Hacker News Reader

Thank you. This has become my one and only default homepage that I open up starting each day.

james-fendon 5 Things Your Startup Should Take Away From Jeremy Lin’s Underdog Story

None. If you're implying if this blog is simply link-bait, it's not. I have no need for links to this personal blog, I wrote this to bring out a few good pointers about the 'hustling' mentality in a Great come up story I really admire. Just a motivational post, nothing major..

james-fendon Lean Domain Search: Two Weeks After the HackerNews Launch

Thanks for the data, pretty interesting. I was thinking of doing one myself here in a few for Freelancify

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

Thank you for that. I shot you an email..

james-fendon Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

yeah, it only popped up half the time for me when I first saw the news, so I figured I'd post a decent "rewrite" that everyone could access. cheers!

james-fendon Chapter 6 of the Rails Tutorial, 2nd Edition is out ("Modeling users")

Great stuff Michael!

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

thank you for the suggestion, will look into that. The popularity of the posts def caught me off-guard..

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

hey danneu, Unfortunately no. The logic for the cucumber tests are written out, so if another coder took a look at the .features, they'd be able to figure out what the app needs to do. But as far as the tests working if I cmd 'cucumber'; they would all fail as they aren't defined yet.

The main reason for this was, me and Josh were actually going to only do Freelancify for a week or two without testing, then scrap it and re-do it again BDD test driven.

I ended up putting so much work into it in the weeks, that starting over from scratch would be a huge time-killer. One of the next things on the to-do is to go back and make these cucumber tests work.

Josh and I are probably also going to start on another small app so I can do BDD first, then code.

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

Thank you for this. I will have to look into a few off that list and implement them. All the models does have attr_accessible. Using CarrierWave for uploads.

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

Using MacPorts to install ImageMagick was hell. But when I used HomeBrew, it was like night and day.

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

Good question. The wordpress blog (webstartup.me) is on a cheap server. Freelancify is hosted on Heroku.

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

Jump-up-and-down moments, ah... those are great!

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

Do you think it's a left brain, right brain sort of thing? I mean what controls someone's ability to draw better than others?

I've noticed usually the better someone can draw on paper, their web design reflects the same.

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

No prob! exactly why I wrote it.. during times of learning code; motivation is like gold

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

Yep. That's exactly it, it's on a cheap server and too much traffic. Anybody experience this before and/or know some quick solutions?

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

"then I'd come back the next day to realize it was a stupid" I couldn't agree with that more!! Come back and you find out all you had to do was restart the 'Rails Server' or simply mis-spelled something.

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

Yes, it was the hardest/easiest thing to learn I've ever experienced. Sometimes I was jumping out of my chair and then other times throwing things against the wall.

Plenty of times I wanted to just give up.. during those points; I'd step back and go take a break, go for a walk, do something.. other than think.

Programming is hard because it's full-time blitz mode thinking. I felt the front part of my brain (is that where all the programming juice is held?) hurt often in the beginning.

Do you have an actual product you want to work on?

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

Thank you! Without getting too much into technics in the beginning, and getting the person to get something up to feel accomplished, gain confidence.

I think that's what gets most people. That initial learning curve takes a lot reassurance that they can do it; but if they hit a wall and it takes more than 7-8 hours to get around it, a lot just quit all together.

By far, the most thorough and best written resource I used was the Rails Tutorial from Michael Hartl.

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

That's pretty fast. Yeah.. once getting past that initial learning curve; it becomes a lot funner.

james-fendon How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

thank you! how many hours total do you think you spent during the 3 months?

james-fendon I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went

great question. I was a web designer working with only html/css. I had no clue what an MVC was before I got told the best route is to learn Rails by Josh.

I'll definitely be making a blog post about the learning Rails aspect as it was requested alot today. If you want, I'd suggest to subscribe that way it'll email you when that post is created.

james-fendon I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went

thanks!

james-fendon I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went

Also, those spray and pray 'generic' bids that many companies on Elance and oDesk can't get away with that. So they actually have to display some sort brain power and ability to the project poster.

The ability for the project poster not be embarded by 40-50 bids all at the same time and not having a clue about their work ethic/communication/etc. and going purely off of reviews and botched portfolios.

james-fendon I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went

The ability to tell the person who posted the project that their project will be a piece of crap if they try to get something done for that much and why.

james-fendon I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went

BRILLIANT IDEA!!

james-fendon I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went

Thanks.. yep, fixing that is on the list

james-fendon I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went

Live and learn. I prob won't make that mistake again as I just woke up from a crash nap and trying to catch up on blog comments..

james-fendon I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went

Hey sequoia, Yes, that does need to come down. That image was actually a leftover from the original 1-page splash landing site that runs running since June until yesterday. Never thought twice to take it out as my eyes literally skip over it when scanning that page.

james-fendon I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went

lmao.. fixed.

james-fendon I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went

thanks for the list.. getting small quirks like this fixed is my goal for this week.