12 ms·

I recorded vlogs to show how I built side projects

243 points by damechen 6y ago

damechen 6y ago
I started to build IndieLog (formerly Lonely Dev) since the lockdown to fix my own problem. The other project Backlogs is like a by-product while building IndieLog. I never did something like this, putting myself in the public. It sounds scary. Indeed it was in the beginning, but it's an incredible journey so far!
- lukevp 6y ago
  Nice looking site and product! I watched your drag and drop demo for the kanban board. You may consider having a “best of” at the top, I wouldn’t watch a vlog because of the time involved, but I would definitely watch a couple of top rated videos from your journey where you talk about pivots, big feature demos, etc. you could manually curate the top ones for now and influence them with thumbs up and view as there are more user metrics. Good luck!
  - damechen 6y ago
    This is such a great idea lukevp!!! I will consider to have those featured ones.
    - frsandstone 6y ago
      You might also take a look at how popular influencers use Instagram Stories to collect throughout-the-day updates into cohesive stories across days and weeks. IE: "My trip to Cabo" might include 1-2 stories out of 10 posted that day, but they are the user's favorite and tell a cohesive story. Another analogy is Youtube's "Playlist" feature.
      - damechen 6y ago
        Yes, we kinda have that feature, but in a different way. As most of our members are bootstrapping their own product. Any video if it is related to a particular product, it can be attached to the product. Like our member David creates a product called Remake, all related videos can be linked to Remake in this page https://indielog.com/product/remake https://indielog.com/product/remake
- jfernandez 6y ago
  I love the thought you covered in your first video about "why not YouTube?", so best of luck with building a more specific community. I think some will say that you'll lose a sense of discovery by not being on one of the largest video platforms, but you'll gain an opportunity to build something from scratch and see what you can cultivate. It really comes down to your goals/intent, and I think you did a great job of explaining your choice so far!
  - damechen 6y ago
    Thank you Joseph! It feels amazing to build a niche community out of nothing. Also it's interesting to see most of our members never did vlog before. But they still love to share their updates on IndieLog. I think it's because people feel that there are like-minded people around. You can't get the feeling by posting a video on YT.
- nicholascamera 6y ago
  Congratulations Damon. I believe personal vlogging has a bright future. I am excited to see where your project goes.
  - damechen 6y ago
    Hey Nicholas, thanks! Yes, the world is becoming more virtually. Video content definitely has lots of potentials to release.
- cschep 6y ago
  very cool, thanks for putting in the work to share!
Fiveplus 6y ago
I quite like the concept of keeping each video under 2 minutes. Congrats on getting to the 100-mark! What do you think was the best thing to come out of vlogging simultaneously?
- damechen 6y ago
  Yes, 2 minutes is like a standup update. Our members also think the limit is very helpful to keep them concise. A good way to practice speak in some sense. The best thing so far is definitely making lots of friends around the world. We can see each other, hear each other. It's the feeling that none of those text-based forums can give.
surajs 6y ago
This just gave me the idea to use YouTube for the same thing.
- damechen 6y ago
  Haha, do it, it's going to be fun!
gregalbritton 6y ago
Great concept and nice implementation! Feels a bit like Justin.tv meets Github. Very cool.
- damechen 6y ago
  haha thanks! It's the first time I heard someone described in this way (justin.tv + github). The platform is still very young, 4 months old. I am trying to bring more features into it. Audio update is the next thing.
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  years ago, I'd proposed (to the 5 people who used to listen to me!) that we put together a protocol to be able to tie audio files (for comments) to specific commits in a subversion system (2006 maybe?). perhaps if GitHub gave us a way to do media attachments with particular commits, we could let people embed instructional/teaching moments in their code bases... not suggesting GitHub is the only player out there, but may be big enough to give this a try as a side project for some of the internal folks.
  - damechen 6y ago
    This idea is mind blowing!!! We can make Github more fun, like giving users options to attach audio, or video along with the commit. World nowadays is no longer text-based, it needs more context!
  - gregalbritton 6y ago
    yeah, exactly. a nice thought. it becomes an extension of stack overflow experience a bit too. plus contextual relevance is very high, as mentioned below. use ML to connect topics of code and then create powerful network of contextual coding literacy through engaging media clips. a wild ride, also of intrigue.
macspoofing 6y ago
Awesome! It's not easy to put yourself out there like this, but it will make a difference for somebody who will either take value from your videos or be inspired by them (or both!). Kudos!
- damechen 6y ago
  Indeed! We are like virtual colleagues, help each other out, cheer for any achievement, and grow ourselves and our products together.
danso 6y ago
Very cool, and great presentation! Have you considered getting on a service like Twitch or YouTube? Not so much as a way to produce the step-by-step snippets you're already doing, but to document yourself working in livestream, with all the upsides and downsides it entails?
- damechen 6y ago
  I want to try livestream, but my 19mo daughter would not allow me to do that. Actually as you can see, most of my videos do not have good lighting because I recorded them in the evening time after my little daughter went to bed. In the day time, I only got fragmented time slot so I can add things, whatever bug fixes or new features, little by little. So blocking hours to do livestream would be hard for me as for now :(
tunesmith 6y ago
I've been tempted more than once to vlog programming, but what do you do about the (frequent, for me) times where you're just searching stackoverflow or reading docs or barking up the wrong tree? I'm more tempted to write the thing, then vlog starting over from scratch as if I know what I'm doing.
- adamfeldman 6y ago
  That's all a normal part of my process, and true for many people. Seeing that is as valuable as anything else.
  - damechen 6y ago
    Totally agree!
- damechen 6y ago
  You are right! We may spend days and hours on triaging some bug, but it only needs one-line change. The researching and investigation are more valuable than the final deliverable! For me, I will basically say anything from getting the idea, to doing some research, to implementing, then to demoing it. It's all about the journey!
jsnk 6y ago
Love the idea. Is there a plan to support Email only sign up? I dislike using social account because I might get suspended and lose the data and access to the website.
- damechen 6y ago
  Yes, it's on my todos, will make it in this week!
- panpanna 6y ago
  I think this is a reasonable comment. Not sure why it received so many downvotes
- damechen 6y ago
  hey jsnk, email sign up is supported now! https://indielog.backlogs.co/changelog/support-email-sign-up-279e18dc https://indielog.backlogs.co/changelog/support-email-sign-up...
chrismorgan 6y ago
Bug report on the site itself: with the way you’ve styled both body and html, body is a separate scrolling pane from the document scroll area, which causes the header and the “give feedback” buttons to sit on top of the scroll bar, and breaks keyboard navigation (arrow keys, Space, Page Down, &c.) until you focus the body (by clicking on the page or with Tab). A simple additive way of fixing this is to set `overflow-x: unset` on at least one of html and body (if you just do one, it actually doesn’t matter which, because html and body are a bit special), but removing the offending overflow declarations altogether would be better. A top-level `overflow-x: hidden` is generally a bad idea anyway—if it changes anything, it suggests that you’ve got some other styles somewhere wrong (though there are one or two genuine cases where there’s no good alternative), and doing things that way invariably ends up going wrong and truncating important content sooner or later.
- damechen 6y ago
  Haha, you made my day Chris! This issue bothers for quite a long time, and I just didn't know how to fix it. In fact, I thought this is just some css issue, and didn't affect the functionality, so didn't invest too much time on it, also because of my procrastination :) Thanks for suggesting the fix!!!
mgkimsal 6y ago
Nice. I did a test project and just let screenflow record for hours - I think I have around 26 hours of stuff, but ... it's definitely not fit for consumption or learning from. I look back and think I could edit it down some and make it useful, but then think I may just start the next project with a more focused eye on the recording in the first place.
- damechen 6y ago
  26 hours nonstop? You didn't take any sleep?
  - mgkimsal 6y ago
    oh no, it was a few hours a day for a few days, then... picked up a couple weeks later, etc.
chrismorgan 6y ago
Multiple people here seem to be thinking this is recordings of the actual building of side projects. Rather, it’s videos not more than two minutes long, mostly just a person talking to the camera about the work they’re doing.
- webosdude 6y ago
  Yeah even I thought it would be concise demos or screen recordings of everyday progress but it’s just person talking. Is there a blog or Youtube channel which slowly builds a project which you can follow too?
  - egfx 6y ago
    There is an in site IDE at gif.com.ai and I was thinking about recording a few demos of how to build gifs using it. But I thought it would be better to contact existing computer graphics bloggers who post videos. It’s hard to both build an app and vlog about it full time. It’s not like you can just stream your screen.
    - LeonB 6y ago
      (TimeSnapper developer here) — you can use TimeSnapper to continually screenshot your work. Run it together it creates a super fast movie. For the purpose of indie log it might be sufficient to handroll a custom script that takes the snapshots and then use ffmpeg to convert them to a video.
      - egfx 6y ago
        It looks like the ability to focus in on an app could prove useful. If I get into it again. I will take a look.
  - kangabru 6y ago
    I started doing something like that this month! I'm still finding my style but I code stuff, demo it, and explain how the code works. I would love any constructive feedback if you want more content like this. Here's today's vid - https://youtu.be/KI4Hv3uBjVY https://youtu.be/KI4Hv3uBjVY
dgoberna 6y ago
I love the idea and the implementation! Great job! If I had time for side projects I probably would use it. Bookmarked for when that time comes. How many active users (uploading videos) are already? How you feel about speakers in other languages?
- damechen 6y ago
  The visitor are like hundreds every day. But today is totally different :) For speaking in another language, so far we don't have people do that. I am not an English speaker as well. But if you think our platform is useful for you to simply document your own journey, feel free to say it in your own language :)
natchy 6y ago
Hey I was just thinking about doing something like this, but just on Youtube. I was recently on Indie Hacker's podcast and got a lot of followup emails from other engineers asking questions and it was cool talking with random developers. Is there a way to post a link to a youtube video on IndieLog so I can double dip?
- damechen 6y ago
  Hmm, I think that would be cool to have. Indeed some of our members are Youtubers as well. It would be a duplicate effort for them to upload the same thing on IndieLog. Thanks for sharing this idea. I will definitely see how I can make it work! I added it to our backlogs: https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/allow-indietubers-to-share-yt-link-on-indielog-ca3f08eb https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/allow-indietubers-to-share...
  - ed 6y ago
    Backlogs is a cool idea! But I feel like it really wants to be a Trello Powerup. Show a popup asking for CC info after install, using Stripe Checkout. Then give people a CNAME record that displays a public board in an iFrame, available at backlog.yourservice.com. This would be like a 3-5 day project, instead of weeks, to duplicate most of Trello's functionality. And you'd benefit from the visibility in Trello's marketplace. You could really simplify your implementation and still validate the idea. Just a thought!
    - damechen 6y ago
      That's so true! If I heard Trello Power-ups, I will definitely give it a go. Actually for Backlogs, some features are already taken from IndieLog, like the upvote and commenting. I just implemented the roadmap boards and the changelog page. Haha, I built the Backlogs on the side, so it is a slow process :)
batt4good 6y ago
I wish there were more live-coding and / or code snippets! This guy is a UX pro!
- damechen 6y ago
  Would like to see if we can bring the live streaming and code sharing to our platform! Wow, you just opened up some hidden potential to IndieLog. Thanks!
apineda 6y ago
Waaay better name! Good choice. :)
- damechen 6y ago
  Glad you like it!!!
ZinniaZirconium 6y ago
But why? Reality is not at all like Mr Robot. Building a side project in real life doesn't involve rapidly typing memorized boilerplate code to blaring techno background music. Reality is sitting alone in the darkness staring at a screen all night piecing together code that doesn't do anything yet and won't do anything for days until it's complete enough to be debugged and even then it certainly won't be fully functional or bug-free on the first execution. Reality is discovering your assumptions were wrong and huge parts of your code need to be scrapped and replaced. Reality is tediously testing your code to discover why the performance is so bad and what needs to be optimized to fix it. Reality is discovering that the tools and languages and platforms you are using are all complete crap with undocumented bugs that you will have to do original research to work around if you ever want your project to work as intended. Reality isn't a TV show and it doesn't fit neatly into a vlog. Unless you're a poser who doesn't code.
felubra 6y ago
Hi, I just tried to login in the site via Github, but a popup flashes and nothing happens. I've tried the Feedback tool (https://feedback.indielog.com/post/ https://feedback.indielog.com/post/), but this page gives me a 404. Thank you
- damechen 6y ago
  Hey, I am really sorry, it sounds terrible! I just fixed the 404 issue for the feedback tool. For the Github popup, I can see new users signed up via Github with no issue. May I know what browser are you using? Is the popup blocked by the browser somehow? Thanks!
sakopov 6y ago
I sometimes find myself hacking together a quick console-based or vanilla JS prototype for an idea and then just stop there because messing with different cloud providers, containers, react, webpack and etc is just soul draining. I remember when I was 14 I'd throw up a quick PHP script for my project, upload it to my host and get it up and running in just a few minutes. A month ago I spent week trying to get Cognito working with a Serverless API and by the time I figured it out I was mentally done with the project. I cannot ever seem to get over this hump. I love working on side projects but getting things up and running properly is just a huge drag these days.
- scarecrowbob 6y ago
  Maybe just go back to PHP :D I mean, I am enjoying the custom webpack setup that I built for my work project... but just because I can do that stuff doesn't mean I should. Nothing wrong with tossing a php script on some shared hosting.
- mrmonkeyman 6y ago
  It is not normal and it'll self-correct eventually. Do what you think is smart. Do you need all that shit? Why? Why, exactly? Try to do without, indeed throw some PHP on a shared hosting. PHP is like assembly these days and you'll be amazed at the speed and grace of it (compared to the other BS). You don't need to containerize your bullshit little app. It's not that complex. You win nothing. Less than 1K users? Throw it on a raspberry. I'm not even kidding. Kids these days sjeez.
- freehunter 6y ago
  I’m running into some of the same issues working with cloud native applications. The tooling and observability just isn’t there yet. I think the future is bright for the tech but it’s just very early. Fighting the AWS console is the worst.
- godot 6y ago
  I'd be lying if I said this wasn't the case for myself :) All the new stuff also drains me and I'm a lot more motivated to hack up stuff in PHP and jquery for these side projects. I think you shouldn't let "the modern way to do things" stop you from hacking up prototypes in whatever way you want. I'll say though, after having done a few side projects with modern SaaS/stack -- e.g. Netlify, Heroku, nodejs -- it does start to look like to me that it's a time trade-off. When I embrace the JAM stack with static site gen (with Svelte/Sapper) and an API layer (nodejs on Heroku), what I'm doing is trade the time to get started (more time/effort) with less maintenance and deploy effort later. But if you have the passion to hack up something right this moment and can't deal with that drag to kick off the project, and you don't know if it's a product that'll work out and get traction anyway, by all means hack it up in PHP and jquery.
kamel3d 6y ago
Great job! Would like to see you on indiehackers podcast talking about your journey, maybe a bit early for this but hopefully soon. I have a suggestion to add some kind of pagination to the video so after one video you go to the next one without going back to the pain profile page, or maybe some kind of playlist, I think would be wise to focus on making the video experience very good before adding the audio feature. good luck
- damechen 6y ago
  This is such an invaluable idea! I am adding it to my roadmap: https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/pagination-to-the-video-1921a7c0 https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/pagination-to-the-video-19... Thanks a lot!
- damechen 6y ago
  Hey Kamel, I just added the video pagination inside the video page. Check it out, haha
thecoppinger 6y ago
Hey, look! It’s my hero Damon! Made my day seeing this on HN just now, you definitely deserve the exposure. Keep it up mate, you’re doing great work.
- damechen 6y ago
  Hey Charlie, thanks for support as always!!! I really didn't expect this much attention. I will do an update on IndieLog in a bit.
catsarebetter 6y ago
If anyone has issues logging in or signing up in Chrome, spam Damon so he'll fix it lol, otherwise, use Firefox.

243 points by damechen 6y ago

I started to build IndieLog (formerly Lonely Dev) since the lockdown to fix my own problem. The other project Backlogs is like a by-product while building IndieLog. I never did something like this, putting myself in the public. It sounds scary. Indeed it was in the beginning, but it's an incredible journey so far!

lukevp 6y ago
Nice looking site and product! I watched your drag and drop demo for the kanban board. You may consider having a “best of” at the top, I wouldn’t watch a vlog because of the time involved, but I would definitely watch a couple of top rated videos from your journey where you talk about pivots, big feature demos, etc. you could manually curate the top ones for now and influence them with thumbs up and view as there are more user metrics. Good luck!
- damechen 6y ago
  This is such a great idea lukevp!!! I will consider to have those featured ones.
  - frsandstone 6y ago
    You might also take a look at how popular influencers use Instagram Stories to collect throughout-the-day updates into cohesive stories across days and weeks. IE: "My trip to Cabo" might include 1-2 stories out of 10 posted that day, but they are the user's favorite and tell a cohesive story. Another analogy is Youtube's "Playlist" feature.
    - damechen 6y ago
      Yes, we kinda have that feature, but in a different way. As most of our members are bootstrapping their own product. Any video if it is related to a particular product, it can be attached to the product. Like our member David creates a product called Remake, all related videos can be linked to Remake in this page https://indielog.com/product/remake https://indielog.com/product/remake
jfernandez 6y ago
I love the thought you covered in your first video about "why not YouTube?", so best of luck with building a more specific community. I think some will say that you'll lose a sense of discovery by not being on one of the largest video platforms, but you'll gain an opportunity to build something from scratch and see what you can cultivate. It really comes down to your goals/intent, and I think you did a great job of explaining your choice so far!
- damechen 6y ago
  Thank you Joseph! It feels amazing to build a niche community out of nothing. Also it's interesting to see most of our members never did vlog before. But they still love to share their updates on IndieLog. I think it's because people feel that there are like-minded people around. You can't get the feeling by posting a video on YT.
nicholascamera 6y ago
Congratulations Damon. I believe personal vlogging has a bright future. I am excited to see where your project goes.
- damechen 6y ago
  Hey Nicholas, thanks! Yes, the world is becoming more virtually. Video content definitely has lots of potentials to release.
cschep 6y ago
very cool, thanks for putting in the work to share!

Fiveplus 6y ago

I quite like the concept of keeping each video under 2 minutes. Congrats on getting to the 100-mark! What do you think was the best thing to come out of vlogging simultaneously?

damechen 6y ago
Yes, 2 minutes is like a standup update. Our members also think the limit is very helpful to keep them concise. A good way to practice speak in some sense. The best thing so far is definitely making lots of friends around the world. We can see each other, hear each other. It's the feeling that none of those text-based forums can give.

surajs 6y ago

This just gave me the idea to use YouTube for the same thing.

damechen 6y ago
Haha, do it, it's going to be fun!

gregalbritton 6y ago

Great concept and nice implementation! Feels a bit like Justin.tv meets Github. Very cool.

damechen 6y ago
haha thanks! It's the first time I heard someone described in this way (justin.tv + github). The platform is still very young, 4 months old. I am trying to bring more features into it. Audio update is the next thing.
mgkimsal 6y ago
years ago, I'd proposed (to the 5 people who used to listen to me!) that we put together a protocol to be able to tie audio files (for comments) to specific commits in a subversion system (2006 maybe?). perhaps if GitHub gave us a way to do media attachments with particular commits, we could let people embed instructional/teaching moments in their code bases... not suggesting GitHub is the only player out there, but may be big enough to give this a try as a side project for some of the internal folks.
- damechen 6y ago
  This idea is mind blowing!!! We can make Github more fun, like giving users options to attach audio, or video along with the commit. World nowadays is no longer text-based, it needs more context!
- gregalbritton 6y ago
  yeah, exactly. a nice thought. it becomes an extension of stack overflow experience a bit too. plus contextual relevance is very high, as mentioned below. use ML to connect topics of code and then create powerful network of contextual coding literacy through engaging media clips. a wild ride, also of intrigue.

macspoofing 6y ago

Awesome! It's not easy to put yourself out there like this, but it will make a difference for somebody who will either take value from your videos or be inspired by them (or both!). Kudos!

damechen 6y ago
Indeed! We are like virtual colleagues, help each other out, cheer for any achievement, and grow ourselves and our products together.

danso 6y ago

Very cool, and great presentation! Have you considered getting on a service like Twitch or YouTube? Not so much as a way to produce the step-by-step snippets you're already doing, but to document yourself working in livestream, with all the upsides and downsides it entails?

damechen 6y ago
I want to try livestream, but my 19mo daughter would not allow me to do that. Actually as you can see, most of my videos do not have good lighting because I recorded them in the evening time after my little daughter went to bed. In the day time, I only got fragmented time slot so I can add things, whatever bug fixes or new features, little by little. So blocking hours to do livestream would be hard for me as for now :(

tunesmith 6y ago

I've been tempted more than once to vlog programming, but what do you do about the (frequent, for me) times where you're just searching stackoverflow or reading docs or barking up the wrong tree? I'm more tempted to write the thing, then vlog starting over from scratch as if I know what I'm doing.

adamfeldman 6y ago
That's all a normal part of my process, and true for many people. Seeing that is as valuable as anything else.
- damechen 6y ago
  Totally agree!
damechen 6y ago
You are right! We may spend days and hours on triaging some bug, but it only needs one-line change. The researching and investigation are more valuable than the final deliverable! For me, I will basically say anything from getting the idea, to doing some research, to implementing, then to demoing it. It's all about the journey!

jsnk 6y ago

Love the idea. Is there a plan to support Email only sign up? I dislike using social account because I might get suspended and lose the data and access to the website.

damechen 6y ago
Yes, it's on my todos, will make it in this week!
panpanna 6y ago
I think this is a reasonable comment. Not sure why it received so many downvotes
damechen 6y ago
hey jsnk, email sign up is supported now! https://indielog.backlogs.co/changelog/support-email-sign-up-279e18dc https://indielog.backlogs.co/changelog/support-email-sign-up...

chrismorgan 6y ago

Bug report on the site itself: with the way you’ve styled both body and html, body is a separate scrolling pane from the document scroll area, which causes the header and the “give feedback” buttons to sit on top of the scroll bar, and breaks keyboard navigation (arrow keys, Space, Page Down, &c.) until you focus the body (by clicking on the page or with Tab). A simple additive way of fixing this is to set `overflow-x: unset` on at least one of html and body (if you just do one, it actually doesn’t matter which, because html and body are a bit special), but removing the offending overflow declarations altogether would be better. A top-level `overflow-x: hidden` is generally a bad idea anyway—if it changes anything, it suggests that you’ve got some other styles somewhere wrong (though there are one or two genuine cases where there’s no good alternative), and doing things that way invariably ends up going wrong and truncating important content sooner or later.

damechen 6y ago
Haha, you made my day Chris! This issue bothers for quite a long time, and I just didn't know how to fix it. In fact, I thought this is just some css issue, and didn't affect the functionality, so didn't invest too much time on it, also because of my procrastination :) Thanks for suggesting the fix!!!

mgkimsal 6y ago

Nice. I did a test project and just let screenflow record for hours - I think I have around 26 hours of stuff, but ... it's definitely not fit for consumption or learning from. I look back and think I could edit it down some and make it useful, but then think I may just start the next project with a more focused eye on the recording in the first place.

damechen 6y ago
26 hours nonstop? You didn't take any sleep?
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  oh no, it was a few hours a day for a few days, then... picked up a couple weeks later, etc.

chrismorgan 6y ago

Multiple people here seem to be thinking this is recordings of the actual building of side projects. Rather, it’s videos not more than two minutes long, mostly just a person talking to the camera about the work they’re doing.

webosdude 6y ago
Yeah even I thought it would be concise demos or screen recordings of everyday progress but it’s just person talking. Is there a blog or Youtube channel which slowly builds a project which you can follow too?
- egfx 6y ago
  There is an in site IDE at gif.com.ai and I was thinking about recording a few demos of how to build gifs using it. But I thought it would be better to contact existing computer graphics bloggers who post videos. It’s hard to both build an app and vlog about it full time. It’s not like you can just stream your screen.
  - LeonB 6y ago
    (TimeSnapper developer here) — you can use TimeSnapper to continually screenshot your work. Run it together it creates a super fast movie. For the purpose of indie log it might be sufficient to handroll a custom script that takes the snapshots and then use ffmpeg to convert them to a video.
    - egfx 6y ago
      It looks like the ability to focus in on an app could prove useful. If I get into it again. I will take a look.
- kangabru 6y ago
  I started doing something like that this month! I'm still finding my style but I code stuff, demo it, and explain how the code works. I would love any constructive feedback if you want more content like this. Here's today's vid - https://youtu.be/KI4Hv3uBjVY https://youtu.be/KI4Hv3uBjVY

dgoberna 6y ago

I love the idea and the implementation! Great job! If I had time for side projects I probably would use it. Bookmarked for when that time comes. How many active users (uploading videos) are already? How you feel about speakers in other languages?

damechen 6y ago
The visitor are like hundreds every day. But today is totally different :) For speaking in another language, so far we don't have people do that. I am not an English speaker as well. But if you think our platform is useful for you to simply document your own journey, feel free to say it in your own language :)

natchy 6y ago

Hey I was just thinking about doing something like this, but just on Youtube. I was recently on Indie Hacker's podcast and got a lot of followup emails from other engineers asking questions and it was cool talking with random developers. Is there a way to post a link to a youtube video on IndieLog so I can double dip?

damechen 6y ago
Hmm, I think that would be cool to have. Indeed some of our members are Youtubers as well. It would be a duplicate effort for them to upload the same thing on IndieLog. Thanks for sharing this idea. I will definitely see how I can make it work! I added it to our backlogs: https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/allow-indietubers-to-share-yt-link-on-indielog-ca3f08eb https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/allow-indietubers-to-share...
- ed 6y ago
  Backlogs is a cool idea! But I feel like it really wants to be a Trello Powerup. Show a popup asking for CC info after install, using Stripe Checkout. Then give people a CNAME record that displays a public board in an iFrame, available at backlog.yourservice.com. This would be like a 3-5 day project, instead of weeks, to duplicate most of Trello's functionality. And you'd benefit from the visibility in Trello's marketplace. You could really simplify your implementation and still validate the idea. Just a thought!
  - damechen 6y ago
    That's so true! If I heard Trello Power-ups, I will definitely give it a go. Actually for Backlogs, some features are already taken from IndieLog, like the upvote and commenting. I just implemented the roadmap boards and the changelog page. Haha, I built the Backlogs on the side, so it is a slow process :)

batt4good 6y ago

I wish there were more live-coding and / or code snippets! This guy is a UX pro!

damechen 6y ago
Would like to see if we can bring the live streaming and code sharing to our platform! Wow, you just opened up some hidden potential to IndieLog. Thanks!

apineda 6y ago

Waaay better name! Good choice. :)

damechen 6y ago
Glad you like it!!!

ZinniaZirconium 6y ago

But why? Reality is not at all like Mr Robot. Building a side project in real life doesn't involve rapidly typing memorized boilerplate code to blaring techno background music. Reality is sitting alone in the darkness staring at a screen all night piecing together code that doesn't do anything yet and won't do anything for days until it's complete enough to be debugged and even then it certainly won't be fully functional or bug-free on the first execution. Reality is discovering your assumptions were wrong and huge parts of your code need to be scrapped and replaced. Reality is tediously testing your code to discover why the performance is so bad and what needs to be optimized to fix it. Reality is discovering that the tools and languages and platforms you are using are all complete crap with undocumented bugs that you will have to do original research to work around if you ever want your project to work as intended. Reality isn't a TV show and it doesn't fit neatly into a vlog. Unless you're a poser who doesn't code.

felubra 6y ago

Hi, I just tried to login in the site via Github, but a popup flashes and nothing happens. I've tried the Feedback tool (https://feedback.indielog.com/post/ https://feedback.indielog.com/post/), but this page gives me a 404. Thank you

damechen 6y ago
Hey, I am really sorry, it sounds terrible! I just fixed the 404 issue for the feedback tool. For the Github popup, I can see new users signed up via Github with no issue. May I know what browser are you using? Is the popup blocked by the browser somehow? Thanks!

sakopov 6y ago

I sometimes find myself hacking together a quick console-based or vanilla JS prototype for an idea and then just stop there because messing with different cloud providers, containers, react, webpack and etc is just soul draining. I remember when I was 14 I'd throw up a quick PHP script for my project, upload it to my host and get it up and running in just a few minutes. A month ago I spent week trying to get Cognito working with a Serverless API and by the time I figured it out I was mentally done with the project. I cannot ever seem to get over this hump. I love working on side projects but getting things up and running properly is just a huge drag these days.

scarecrowbob 6y ago
Maybe just go back to PHP :D I mean, I am enjoying the custom webpack setup that I built for my work project... but just because I can do that stuff doesn't mean I should. Nothing wrong with tossing a php script on some shared hosting.
mrmonkeyman 6y ago
It is not normal and it'll self-correct eventually. Do what you think is smart. Do you need all that shit? Why? Why, exactly? Try to do without, indeed throw some PHP on a shared hosting. PHP is like assembly these days and you'll be amazed at the speed and grace of it (compared to the other BS). You don't need to containerize your bullshit little app. It's not that complex. You win nothing. Less than 1K users? Throw it on a raspberry. I'm not even kidding. Kids these days sjeez.
freehunter 6y ago
I’m running into some of the same issues working with cloud native applications. The tooling and observability just isn’t there yet. I think the future is bright for the tech but it’s just very early. Fighting the AWS console is the worst.
godot 6y ago
I'd be lying if I said this wasn't the case for myself :) All the new stuff also drains me and I'm a lot more motivated to hack up stuff in PHP and jquery for these side projects. I think you shouldn't let "the modern way to do things" stop you from hacking up prototypes in whatever way you want. I'll say though, after having done a few side projects with modern SaaS/stack -- e.g. Netlify, Heroku, nodejs -- it does start to look like to me that it's a time trade-off. When I embrace the JAM stack with static site gen (with Svelte/Sapper) and an API layer (nodejs on Heroku), what I'm doing is trade the time to get started (more time/effort) with less maintenance and deploy effort later. But if you have the passion to hack up something right this moment and can't deal with that drag to kick off the project, and you don't know if it's a product that'll work out and get traction anyway, by all means hack it up in PHP and jquery.

kamel3d 6y ago

Great job! Would like to see you on indiehackers podcast talking about your journey, maybe a bit early for this but hopefully soon. I have a suggestion to add some kind of pagination to the video so after one video you go to the next one without going back to the pain profile page, or maybe some kind of playlist, I think would be wise to focus on making the video experience very good before adding the audio feature. good luck

damechen 6y ago
This is such an invaluable idea! I am adding it to my roadmap: https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/pagination-to-the-video-1921a7c0 https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/pagination-to-the-video-19... Thanks a lot!
damechen 6y ago
Hey Kamel, I just added the video pagination inside the video page. Check it out, haha

thecoppinger 6y ago

Hey, look! It’s my hero Damon! Made my day seeing this on HN just now, you definitely deserve the exposure. Keep it up mate, you’re doing great work.

damechen 6y ago
Hey Charlie, thanks for support as always!!! I really didn't expect this much attention. I will do an update on IndieLog in a bit.

catsarebetter 6y ago

If anyone has issues logging in or signing up in Chrome, spam Damon so he'll fix it lol, otherwise, use Firefox.