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Out of curiosity: when you say "weekend project", do you mean one person working for a single weekend? Because I've been seeing more and more "weekend projects"

Out of curiosity: when you say "weekend project", do you mean one person working for a single weekend? Because I've been seeing more and more "weekend projects" showing up on HN that look like they took a small team a week to put together, and it's really making me feel self-conscious about taking several days to just to get a couple of JS frameworks up and running on a simple proof-of-concept web-app — to say nothing of CSS, UI, server stuff, QA, error handling, etc. etc. etc. Am I really that far out of the loop?! Either way, great work!

krapp 13y ago
I hope not... I'm four months into a "weekend project" and it's still mostly a bootstrap template...
sliverstorm 13y ago
People like to brag. If someone says "this took us a weekend to put together", I generally expect (for example) all the planning was already done, a code skeleton was already put together, etc... Any time someone says "oh here's a little project I put together in a weekend" your "bragging" detector should be quietly blinking, which signals to you the claims are likely at least a little inflated.
nathan_f77 13y ago
Yep, I was on vacation and wrote most of the app in a weekend. I wrote the FAQ and about pages on my phone while we were traveling, and then it took one more evening to add most of the products. And I've spent a few more hours fixing bugs and adding some more products. I have to admit, I was surprised at how fast I got it done. It was a really focussed sprint. Rails app / Reddit integration - I've been a Rails developer for a while, so was very familiar with most of the gems I used. (devise, omniauth, resque, etc.) Server stuff - Heroku is pricy, but it's awesome. Although I might migrate to a much cheaper Digital Ocean box this weekend. CSS - Zurb Foundation is amazing. The menu bar, in particular, has really awesome built-in responsiveness. There's a little custom CSS, but most is stock framework. Admin interface - I used RailsAdmin, which is perfect for small apps. It can do so much out of the box. (For bigger apps, I prefer ActiveAdmin) Error handling - I just added the airbrake gem and configured my self-hosted Errbit instance. I've had it running on Heroku for a few years now. QA - Thanks for your help! The most time-consuming things were writing a simple Reddit API with httparty (none of the gems I looked at supported OAuth), adding very basic PG array support to Rails Admin, and making the site work on mobile (responsive design was very fun to learn).
- archagon 13y ago
  Thanks for the rundown! I wish more people posted their process like this. Helps me learn what's best to use and how to do things faster.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
rfnslyr 13y ago
If there is anything I've learned in life, it's to take everything you hear on the internet with a truckload of salt, not a grain. Doesn't really matter if there are people out there that are better than you, there always will be.

krapp 13y ago

I hope not... I'm four months into a "weekend project" and it's still mostly a bootstrap template...

sliverstorm 13y ago

People like to brag. If someone says "this took us a weekend to put together", I generally expect (for example) all the planning was already done, a code skeleton was already put together, etc... Any time someone says "oh here's a little project I put together in a weekend" your "bragging" detector should be quietly blinking, which signals to you the claims are likely at least a little inflated.

nathan_f77 13y ago

Yep, I was on vacation and wrote most of the app in a weekend. I wrote the FAQ and about pages on my phone while we were traveling, and then it took one more evening to add most of the products. And I've spent a few more hours fixing bugs and adding some more products. I have to admit, I was surprised at how fast I got it done. It was a really focussed sprint. Rails app / Reddit integration - I've been a Rails developer for a while, so was very familiar with most of the gems I used. (devise, omniauth, resque, etc.) Server stuff - Heroku is pricy, but it's awesome. Although I might migrate to a much cheaper Digital Ocean box this weekend. CSS - Zurb Foundation is amazing. The menu bar, in particular, has really awesome built-in responsiveness. There's a little custom CSS, but most is stock framework. Admin interface - I used RailsAdmin, which is perfect for small apps. It can do so much out of the box. (For bigger apps, I prefer ActiveAdmin) Error handling - I just added the airbrake gem and configured my self-hosted Errbit instance. I've had it running on Heroku for a few years now. QA - Thanks for your help! The most time-consuming things were writing a simple Reddit API with httparty (none of the gems I looked at supported OAuth), adding very basic PG array support to Rails Admin, and making the site work on mobile (responsive design was very fun to learn).

archagon 13y ago
Thanks for the rundown! I wish more people posted their process like this. Helps me learn what's best to use and how to do things faster.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

rfnslyr 13y ago

If there is anything I've learned in life, it's to take everything you hear on the internet with a truckload of salt, not a grain. Doesn't really matter if there are people out there that are better than you, there always will be.