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acoleman616

249 karma · joined June 20, 2012

Consulting developer and designer, and soon-to-be author. I'm writing a book helping people learn to code and create their first web app called "Your First Web App": http://www.alexpcoleman.com/your-first-web-app/

Blog: http://www.alexpcoleman.com/blog/

Consulting: http://www.alexpcoleman.com/

@alexpcoleman

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acoleman616··on Call yourself titles
would be good friends with james clear
acoleman616··on Launch HN: Promise (YC W18) – Cost-effective, more humane alternative to jail
I'd love to follow your progress! Any chance of an email newsletter?
acoleman616··on The Merge
It's Elon's biggest fear for very good reasons...
acoleman616··on Koel: A personal music streaming server
I'm happy to see Laravel being used for more and more projects and getting the credit it deserves as truly first-class framework -- regardless of language.
acoleman616··on Stripe Dashboard for iPhone
How convenient, since I just started using Stripe this past week :) Control -- the app I had been using -- seemed great, but I have to imagine this will trump, especially considering the amount of polish and attention to detail goes into every Stripe interface.
acoleman616··on Show HN: Learn Swift
Softcover is awesome. (It's a Michael Hartl creation.)
acoleman616··on How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire
Man, this country is really messed up sometimes...
acoleman616··on GitHub and BitBucket's SSL Provider's Cert has expired
Thank you!
acoleman616··on How to get stuff done, automatically
Always something fun and new with the server when on HN. Working on getting it back up now...
acoleman616··on A New Codecademy
Wholeheartedly agree. This really strikes a chord with me, and it's the exactly problem I'm working to make a dent on.

Earlier this year I created a free course called the New Year of Coding [1] with the goal of helping anyone learn what they're doing and, more importantly, why things function in the way they do.

I'm attempting to tackle the problem at a larger scale with my upcoming book, Your First Web App [2], which will walk anyone through the entire process of creating a web app, from start to finish. The goal is for someone to be able to understand all of the pieces, starting with the text editor, the development environment, etc., and gradually working into the actual development, all the way explaining how everything fits together.

It's proven to be a great deal of work so far, but it sure is rewarding getting the "Hey! This is was super helpful! Thanks!" messages.

[1] http://www.alexpcoleman.com/new-year-of-coding/

[2] http://www.alexpcoleman.com/your-first-web-app/

acoleman616··on Show HN: GitBook – Build beautiful programming books using GitHub and Markdown
I also started off on a very similar path writing my programming book [1] and ended up switching over to using LaTeX-powered Texpad for Mac.

It's resulted in a huge gain in productivity, in terms of both managing the content and the code samples and keeping everything nice and consistent. (That last item can become difficult, much quicker than I originally anticipated.)

It's wonderful to see more tools cropping up in this area; there's most definitely a need for them!

[1] http://www.alexpcoleman.com/your-first-web-app/

acoleman616··on We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
You're right. If he's doing his job right, you should be getting MORE than ($125 * # hrs) in value in return.
acoleman616··on Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended
I think like assuming people know how to open links in new tabs on their own (i.e. right click, "Open in New Tab") is completely misguided.
acoleman616··on Show HN: Capture a screen area in OS X and automatically pin it
With that being the most common feedback you get, I would highly recommend adding some good use cases to your landing page to tell people why they should want to use it.
acoleman616··on Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?
This is great. First off, congrats.

As others have mentioned, due to the sensitive nature of a project along these lines, I would strongly recommend finding a mentor in the psychology realm. You'll want to make sure that you carefully consider some of the functionality aspects of the app to make sure things won't be unnecessarily/accidentally harmful.

acoleman616··on Scramble.io: secure email for everyone
Whenever I see a site with the fixed background images and scrolling content panels (where the background image is periodically visible again), I spend more time trying to figure out what's contained in the background images through those gaps than I do reading the content.
acoleman616··on Authority Case Studies: $30k in sales from first-time authors
I'm in the process of writing a book right now (http://yourfirstwebapp.com) with the help of Nathan's Authority, and I can say that his book is jam-packed with useful info. It's been particularly beneficial in helping me develop a cohesive plan/strategy to plan, write, and market my book.
acoleman616··on Have a startup idea but don't know how to code?
Author here. Did not expect this to hit the front page, and of course got struck down by the almighty HN traffic gods.

Page is back up now!

acoleman616··on Interactive Resume
Awesome enough that I made it all the way to the end!
acoleman616··on You don't need millions of dollars
As others have mentioned in the past, I believe this is one of the best "business" books I've ever read. Not in the traditional sense, but that only furthers my point. Absolutely phenomenal read.
acoleman616··on Tesla Is The New Bubble Stock
Holy crap is the Forbes site busy (in terms of "stuff", not traffic)...
acoleman616··on Show HN: Introducing Harp – A static web server with built in preprocessing
Nitpick: on the harpjs.com site, under the "The beloved Layout/Partial paradigm" header, you have "orginized" instead of "organized".

Looks like an interesting project, though!

acoleman616··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (October 2013)
SEEKING WORK - Remote / Boston, MA - me [at] alexpcoleman.com

Web design/development consultant looking to build custom web app solutions to improve your business.

I have plenty of experience building custom web apps, from start to finish, including design implementation, UI experience conceptualization, and full development responsibilities.

You can view my portfolio and blog at my personal website:

http://www.alexpcoleman.com

For more professional information, see my LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexpcoleman

acoleman616··on Idea to App in 2 weeks
If others are interested though, that validates the idea, which is immensely more useful than the alternative.
acoleman616··on Idea to App in 2 weeks
I would imagine that a good deal of the orders are from the friends that were mentioned.
acoleman616··on JustFab.com JustFabulous Class Action Lawsuit (2011)
Wow. The first time I looked at the image of that page (and mind you I actually spent about 20-30 seconds on it), I definitely thought it was just $39.95 for that pair of shoes. Did not realize at all that it was for a membership. And I like to think that my attention to detail is pretty strong... That's disturbing!
acoleman616··on Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
I make $0/month now, but I'm working on a book ("Your First Web App", http://www.alexpcoleman.com/your-first-web-app/) and another SaaS app now to hopefully change that soon.
acoleman616··on Semantic UI – A language for sharing UI
This is semantic:

<header> <h1>Title</h1> <nav> <button class="active">Home</button> <button>Link</button> <button>Link</button> </nav> </header>

not this:

<div class="ui menu"> <div class="header item">Title</div> <a class="active item">Home</a> <a class="item">Link</a> <a class="item">Link</a> <div class="right floated text item"> Signed in as <a href="#">user</a> </div> </div>

acoleman616··on Responsive Design is Not About Screen Sizes Any More
It doesn't, directly, but you could argue that when designing/building a website with mobile at the forefront of your thought process, you should end up with a less-excessive DOM, as you begin by building the simplest (i.e. mobile) UI, first.
acoleman616··on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
Exactly.
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