5 ms·

Ask HN: Hacker News style site for programming tutorials

28 points by gurisingh 11y ago

I am thinking of creating a new site and was wondering who thinks a hacker news style site where people post programming tutorials instead of news would be useful?

wingerlang 11y ago
Not really, seems too dis-organised.
- gurisingh 11y ago
  What if we add tags or categories to make it more organized?
  - golergka 11y ago
    I suspect that then we'll either have a system that is misused, or a team of draconic moderators who will ban half of the posts because they don't fit any of pre-created categories. Sorry for being pessimistic, but I've seen how efforts to categorise community-driven content have played out too many times in my life. Is there a real problem that we're trying to solve here?
    - hluska 11y ago
      I'm not sure if you're talking about the original idea (ie - a curated list of tutorials) or the parent's idea (ie - adding tags and categories), but I have a couple ideas. The original idea could (if a community formed) solve the PHP problem. If a true beginner programmer decides to learn a language (I pick on PHP but it can happen with any language), the true beginner has no context with which to evaluate learning resources. Hence, you end up in the situation where beginners learn from bad code. Categories and tags worry me because it sounds chaotic, but it could go a long ways towards solving the problem Zed Shaw articulated in Early versus Beginning Programmers. (http://zedshaw.com/2015/06/16/early-vs-beginning-coders/ http://zedshaw.com/2015/06/16/early-vs-beginning-coders/)
golergka 11y ago
Although this site has "news" in it's name, people post articles, tutorials and other stuff here all the time, which is welcomed by the community. I don't think there's a need for a separate HN clone for a specific topic.
galfarragem 11y ago
I think a site like HN will be always a good direction to follow but beware of some 'issues': - HN hasn't annoying ads. (How will you monetise it? Because you must monetise it somehow in the near future and we have already a lot of 'code schools' where people pay a fee to access). - HN is his community. No community and your site will die. Many clones of HN have already died. Anyway good luck!
marknadal 11y ago
I like the idea. Or we could just post some of our tutorials here! This is an introductory one I wrote covering the basics of HTML, jQuery, and making a ToDo app with my database http://gun.js.org/web/think.html http://gun.js.org/web/think.html .
unixhero 11y ago
Why not just do it. You could set up a Telescope instance, in an instant!
- yebyen 11y ago
  Maybe, but if there's an existing effort that just needs some additional community members, why not highlight it and join up? Looks like hackr.io is pretty close to what he's asking for, but the first category I picked to look into I found only four articles, with none having more than two points from upvotes.
krapp 11y ago
I think you might have difficulty getting regular content with a site that focused only on tutorials. You might want to broaden the scope to programming projects or programming in general.
random42 11y ago
Hackr.io is pretty close to what you are thinking about.
- tmaly 11y ago
  wow thanks for the link
- lucasmorano 11y ago
  Just adding another similar/relevant https://dzone.com/links https://dzone.com/links
- ljk 11y ago
  wow helpful link, thanks!
duiker101 11y ago
I think it would be a wrong approach because with a style like HN, articles disappear from the main page and are hard to retrieve very soon. While in the case of a tutorial it might remain relevant for a long time and the order in which they are submitted is not important. While with news, how fresh a news is, is important.
- yebyen 11y ago
  That might be a function of the incredible volume of new posts that get submitted to HN, rather than being simply the effect of the algorithm. (If you're not getting 30 new posts each day, many articles will undoubtedly live on the front page for longer than a day.) The algolia search seems very good in my opinion, I rarely simply can't find a post I remember and want to look up again days or even months after noticing it. Of course that is a proprietary search, isn't it? At least it's a separate problem than the one solved by HN software / news.Arc (and probably Telescope, too).
SanderMak 11y ago
Something like http://pineapple.io http://pineapple.io ?
noer 11y ago
Not so much programming tutorials, but there's www.growthhackers.com for marketing article sharing. It's divided into categories (Paid, SEO, Content, etc.) though the content of the posted links usually isn't too great. I'm not sure what potential users would be looking for? Quick tutorials for the "Gee, I've always wanted to try that and have an hour" crowd or something more in depth that someone would come specifically looking for. If it's the latter, a directory supported by a voting system might be a little better. Just my $.02
arikrak 11y ago
One could post such tutorials to here and Reddit. I think it might be worth offering more organization, curation and features though.
petercooper 11y ago
It's not mine but a guy emailed me a week ago about something like this called http://www.tutzpro.com/ http://www.tutzpro.com/ that he launched. I think there are a lot of similar sites though. The major flaw with most of these sites (and especially the "curated X Y Z" versions) are they go out of date or just don't build up a community and wither and die with out of date information. That's the real trick.. not just delivering the information.
tmaly 11y ago
I have wanted to do a more general learning concept for my kid with my site http://nextlesson.com http://nextlesson.com its just been a little busy. My idea was to build curated list of videos/tutorials by category/ topic / users age populated by social likes sort of like how ranker does it with for movies etc.
hluska 11y ago
I love the idea. I wonder if 'Teach HN:' (or similar) might be an easy way to solve the problem within this community.
- inflam52 11y ago
  +1 to this idea. I'm going to try and start using 'Teach HN:'.
brudgers 11y ago
One of the features of HN is story churn. On the other hand, to be useful, tutorials typically require extended commitment on the part of the user. Even a very trivial tutorial is going to take ten minutes to digest and require a context switch from browsing the internet to programming. At the very least, I will be hitting F12 in the browser. A good tutorial might take hours, days or weeks of my time. In that time, I am not engaged with your site. Good luck.
gauravgupta 11y ago
@gurisingh - I'm the founder of Hackr.io and we need plenty of help in running this site :) How about working on it together?

28 points by gurisingh 11y ago

I am thinking of creating a new site and was wondering who thinks a hacker news style site where people post programming tutorials instead of news would be useful?

wingerlang 11y ago

Not really, seems too dis-organised.

gurisingh 11y ago
What if we add tags or categories to make it more organized?
- golergka 11y ago
  I suspect that then we'll either have a system that is misused, or a team of draconic moderators who will ban half of the posts because they don't fit any of pre-created categories. Sorry for being pessimistic, but I've seen how efforts to categorise community-driven content have played out too many times in my life. Is there a real problem that we're trying to solve here?
  - hluska 11y ago
    I'm not sure if you're talking about the original idea (ie - a curated list of tutorials) or the parent's idea (ie - adding tags and categories), but I have a couple ideas. The original idea could (if a community formed) solve the PHP problem. If a true beginner programmer decides to learn a language (I pick on PHP but it can happen with any language), the true beginner has no context with which to evaluate learning resources. Hence, you end up in the situation where beginners learn from bad code. Categories and tags worry me because it sounds chaotic, but it could go a long ways towards solving the problem Zed Shaw articulated in Early versus Beginning Programmers. (http://zedshaw.com/2015/06/16/early-vs-beginning-coders/ http://zedshaw.com/2015/06/16/early-vs-beginning-coders/)

golergka 11y ago

Although this site has "news" in it's name, people post articles, tutorials and other stuff here all the time, which is welcomed by the community. I don't think there's a need for a separate HN clone for a specific topic.

galfarragem 11y ago

I think a site like HN will be always a good direction to follow but beware of some 'issues': - HN hasn't annoying ads. (How will you monetise it? Because you must monetise it somehow in the near future and we have already a lot of 'code schools' where people pay a fee to access). - HN is his community. No community and your site will die. Many clones of HN have already died. Anyway good luck!

marknadal 11y ago

I like the idea. Or we could just post some of our tutorials here! This is an introductory one I wrote covering the basics of HTML, jQuery, and making a ToDo app with my database http://gun.js.org/web/think.html http://gun.js.org/web/think.html .

unixhero 11y ago

Why not just do it. You could set up a Telescope instance, in an instant!

yebyen 11y ago
Maybe, but if there's an existing effort that just needs some additional community members, why not highlight it and join up? Looks like hackr.io is pretty close to what he's asking for, but the first category I picked to look into I found only four articles, with none having more than two points from upvotes.

krapp 11y ago

I think you might have difficulty getting regular content with a site that focused only on tutorials. You might want to broaden the scope to programming projects or programming in general.

random42 11y ago

Hackr.io is pretty close to what you are thinking about.

tmaly 11y ago
wow thanks for the link
lucasmorano 11y ago
Just adding another similar/relevant https://dzone.com/links https://dzone.com/links
ljk 11y ago
wow helpful link, thanks!

duiker101 11y ago

I think it would be a wrong approach because with a style like HN, articles disappear from the main page and are hard to retrieve very soon. While in the case of a tutorial it might remain relevant for a long time and the order in which they are submitted is not important. While with news, how fresh a news is, is important.

yebyen 11y ago
That might be a function of the incredible volume of new posts that get submitted to HN, rather than being simply the effect of the algorithm. (If you're not getting 30 new posts each day, many articles will undoubtedly live on the front page for longer than a day.) The algolia search seems very good in my opinion, I rarely simply can't find a post I remember and want to look up again days or even months after noticing it. Of course that is a proprietary search, isn't it? At least it's a separate problem than the one solved by HN software / news.Arc (and probably Telescope, too).

SanderMak 11y ago

Something like http://pineapple.io http://pineapple.io ?

noer 11y ago

Not so much programming tutorials, but there's www.growthhackers.com for marketing article sharing. It's divided into categories (Paid, SEO, Content, etc.) though the content of the posted links usually isn't too great. I'm not sure what potential users would be looking for? Quick tutorials for the "Gee, I've always wanted to try that and have an hour" crowd or something more in depth that someone would come specifically looking for. If it's the latter, a directory supported by a voting system might be a little better. Just my $.02

arikrak 11y ago

One could post such tutorials to here and Reddit. I think it might be worth offering more organization, curation and features though.

petercooper 11y ago

It's not mine but a guy emailed me a week ago about something like this called http://www.tutzpro.com/ http://www.tutzpro.com/ that he launched. I think there are a lot of similar sites though. The major flaw with most of these sites (and especially the "curated X Y Z" versions) are they go out of date or just don't build up a community and wither and die with out of date information. That's the real trick.. not just delivering the information.

tmaly 11y ago

I have wanted to do a more general learning concept for my kid with my site http://nextlesson.com http://nextlesson.com its just been a little busy. My idea was to build curated list of videos/tutorials by category/ topic / users age populated by social likes sort of like how ranker does it with for movies etc.

hluska 11y ago

I love the idea. I wonder if 'Teach HN:' (or similar) might be an easy way to solve the problem within this community.

inflam52 11y ago
+1 to this idea. I'm going to try and start using 'Teach HN:'.

brudgers 11y ago

One of the features of HN is story churn. On the other hand, to be useful, tutorials typically require extended commitment on the part of the user. Even a very trivial tutorial is going to take ten minutes to digest and require a context switch from browsing the internet to programming. At the very least, I will be hitting F12 in the browser. A good tutorial might take hours, days or weeks of my time. In that time, I am not engaged with your site. Good luck.

gauravgupta 11y ago

@gurisingh - I'm the founder of Hackr.io and we need plenty of help in running this site :) How about working on it together?