4 ms·

This was an enjoyable read. As someone not yet even out of the gate, I think the biggest take-away from this is that networking is by far the most important ski

by ch 16y ago

This was an enjoyable read. As someone not yet even out of the gate, I think the biggest take-away from this is that networking is by far the most important skill an entrepreneur must cultivate. I am technically skilled, but spend much of that skill on private projects, and so have not learned the art of building networks with even technical fellows, let alone business fellows (my business skillset is nonexistent). The author appears not only to have natural network skills, but also a knack for social organization, which clearly shows through in this article. I have been slowly circling towards evolving a more social persona, and communicating online seems like a safe first step. I feel inspired today. Thanks for posting this.

ljlolel 16y ago
That's funny you say that. I definitely have been working a lot on that specifically over the last few years. I'm actually a hard-core hacker. I'm running technology at Stickybits. I wrote my own Python web framework, and released (what I think is) the best templating framework in any language. (weby templates: http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/weby-templates-are-easier-faster-and-more-flexible http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/weby-templates-are-easier-fa...)
- ch 16y ago
  It was another article posted here (I think) detailing the history of some pretty famous products (I remember the Super-Soaker being among those mentioned) and how these wildly successful products all had rather humble beginnings, and sometimes quite rocky starts. It was a good read, since it reminds one that when you use someone (something) else's success as a measuring stick you quite often are behaving much like the blind men and the elephant. I bring that up because while I was reading your post I completely forgot those lessons learned and found myself both envious of your success and disappointed in my relative lack. Of course reading your reply here only helps to re-ground me yet again. A funny coincidence, I too have worked on similar Python projects, only never released them. In fact I have a HTML similar template system which made use of ‘__getattr__’ and ‘__call__’ to allow you to produce things like this: def pageSidebar(): html = T.div(id="page-sidebar")( T.div( T.a("Add Page",href="?cont=addPage") ), T.ul( *map(T.li,(nodeUrl for nodeType,nodeUrl in graphData.nodes_iter() if nodeType == 'page')) )) return html Of course this was before I could take advantage of ‘with’, so my product looks a bit too lispy!
  - ljlolel 16y ago
    Yea, everyone always said that Python is no good for embedding in template languages because of its significant whitespace. Weby Templates proves that whitespace is actually an asset. A number of Python templaters (like yours), lisp templates, and other language templates have a system like yours, nested lists. But they quickly become unworkable, lack the ability to do if statements (simple branching), and not having to put end tags ("))") is half the reason you use Python! Python's whitespace proves to make a much better language for templates than any other. My "success" may look enviable, but it's luck. Except not quite luck. When I visited California, I wrote a script to email over 200 companies. Only a few replied. Is that luck, or did I make that?

by ch 16y ago

ljlolel 16y ago

That's funny you say that. I definitely have been working a lot on that specifically over the last few years. I'm actually a hard-core hacker. I'm running technology at Stickybits. I wrote my own Python web framework, and released (what I think is) the best templating framework in any language. (weby templates: http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/weby-templates-are-easier-faster-and-more-flexible http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/weby-templates-are-easier-fa...)

ch 16y ago
It was another article posted here (I think) detailing the history of some pretty famous products (I remember the Super-Soaker being among those mentioned) and how these wildly successful products all had rather humble beginnings, and sometimes quite rocky starts. It was a good read, since it reminds one that when you use someone (something) else's success as a measuring stick you quite often are behaving much like the blind men and the elephant. I bring that up because while I was reading your post I completely forgot those lessons learned and found myself both envious of your success and disappointed in my relative lack. Of course reading your reply here only helps to re-ground me yet again. A funny coincidence, I too have worked on similar Python projects, only never released them. In fact I have a HTML similar template system which made use of ‘__getattr__’ and ‘__call__’ to allow you to produce things like this: def pageSidebar(): html = T.div(id="page-sidebar")( T.div( T.a("Add Page",href="?cont=addPage") ), T.ul( *map(T.li,(nodeUrl for nodeType,nodeUrl in graphData.nodes_iter() if nodeType == 'page')) )) return html Of course this was before I could take advantage of ‘with’, so my product looks a bit too lispy!
- ljlolel 16y ago
  Yea, everyone always said that Python is no good for embedding in template languages because of its significant whitespace. Weby Templates proves that whitespace is actually an asset. A number of Python templaters (like yours), lisp templates, and other language templates have a system like yours, nested lists. But they quickly become unworkable, lack the ability to do if statements (simple branching), and not having to put end tags ("))") is half the reason you use Python! Python's whitespace proves to make a much better language for templates than any other. My "success" may look enviable, but it's luck. Except not quite luck. When I visited California, I wrote a script to email over 200 companies. Only a few replied. Is that luck, or did I make that?