4 ms·

In the past year and a half, I started at least a different dozen projects. None of them is finished, or in a "correct" state. I would start something, to stop

In the past year and a half, I started at least a different dozen projects. None of them is finished, or in a "correct" state. I would start something, to stop it half way through in order to start something else. I would sit on the computer to work, and start gaming a few minutes later. . . But lately, within 3 weeks, I popped up my first android application on the store; without any prior knowledge on database, webscrapping or anything else I needed to build the app. The difference? The users. A friend of mine called me saying : Hey, I do that every morning, and the current way of doing it is a pain. I am sure you can do something for me. And magically enough, I got motivated, working my arse off to get the first version finished. Since it is on the market, I got 60 recurring users and growing. And this keeps me motivated. I put hours on the project, just because I get feedback. So the conclusion: Do something that someone asked you to. Get your users first, start working afterwards. Don't be alone. If you don't have users, then join a project that has already started, in order to code with someone and get some interaction. I think that for a good 90% of us, what keeps up working is the passion for solving problems others have. Hope this helps :)

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
GFischer 13y ago
A bit offtopic, but how did you do the webscraping part? I'm a bit like the parent, in that I don't commit myself to projects in my "spare time" (ok, after working 10 hours for someone else). I've been meaning to build a website for real estate searches (the current local giant has several usability issues), but I've never gotten to the webscraping part. I have these 3 in my "to-research" list: Scrapy http://scrapy.org/ http://scrapy.org/ Beautiful Soup http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/ http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/ Nokogiri http://nokogiri.org/ http://nokogiri.org/ did you use any of those?
- jlengrand 13y ago
  BS is awesome, I used it in a former project. Good thing is that it tries to repair the parsed stuff too. And you'll see that most of what you retrieve will be broken :). I currently use Jsoup, simply because I am working in java. It gets the job done, I got only good things to say about it. Concerning the real estate thing, I coulnd't agree more. Being a french guy, I know that all real estate website suck, and it is nearly impossible to have a way to know all houses to sell in the neighborhood. Some kind of location based real estate aggregator with links to real estate websites could be a huge hit IMHO. Hope this helps
  - GFischer 13y ago
    Thank you :) . That's exactly what I want to do, a location-based real estate aggregator. I want to add Airbnb-style sliders, and map-based search.
    - jlengrand 13y ago
      in which country?
      - GFischer 13y ago
        Uruguay. The main website for real estate here is El Gallito by the local newspaper El País. There's also BuscandoCasas (http://www.buscandocasa.com/ http://www.buscandocasa.com/) , which is pretty decent but doesn't have map-based search. I'm a bit worried about legal implications, linking and scraping are not well seen here.
        jlengrand 13y ago
        Ok. I got only knowledge of the french and dutch market. The website you gave seems to be a good candidate for scrapping (simple layout, really straightforward). Web scraping is usually not well seen, but hey, if you can help them sell more / more efficiently you can make some friends pretty quickly! AFAIK, what is hugely missing in real estate websites currently is location based search. Some time ago, I had written some to play around with google maps and say "I want to live within 30 minutes of this place". If you can link that to a real estate listing that could really become awesome! Let me know if you actually start the project :).
        GFischer 13y ago
        Yeah, I probably won't, I have a job opportunity that, if I end up getting it, will take most of my time and focus for the next 2 years :) Thank you very much for your advice !! I now feel a bit bad if I don't do this :P
tagabek 13y ago
It looks like a little validation from others can go a long way. Take some time to show off your best work - or whatever you currently have. Let your potential audience provide feedback for you.
- jlengrand 13y ago
  Validation is everything. At least to me :). My app is ultra localized so it is not suited for being posted here :). And my other projects didn't really get any attention so far :). For those who are interested, here is the android app : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.lengrand.brestram&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImZyLmxlbmdyYW5kLmJyZXN0cmFtIl0 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.lengrand.br.... And here are the projects that didn't get noticed : http://jlengrand.github.io/Ivolution/ http://jlengrand.github.io/Ivolution/ http://greengame.co/ http://greengame.co/ :)

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

GFischer 13y ago

A bit offtopic, but how did you do the webscraping part? I'm a bit like the parent, in that I don't commit myself to projects in my "spare time" (ok, after working 10 hours for someone else). I've been meaning to build a website for real estate searches (the current local giant has several usability issues), but I've never gotten to the webscraping part. I have these 3 in my "to-research" list: Scrapy http://scrapy.org/ http://scrapy.org/ Beautiful Soup http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/ http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/ Nokogiri http://nokogiri.org/ http://nokogiri.org/ did you use any of those?

jlengrand 13y ago
BS is awesome, I used it in a former project. Good thing is that it tries to repair the parsed stuff too. And you'll see that most of what you retrieve will be broken :). I currently use Jsoup, simply because I am working in java. It gets the job done, I got only good things to say about it. Concerning the real estate thing, I coulnd't agree more. Being a french guy, I know that all real estate website suck, and it is nearly impossible to have a way to know all houses to sell in the neighborhood. Some kind of location based real estate aggregator with links to real estate websites could be a huge hit IMHO. Hope this helps
- GFischer 13y ago
  Thank you :) . That's exactly what I want to do, a location-based real estate aggregator. I want to add Airbnb-style sliders, and map-based search.
  - jlengrand 13y ago
    in which country?
    - GFischer 13y ago
      Uruguay. The main website for real estate here is El Gallito by the local newspaper El País. There's also BuscandoCasas (http://www.buscandocasa.com/ http://www.buscandocasa.com/) , which is pretty decent but doesn't have map-based search. I'm a bit worried about legal implications, linking and scraping are not well seen here.
      - jlengrand 13y ago
        Ok. I got only knowledge of the french and dutch market. The website you gave seems to be a good candidate for scrapping (simple layout, really straightforward). Web scraping is usually not well seen, but hey, if you can help them sell more / more efficiently you can make some friends pretty quickly! AFAIK, what is hugely missing in real estate websites currently is location based search. Some time ago, I had written some to play around with google maps and say "I want to live within 30 minutes of this place". If you can link that to a real estate listing that could really become awesome! Let me know if you actually start the project :).
        GFischer 13y ago
        Yeah, I probably won't, I have a job opportunity that, if I end up getting it, will take most of my time and focus for the next 2 years :) Thank you very much for your advice !! I now feel a bit bad if I don't do this :P

tagabek 13y ago

It looks like a little validation from others can go a long way. Take some time to show off your best work - or whatever you currently have. Let your potential audience provide feedback for you.

jlengrand 13y ago
Validation is everything. At least to me :). My app is ultra localized so it is not suited for being posted here :). And my other projects didn't really get any attention so far :). For those who are interested, here is the android app : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.lengrand.brestram&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImZyLmxlbmdyYW5kLmJyZXN0cmFtIl0 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.lengrand.br.... And here are the projects that didn't get noticed : http://jlengrand.github.io/Ivolution/ http://jlengrand.github.io/Ivolution/ http://greengame.co/ http://greengame.co/ :)