HN.

The biggest problem left unsolved in this space is: how do you get people to form real relationships online. Relationships that spill over beyond the site in which it originated and give you a chance for genuine friendship.

If Evemi lets me have more superficial interactions with people around topics of interest, it's probably not going to go very far. If it does have the chance to get me to form genuine relationships, I'd need to know how it does that before giving any credence to 'Hang out with people that are similar to you'.

Just my 2 cents.

I was being sarcastic. Seems like a few commenters here are expecting a bit much from you.

Well done on the project! I'd be interested in a post about how you went from zero-to-product in 6 months.

lol okay thanks kyro, and thanks for understanding where I am coming from - and thanks for your encouragement. A few people have emailed me about this so I will by telling a little more about my story here on Hacker News and I will do a nice detailed post on evemi.

Imo, this is not representative. You should try to do a better job explaining what your product is, and that's it. Very little people will care about 6 month roadmaps, and asking you for revenue projections is plain silly.

Thanks David! :)

The mobile version of the site is really slick. The onboarding for a new user felt friendly.

Two things:

1. I had little context of who the people were I could choose to follow (save for their photos).

2. I had no place to upload a profile photo.

Care to share your tech stack or how you progressed over six months of learning? I'd love to hear about it.

Hey there, the mobile version is extremely incomplete at the moment, I threw it together really with a little jquery mobile.. I guess now with the ios6 updates I can add the option to upload a photo after sign up. Also on the site version (which is much more complete) there is a little more information about who the people are you are about to follow and why you are following. I definitely have some work to do on the mobile version so thanks for the comments and advice!

A few people have asked about how everything progressed over the last six months so I am going to add a comment here with some more details in a few minutes.

I would lead off with this:

http://gyazo.com/3a3958557ec6c07e1ce34e635526a45d

it gets right to the point and avoids the awkward 'click through full page slideshows of feelgood BS' (assuming you even understand you're supposed to click words in the first place).

Those words on the slideshows ... some letters always clash because the pics are a mix of light and dark, as are the letters. Just drop it.

Hey thanks for taking the time to comment, that's some good advice. On the ipad version it does that and skips the intro. A few people have made this point so I definitely need to look at this page again and simplify it a little. Thank you.

IMHO, the design is too influenced by airbnb's. Feels and looks the same in a very explicit way - the top bar, the logo, the colors, the photos.

Hey guru_shastry I am guilty as charged! :) I was definitely influenced by airbnb's design in some places and over the coming weeks I plan to make the design more like 'evemi' and less like airbnb, I definitely want to have a much more unique feel.. I am totally new to coding and also to designing but I guess one improtant thing I have learnt is that I need to keep things modern and slick, but also original and unique, thanks for the comment and advice. :)

Could you tell us a little about the technology you used, your background, how you learned to code and what you found most challenging and most rewarding? Those are the most interesting parts of this story to me. The site looks nice regardless of the derivative nature, don't let the negative comments get you down, good job.

Hey Seth, thank you for the nice words and it is great to hear you have an interest in me and the journey I have been on. A few people have asked me about this now so here is a little more about how I got to here..

I am 25 years old living in Leeds in the UK and previously I ran and designed my own small magazine for the printing industry. I loved doing it but in a shrinking market it was no fun and cold calling for advertising space was definitely no fun. The feedback I was getting was that 'everything is going on-line' and after having a little experience in the printing industry I was totally feeling the same way.

I began spending a lot of time reading about start-ups and the tech scene and I thought it sounded pretty interesting and exciting. I guess I considered myself a little entrepreneurial after doing the magazine and thought I might be capable of doing my own thing on-line too. I just wanted to have a shot at it myself. Around the same time I was also wondering if there were other people out there similar to me that I could chat to about all of this. So I decided the best thing to do would be to learn how to code and jump right in at the deep end and build something pretty big to both learn the skills you need to build something and also to try and solve the problem I had of connecting with some new and similar people to me.

One of the biggest challenges I had in the beginning was not knowing where to start. I did a bit of research into the technologies used to build twitter/facebook/foursquare/etc and I came to the conclusion that there was a lot of help and a big community for php/mysql so I decided that would be best for me to learn first. But I really can't describe how difficult it was taking this first step. There is so much out there about different technologies and I had no idea what css was and what you use that for instead of javascript etc - it is really difficult even for me to comprehend and remember now but starting from nothing and with very little one to one advice it is really difficult to know where to begin.

I bought a few php/mysql books and started reading. the after the first page I stopped reading. Going from 0 to reading about variables and arrays etc just really did not work for me and it went completely over my head. then I came across a few youtube videos. I watched some great tutorials that took me step by step through creating a basic php/mysql website from scratch and I found these to be extremely useful. I played with these for about two weeks and then decided to just start making the thing I really wanted to spend my time on and was excited about (evemi). I guess the point here is that it was better for me (and maybe it is better for other people too) to just get stuck in and start making something over trying to learn all about it first. if you just start making something you learn what you need to know as you need to know it instead of been barricaded with an overwhelming amount of information before laying down your first line of code.

I had the first bare-bones version of evemi scrapped together in a few weeks and then after a couple of months I asked a few friends to come along and give it a go. While my friends were using it I was iterating as fast as I could to make it better and that is where I am today.

I guess the best lesson I have learned from this so far is the importance of moving quickly and working hard. When I set out learning all of this 6 months ago I was completely dedicated and passionate about achieving what I set out to do and I was sure I had to do it as quickly as possible. I think my drive and determination is what has got me out of bed early and kept me working until late into the night for the past few months and got the product to here it is today.

evemi is still nowhere near a finished product, and there is a hell of a lot to do to change it and improve it before it fulfils the vision I have for it. I am just trying to listen to the users we have and develop it the best I can whilst I try and keep learning and pushing myself. If evemi has got this far in quite a short time I am excited to see what it might look like and what it might be able to do in another 6 months. For now I just need to keep focused and keep coding.

Thanks. Age wasn't important though, just background and experience. The eye for design you had already started cultivating with the magazine work shows.

Just some advice:

When I clicked on "What is Evemi" I spend about 30 seconds waiting for the page to fully load before I realised I had to click. Maybe I've just tired but it was a bit difficult for me to realise what was going on.

Also when I look at how evemi works, the pictures you have are a bit too small for me to read the text, im not sure if thats on purpose or not.

Hey there, I really appreciate your advice and I think I agree about the size of the text on the screenshots on the what is evemi page.. I threw that page together quite recently because I had a lot of initial feedback from people saying that they did not fully understand what evemi is and why it could be of value to them but yeah I think it requires some further tinkering to get the message across clearly and to get the design a little better.

The "Why Evemi" page is also incomplete. There's nothing after the header text.

http://evemi.com/why_evemi

Hmm, not sure what you mean it seems to be loading up fine for me, you are not on mobile by any chance are you? There is still lots of work to be done on the mobile version.

He probably didn't realize you have to click, it's not very clear. The design looks quite nice, but if you can't tell what you're supposed to do, it's a problem (it confused me too).. esp the HN crowd probably just wants to see a description of what your service actually does, not some nice pictures :)

Hey neona, I definitely need to add a prompt for people to click, and need to make the description a little clearer, thanks for commenting.

Yep, came here to make the same remark. It might be interesting to put in some link colors or an arrow.

Edit: grammar

Hey why-el, thanks for taking the time to have a look and to make the comment, definitely know this is an issue I should look at now.

>>When I clicked on "What is Evemi" I spend about 30 seconds waiting for the page to fully load before I realised I had to click.

I didn't realize I had to click until I read this.

I'm not sure what the concept is, or even if the rest of the site is up and running, but if you did, it's a pretty good effort.

I'm not particularly interested in the idea, but that comes from someone who doesn't like using facebook or twitter. Hopefully someone who is really into this stuff can weigh in.

Hey dizzystar, thanks for commenting. Yeah I definitely need to add a prompt to click on that page, and I think I need to clarify the concept a little too. The site is built-ish once you sign in (still lots I want to do) but nice to hear from some people on Hacker News that have an understanding as to the learning curve I have been on.

Regardless of the visual similarity to Pinterest, the underlying idea seems interesting.

More so, I commend you for your effort the last 6 months learning something to code. It's not easy to get into it, so congrats!

Hey there. Thank you for taking the time to comment and for seeing beyond the layout. No doubt I need to make the concept a little clearer and I have lots of iterations to the design and concept until I really have something here - this is just my first attempt and I am pretty excited to see what I can turn evemi into after another six months.

Great work - the aesthetics reminds me of airbnb :-) I would suggest that you do some kind of input validation for the 'request an invite' box - eg, checking for empty strings.

Hey Anthony, wow thanks for the nice words (and yeah I totally was inspired in places by airbnb - I really love their design work)... Good point about validating for emails - I need to check duplicate entries too, also think I need a good way to check if it is a valid email address that is been entered - that has been causing me a couple of problems in the last few hours.

Looks great! Though your 'sign paint' font took a while to load, so I was a little confused when I clicked on 'what is evemi' as there were missing words!

Hey James.. Thanks for the nice words! Yeah I have had a few issues with knowing what font files load fastest - I am still very much a beginner! Very nice to have your words of encouragement, let me know if you have any more thoughts or feedback! :)

> Invalid file format..

When uploading a profile picture in png or jpg. There are some other little things but in general it looks slick.

Hmm, okay will have to look into that, was you uploading during the sign-up process or from the settings page? Thanks for the comment!

I'd suggest a clear way to unsubscribe from those SendGrid emails or they're going to start getting marked as spam.

Hmm, okay never even thought of that, at the moment you can only unsubscribe from the site, but yeah you are right I need to add a link in the emails too - very good point.

Come on. If you're gonna post to HN don't link me to some landing page with a huge jpg of 2 chicks and a form to put my e-mail in. I feel like this goes against Show HN/hacker etiquette

Sorry about that.. I did not know what page to link to, I really wasn't after sign-ups for the sake of sign-ups, I just wanted a little feedback from some more experienced people.

You still get my respect for shipping something and showing it to HN. There's not many people that manage to do that. That being said I'd like to have a little more to see before I give up my e-mail address.

Yawn. This is well executed, but completely derivative. It is shame to see evidently talented web developers making knock-offs of Tumblr and Pinterest.

What a very nice thing to say I am talented, I am very new to developing so it is great to have some nice feedback. Regarding the concept I think you have to give it a little time to see why evemi is so unique, the feed may be similar to Pinterest, but that is basically it - I think it takes a while to get to grips with evemi, and maybe this will be one of the problems I am going to face and will have to address, thanks for pointing that out to me.

Fucking buzzkill man. He is 6 months in. Let him build what he wants

Haha, thanks man!

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