Congrats on launching!
For anyone looking for more (open-source) alternatives, here's one I just discovered today: https://microsoft.github.io/kiota/
Readit Newskbanman commented on Show HN: An opinionated and statically-typed TypeScript SDK generator easysdk.xyz/... · Posted by u/simplesager
kbanman commented on It's not your imagination – iPhone users are worse drivers androidauthority.com/ipho... · Posted by u/BayAreaEscapee
The article doesn't dive into why this group performed worse; to me that is of much more interest than the conclusion.
Just from my own observations I would expect that this is largely due to income differences in the two groups. Rich people are more likely to own iPhones and in my experience also more likely to be careless drivers.
Between MailChimp and Basecamp, it seems like a few products have spun out of agencies. Is it a good idea to first start an agency to maintain reliable cash flow until a product strikes it big, or is it a distraction/time sink? Curious on the community's thoughts. In my opinion, it seems smart because you can float by indefinitely with a handful of clients until you have market fit with some product, though I wonder if statistically it would make more sense to just focus on the agency without the distraction of product.
Hootsuite also started as an agency side project, and I'm sure there are more.
Intentionally following this model doesn't seem sensible though; with VC money so accessible if you have already put together a good team you might as well focus on the product itself. Agency work is not fun.
kbanman commented on AWS releases Glue Databrew, a visual ETL tool aws.amazon.com/glue/featu... · Posted by u/ManWith2Plans
The thing folks don't mention regarding AWS is the inherent competitive advantage their micro-startups have. We focus on AWS launching managed ElasticSearch or managed Kafka, and talk about them (legally) using open source contributions to make money, but I think those are minor compared to things like this.
What AWS has is a culture and institutional knowledge on how to launch new products that take foundational AWS services (S3, Lambda, EC2, DDB, etc.) and glues (!) them together better than what a competing non-AWS company can do. This is a bold claim (since AWS launches some very crappy products), but imagine being able to use AWS infrastructure at cost, having internal knowledge on how to best optimize that infrastructure and access to the engineers that own those services while you build abstractions and better user experiences on top of them.
I don't know how cos that compete in any related space can survive. When AWS is willing to throw whatever against a wall (launching 50+ services a year) to see what sticks, sooner or later they're going to land in your space.
Become more locked into AWS's foundational services -> these abstractions on top of them start to make more sense in engineering complexity / delivery time / possible cost dimensions -> Use more of these -> Become more locked into AWS's foundational services.
This feels very different from Azure or GCP.
Speaking as a former AWS Engineer, I disagree with the sentiment that they are able to glue AWS services together better than what a competing non-AWS company can do. Internally the use of AWS is subject to the same constraints and APIs you and I have.
Their competitive advantage is their captive customer base, which will much rather pay a premium to use an AWS-managed service than use another vendor.
kbanman commented on The good parts of AWS: a visual summary hassenchaieb.com/aws-good... · Posted by u/hac96
I have seen some projects use DynamoDB for relational data, with the "single table design" approach, anyone who did this, how was your experience?
I've seen this done for new projects, and it works really well. If your data access patterns are truly relational (varied lookup paths) then it is probably not the right tool, but many apps can be modeled in a way that DDB handles well.
Highly recommended viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaEPXoXVf2k this talk explains how relational data can be efficiently modeled for key-value stores.
Very well done!
I had started on a similar idea a while back, but never got around to it. Even have a cute domain for it (pifork.com) in case you're interested :)
I've had a lot of trouble finding a job since shuttering my start up, which I constructed on my own. I open sourced my code, but no one seems to care. They still just look at me as if I have no experience and pass on me before a technical assessment.
It's troubling to know that engineers with many years of experience still have difficulties. Every job listing I see asks for someone with 6+ years, and the only feedback I ever get is "we're looking for someone with more experience, try again in 4 years."
Tech companies should really just hire for soft skills. Screw tech interviews completely. A lot of this stuff can be taught. Maybe just give people a contracted trial period. Companies are spending incredible sums of money just searching for candidates that meet their exact "needs." In reality, they're not going to know how well someone performs until they actually work with them. Stop wasting your employees' time by having them grade pointless coding quizzes. Use that time instead to train someone who's a good communicator, is passionate about the product, is creative and eager to learn, and wants build something your customers will love. Even if that doesn't work out, at least you didn't waste everyone's time.
Having been in your position, I understand that having built a product from the ground up makes you feel like you are qualified to do anything. I was lucky enough to get hired at a late-stage startup after my endeavor failed, and am constantly reminded that time in the industry matters. Two years of intense coding is worth a lot, but you've only been exposed to a limited set of problems, both technical and business. 6+ years sounds reasonable to me if they are looking for someone with well-rounded experience.
Mind you, as someone else mentioned, some folks spend 6 years in the industry and don't gain the knowledge and experience you already have, but that doesn't mean you've attained 6 years worth of knowledge and experience.
kbanman commented on The advantages of static typing, simply stated pchiusano.github.io/2016-... · Posted by u/ingve
I've recently joined a team writing primarily in Clojure, whose proponents often tout repl-driven programming as a unique benefit to the language.
In a statically typed language (the stronger the better), aided by a good IDE, I don't need to be constantly executing my code against data during development; My editor is constantly validating my code, and when it stops complaining, my code will work. And months later when I or someone else uses that code in another part of the system, they won't need to execute that code to see how it behaves, as the types themselves provide documentation and as-you-code feedback.
kbanman commented on Facebook Is Preparing to Launch Facebook at Work recode.net/2015/09/16/fac... · Posted by u/Amorymeltzer
We have been using this at Hootsuite, and it's been a really smooth experience, especially when compared to Yammer.
I'm concerned about email deliverability--Even more so after the email verification ended up in my spam. Handling incoming email is simple enough, but for this to be useful to my team we would want to be confident that the emails are ending up in the right place.