Ask HN: Where is the Django community? - <AUTHOR> I'm debating whether to pick up Ruby on Rails in addition to my basic django knowledge, and as I explore the RoR community, I can't help but be amazed at how rich and active it is. For learning rails there are 3 very high quality books that talk about the latest version (Rails Way, Rails Tutorial, Agile Web Development with Rails). Compare this to the books available Django, none of which discuss the latest edition and many of which are outdated(e.g. Django book v2 (the latest ed.) covers Django 1.0!).
This doesn't touch on the huge number of blogs/sites that are dedicated to ruby news and tips (e.g. planetrubyonrails, railscasts, etc.).
Is there a reason for this discrepancy between the two ecosystems? Am I just not aware of where the Django community lives? Also, for those of you using Django or Rails, did the size of the community for your framework of choice influence your decision? <comment><USER2> List of communities:

[https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoResources#Communit...](https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoResources#Community)

Mailing lists:

<https://www.djangoproject.com/community/> on the right

Sizes of communities:

reddit:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/django> \- 4,181 readers

<http://www.reddit.com/r/rails> \- 1,994 readers

<http://www.reddit.com/r/rubyonrails> \- 921 readers

Stackoverflow:

<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/django> 20k tagged

<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/ruby-on-rails> 40k tagged

<comment><USER3> <http://www.reddit.com/r/python> \- 22,586 readers <http://www.reddit.com/r/ruby> \- 8,211 readers

<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python> \- 66k tagged <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/ruby> \- 26k tagged

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think part of the difference is that the Django docs are just so good, there isn't a lot I can think of that a book would add.

DjangoSnippets.org is also pretty useful, as are the multitudes of Django apps available on GitHub and BitBucket.

You can also hang out in #django on freenode. People can sometimes be a bit gruff with noobs (though what IRC channel isn't) but there are usually some good discussions going on there.

<comment><USER5> The django docs arn't as good as they're made out to be, at least not any more. The major problem is they're lagging behind at this point, in both using the new core features such as class based views, and in best practices, such as the tutorial teaching reusable apps.

the core devs have said this themselves though on stage at cons, so i'm sure it'll get fixed at some point.

<comment><USER6> The lack of documentation for class based view is quite annoying! How can they release a feature without at least a few lines?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl;dr; (Not meant as a smart-ass comment but...) they're busy building stuff.

I think one of the interesting with Django is just how easy it is to get started with it without prior programming knowledge. I believe this has to do with Python itself and the great docs on Djangoproject.com

Just start doing the tutorial and voila. This has introduced a large amount of new programmers to Django and Python, making it gain in popularity extremely quickly. Case in point: when Django 1.0 came out the "core team" was often on Google Groups "django-users" answering even the most basic questions about programming.

Now most have moved on from Lawrence to businesses of their own; e.g. they're building cool new things. Other users within the Django community need to take over the baton and build up the community. I truly think there are tons of developers out there that are just using Django and haven't taken time to contribute back (I'm partly looking at myself) I think a new surge can take place in Django development in that respect; the user base Django has accrued over the years need to start returning the investment as it were.

Speaking for myself, I've been able to find most if not all information I needed online, and haven't so much needed to go to meetups or even irc and google groups. In this respect the lack of Django community you speak of rests on my shoulders and other Django users out there who haven't taken the time to contribute back to the community.

EDIT: I'm going to make a point of being more involved in the community via IRC etc.

<comment><USER8> _I think one of the interesting with Django is just how easy it is to get started with it without prior programming knowledge._

Wait, you're kidding right? Django is positively _horrible_ for beginning programmers because it's a gigantic framework with an insane learning curve, and if you haven't done much/any webdev before it's almost impossible to learn.

Sure, you and i can pick it up in a weekend, but i don't think it's even in the realm of decent for beginning programmers.

<comment><USER9>
        0> Set up the DB
        1> Describe a model
        2> Write a view function
        3> Write a template
        4> Set up a URL conf

How is this more difficult than or different to other web frameworks, and what do you consider 'insane' about it?

<comment><USER8> Your steps aren't too difficult provided the new programmer knows MVC (sorry, Model-Template-View), regular expressions, ORM principles, basic database design principles, understand how migrations work and how to use south, django's template specifics, and is willing to wade through a maze of documentation for hours on end to find the solution to simple problems.

I'm not noing to list alternatives because that starts flamewars, but there are many smaller frameworks that don't have such a large learning curve.

I'm also not saying that Django is a bad framework-- i even launched my first commercial web app with it-- just that it's not optimal for beginning programmers.

<comment><USER9> What framework does not require one to understand those things?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the biggest thing most people are missing is that django is an okay base, but you shouldn't look just to the django community, you should look to the python community. Django is only one aspect of a whole stack, and you should be more worried about your language choice then your framework choice.

<comment><USER11> absolutely true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Let me tell you the truth, though this will not be popular: Django is not a good framework. It's clumsy, inflexible and restrictive. The community is pretty much dead.

If you want to work in ruby, go for ror. If you want to work in python, go for a micro framework like Bottle.

I made the mistake of investing a lot of my time in Django. It was not worth it in the end. All my Django projects ended up being a big mess, and I had to undjango my way out of the various restrictions it placed on me.

And the community in general seems to agree - there is not much different in the django ecosystem, comparing 2 years ago to now.

My advice, go for Ruby On Rails or Bottle. Leave Django alone.

<comment><USER13> As someone who's been using Django since the magic removal branch, its documentation is top notch, not to mention the lack of magic makes it very usable, supportable, and build-able on. I can say definitely what's going on from the top layer to the bottom layer without any black box behaviour.

Rails is full of sloppy coding, lots of magic, coders who think that return is an keyword, and bad practices. I have no problem with ruby as a language, even if it takes flexibility a step too far, however the style of coders, and the general "I did something clever and unreadable so I'm awesome" attitude seems to permeate the ruby-verse. Also while many improvements have been made on the ruby interpreters... the performance is STILL lagging behind Python, which as a dynamic language with compiled backend elements, gives languages like Java a run for their money.

Both systems are very powerful, Django has certain batteries included that I find it strange that rails fails to do (namely a plugabble extensible flexible user authentication system) and both have their adherents.

The writer of this original piece is clearly not very up on Django development, the strong community apparently how to write well implemented MVC code. Having spent years working with a variety of frameworks, I've yet to find a place where Django stops you doing what you want (unless its a fundamentally stupid idea).

<comment><USER14> Return is absolutely a keyword in Ruby: [http://www.ruby- doc.org/docs/keywords/1.9/files/keywords_rb....](http://www.ruby- doc.org/docs/keywords/1.9/files/keywords_rb.html#M000032)

<comment><USER13> Its a keyword, but its not needed (as its not needed in many modern languages) but many rubyists I've worked with said that it was a nice feature that the return keyword was unnecessary and did not use it.

<comment><USER15> > but its not needed

Depends. It's needed for non-local returns (returning from within blocks), and it's also useful for early returns within methods.

It's not needed for the final return of a method, or a normal exit from a block (not a bad thing in my opinion, and Python's lambda do the same)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes, pick up Ruby on Rails.

The RoR community is surely more vocal. Rails has been described as "an opinionated framework" and this ripples through many of the Ruby communities and projects.

Community thought leaders include people like Yehuda Katz, Jose Valim, Giles Bowkett, Ryan Bates, Ryan Davis, Loren Segal, and Charles Nutter, and companies like PeepCode, ThoughtBot, Intridea, EngineYard, and Pragmatic Programmer. There are many more of course.

In the Ruby ecosystem you'll often find these opinions lead to "more than one way to do it". Some examples that we're discussing at my company relate to comparisons of RubyGems/SlimGems, MRI/JRuby, Rails/Sinatra, RSpec/minitest, HTML/HAML, CSS/SASS, Capistrano/Chef, and many more choices.

I suggest you try RoR version 3.1 and you'll find many built-in pieces that can help you, including jQuery, HAML, SASS, the new asset pipeline, and more. You can use these or swap these out as you like. Heads up that some people think these provide too much "magic" and are hard to learn all at once, whereas other people think these are solid choices based on experience. Be sure whatever books you read are for Rails 3, not Rails 2.

Feel free to message me if you'd like more info.

And a plug: I'm hiring Rails developers.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think one of the reasons that RoR might seem bigger is because RoR is a much bigger part of the "Ruby experience" than Django is for Python. Rails had a huge hand in making Ruby what it is today and I think you'd have a hard time finding a Ruby dev that wasn't introduced through Rails.

This isn't true of Python, though. Most people are Python coders first, web framework users second. Their level of experience with Python has a part in dictating what they're looking for in a web framework and many experienced Python devs are more attracted to small or micro-frameworks like Bottle, Flask, web.py, etc. Django has never been the "one true web framework" for Python the way Rails is for Ruby. Personally I have never touched Django, just Flask and web.py.

Also, if you are going to base your framework usage on its popularity in comparison to Rails you're going to have a tough time ever being satisfied. When has _any_ framework (web or otherwise) generated the same level of cult following as Rails? The Rails community is an absolute outlier in the open source software world (and I mean that in a positive way).

</comment><comment><USER18> I went through this "ror vs. django" thing a few months ago, and ended up picking up Django.

I got the Django book and liked it and I had no problems with my actual project itself in terms of having enough "community."

However, now I'm in the "figuring out how to deploy it" stage and it's been a real pain. My free webhost supports RoR and python, but doesn't have Django installed, I don't want to spend the money on a VPS, and while there's been a recent surge of beta Django hosts, none of them have worked out for me. (I.e. I tried out gondor.io, it wouldn't deploy, I asked for help in the IRC channel, someone said they'd "look into it" but never got back to me.) I'm currently rewriting my models (db structure) for Google apps since it's basically my last hope.

I really love Django, so it pains me to say this, but you might want to check out RoR.

<comment><USER19> I think you'll find that any "free webhost" is going to give you a lot of trouble if you want to deploy a project built on a modern web framework.

Rule of thumb: if it doesn't have SSH access, and it's not a Platform-as-a- Service like Heroku or Gondor, you're probably not going to have much luck deploying anything except PHP or static HTML.

Check out webfaction.com, it's great for beginners and does most of the deployment for you.

<comment><USER18> My webhost has SSH access, it just doesn't give me root. It offers RoR through CPanel, which I just assumed would work, but I haven't tried using it so I don't really know.

But I take your point, a VPS is really the best thing. I just can't convince my husband to let me spend money on it and I'm unemployed :P.

<comment><USER20> If you have SSH access, and Python is installed on the system, you don't need root to install Django. The best approach is via pip/virtualenv, but as a last resort, you can just upload the django source folder in the same directory as your manage.py, and it will work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've met a few of the creators of both the Rails and Django frameworks and noticed that their communities are very much a reflection of the creators.

DHH and crew tend to be very vocal and opinionated about their software.

The Django community (like the python community) tends to shun this type of behavior and prefers to let the code speak for itself.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure I believe the RoR community is larger than the Django community. I do believe it is more vociferous, though, which seems to be indicative of the general difference in communities between Ruby and Python.

It really doesn't matter which you choose. You will hit points with either where you are tearing your hair out trying to figure out how to do something. You'll find good peopke to help you in both communities. Eventually, that phase will pass and you will achieve Zen, until the next shiney framework shows up. :)

Personally, I really like Python as a language, so that's my path to Zen. Yours may be different.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is part of the reason that some people claim "the Ruby community" is full of drama. In reality, it has no more drama than any other group of people. The difference is, those people interact with each other and publish a lot, so any disagreements are more visible.

Anyway, maybe one place to start is <http://djangoweek.ly/> \- not exactly a community but it's a news service so you're likely to be led to interesting places.

</comment><comment><USER24> Mozilla's web development team uses Django for most of their current and new projects. If you come to #webdev on irc.mozilla.org they might be able to point to some other resources and gathering places.

</comment><comment><USER25> there are totally unfair comments to django, django committers and the django users. having used many tools such as grails, rails, django, pylons, turbogears and pyramid for different size of projects and loving them all i have a good amount of experience with these tools. whenever i needed a hand, people in #django (in irc.freenode.net) or a djangonaut's blog post or answer on stackoverflow or the django mailing list helped me out. same applies to rails as well.

what you like with rails is its just being fancy and people acting like it's a miracle. it's not. it's a a tool which helps you prototype your application with scaffolding and some other nice things in a very small amount of time. so is django. complex application means complex code. this is not a django thing. it applies to every tool. do not let screencasts or posts hypnotize you as those guys are working with rails for many years. you will not develop rails apps like they do when you start over. your code will suck. you won't like your own code as you learn ruby and rails in depth and sharpen your skills. oh wait, that applies to python and django as well. :) it's not you though, we all have been there.

one final note. django community does not need a reference book. because django documentation is a reference manual that contains everything a django developer needs. however a cookbook or application-type teaching book would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am newbie when it comes to development, and I had the same choice between developing my product on RoR or Django. I chose Django, and between the tutorial, docs, and the google mailing list, I think there is a pretty good community out there.

A book would be nice, but there are some good apps on registraton, profile, etc. available on GitHub or BitBucket out there. Granted, it might not be plug and play like in the case of RoR, but I have found it to be alright so far.

</comment><comment><USER27> I went through the very same experience you're going through now, and ended up with Rails. The largest deciding factor was the size of the community in my geographic area. Sure, there's always going to be a nontrivial online community for any activity, and the online presence of Django is enough to keep you going. But, you'll need to get some face-to-face interaction in there -- at least I needed that when learning. Waiting for a message board post is not the same as asking a few questions back and forth with a more experienced developer.

My impression that I got from both communities is that while both are good at fostering the growth of existing members (most programming communities do this well). Django is really bad at "evangelism," via teaching non developers to code via Python/Django or converting existing devs over to the framework. In contrast, the Rails community is better than most for profit groups at this (think about Microsoft's initiatives vs. something like Rails for Zombies).

For an example, compare the two homepages. The Rails page is much better at actually conveying the it's information effectively than Django.

</comment><comment><USER28> There are in fact more books focused on Rails compared to Django, and this logically reflects the inferior documentation of Rails compared to Django, necessitating and creating a greater market for additional documentation. This market doesn't exist so much for Django not because of the lack of interest in learning Django, but because the documentation is so good. End of that story.

As for the greater perceived online presence of the Rails community, I think this reflects two things:

1) Greater confusion among Rails users, who as a general group seem less technically inclined "on the whole" (there are obviously a ton of brilliant Rails developers as well). In general, Rails users want things to be pre- configured for them, and therefore never really learn how things work under the hood, and are thus ill-equipped to make simple changes to their own apps.

2) Greater Apple-like fanboy-ism among Rails users, which takes on a religious fervor with people thinking they have met salvation, and it makes them feel special. They love to evangalize about it, and this personality trait in part the perceived greater popularity of Rails.

That said, both frameworks are obviously still very popular and effective at building web applications. Try both and go with whichever one you like better, and stop fretting about whether you've made the "right" decision.

</comment><comment><USER29> Frankly, the discussion below turns quickly into bickering, but in response to your question, in my limited experience I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of the size of the community, though I think that has more to do with the prominence of 37 signals etc and less to do with any technical superiority.

I personally prefer Django for a number of reasons though I've also been impressed by RoR in my dabbling. active record's migrations are nice, and the ease with which rails let's you write dynamically changing forms and various other niceness is really great.

Technical questions aside, I think RoR is the default web framework. At general hacker type meet-ups like Startup Weekend, Rails is pretty much the default framework to work in as more people are familiar with it.

Django is wonderfully well structured and literally just about anything can be accomplished elegantly by subclassing this or that. As you said, the difficulty comes in figuring out what and how to fill in those gaps, which more often than not includes heavy use of grep and browsing around the Django source.

I think you'll be fine with whichever you choose. Learning new languages and frameworks is enjoyable, so try some rails and see how you like it. Smart people and great projects have been done with both.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have the same first two questions as you, so I'm glad you asked.

I can say a large part of me starting developing with Rails is the community. Many, many publishers have books. When I was in school our library had more material on Ruby/Rails than anything else in web dev. The online community is also fantastic as you've noted. Example: someone has taken the time to make ASCIIcasts out of Railscasts is incredible...and very helpful, as I'd often rather read than watch.

</comment><comment><USER31> Yes it's true that the Rails and Ruby community is very talkative and innovative. I see a lot of projects being ported from Ruby to Python and not so much the other way around.

As for getting work done, in my experience Rails and Django are equivalent. The only thing against Rails is that it's slower, which can be a burden for development.

</comment><comment><USER32> <https://www.djangoproject.com/community/>

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm in this same boat. I decided to go with Python vs Ruby due to what seemed like a better language for Sys Admin scripting. I tried Django in the past and quickly ran into issues after Django Book. I think I might give Bottle and Flask a try and get my project live.

<comment><USER34> What issues did you run into by the way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> For a long time I debated which framework to pursue in my off time (work is Java/struts blub programming). Python is the first and only programming language that I truly fell in love with, so I've investigated Django and rather like it. But I'm going to the Lone Star ruby conference next month, and I'll be doing the 0 to Rails tutorial. I guess I'm still having a hard time making up my mind. If exposure to live events is the deciding factor, then ruby will win, because I don't see many nearby django events...

<comment><USER36> In my opinion, the decision whether to use Rails vs. Django should largely be based on which language you know/prefer and which culture you know/prefer. In terms of capabilities, the distance between them is tiny.

Austin Python Web meetup: <http://django.meetup.com/cities/us/tx/austin/>

No?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The strongest part about django has always been (imo) it's documentation. The books that are out currently are simply not as good as the docs on the main site. I suspect this is the main reason there are not new books. If no one is buying django books, why write new ones?

The only dig I've read here that I agree with is that the plugins vary wildly in quality and ease of use. I would suspect that's true of ror as well. (Although, I think they have more to choose from, so there's probably more diamonds in the rough)

</comment><comment><USER13> The best book I've found for picking up rails was the latest edition of the Agile Web Development book, which I actually own 3 different editions of it, for differing versions of rails.

The lack of a Django book, probably has more to do with the fact of the community being more focused on tutorials and Blogs rather than cashing in, although there are a few django books out there. That said with the documentation and tutorials out there I've never felt a great need for a missing book.

<comment><USER38> There is a Django book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Everyone talking about RoR and Django, but what about Scala? Does that a good language with a good web framework?

I experienced RoR and trying Django now, and thinking Django is much easier than RoR (Django configurations and conventions make much more sense for me), but seeing the same problems everyone talking here.

Meanwhile, Scala coming and a lot of services written in RoR or Django are now build in Scala (Twitter, Foursquare).

</comment><comment><USER40> I have a lot of Python experience. However, I recently started to learn RoR. Having a great time so far. I'd recommend making the investment.

</comment><comment><USER41> The size of community for Rails vs Django does not really matters in your selection as both are big enough community. Choose base on your language preference Ruby vs Python as this is where you will be coding in. Learn the basic of both and decide then which is more suitable. I started with Rails/Ruby and switch to Python.

</comment><comment><USER42> Enough of a community that Google chose to let Django on App Engine, not Rails.

<comment><USER43> That has much more to do with Google and GAE already using Python and not Ruby.

<comment><USER44> GAE also supports java webframeworks(Play-framework)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> #django irc.freenode.net

</comment><comment><USER46> Want to propose a talk comparing Rails to Django at PyGotham?

<http://pygotham.org>

Based on your findings, form a panel and let the community decide.

</comment><comment><USER47> Everyone is talking about Django.. What about Zope ? Except the learning curve how does zope fare when compared to other frameworks ?

</comment><comment><USER48> rails and django are both extensions from the ruby and python community. if you know your programming well, you'll be able to grok it in whatever framework you choose. on that note, i'll bet my last penny python's community is more vibrant than ruby. ruby is essentially dead without rails whereas python thrives quite happily without django.

</comment><comment><USER49> Rails 3.0 was released almost 1 year ago on August 29th, 2010

Django 1.3 was released March 23rd, 2011, about 4 months ago.

<comment><USER50> You are contrasting the versions incorrectly. Rails 3.0 may have been released then but the latest version of it is Rails 3.0.9, which was released < 1 month ago.

<comment><USER49> I was just interested in these books about the "latest" version of rails. Are they about Rails 3.0.9?

The Rails 3 Way - Published December 20, 2010, I doubt it includes the 3.0.9 release. Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial - Published on December 26, 2010, also doubt this book covers 3.0.9 Agile Web Development with Rails - March 31, 2011 - don't know about this one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Who is the DHH of Django?

<comment><USER52> We have GvR as a BDFL

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I worked for four years in my startup in which we decided to go with django; four years ago RoR (v1.2.3) and django(0.97) were almost at par. Even though RoR had a slightly bigger community, django was clearly emerging as a leader. Both were equally good but we went for django because it had better performance, the explicit style seemed better than the inflexible conventions approach, Python's one-clear-way-of-solving syntax seemed better suited for teams and django's performance was certainly better than RoR.

Fast-forwarding four years and coming to 2011 with django 1.3 and Rails 3.0: I happened to work in another team to build a product in RoR from scrach. I was blown away by what Rails community has achieved while django is lagging behind a lot and is least likely to catch up.

Here are a few highlights:

* As a generic statement, to achieve anything in RoR, usually there is one clear and simple way of doing it. On the other hand in django you can do in many ways and most of the programmers have their own preferable ways. This is ironic considering Python endorses the very same principle but Ruby has a flexible syntax to cater different styles.

* In RoR, you can find a gem for almost anything. Plugging gem in your app is usually extremely simple. On the other, comparatively there are very few usable django apps and integrating them in your django project usually turns out to be painful. * Resolving and maintaining gem dependencies across the team is a piece of cake with bundler. However when it comes to django, I couldn't find a good tool. There is virtualenv but I couldn't find it comparable with the power of bundler.

* Deployment is fun in Rails. In django, it was and still is painful.

* Rails has a far better support for Backend databases, including some support for NoSQL. On the other hand it was just a while back django started supporing multiple databases and that too is hackish approach.

* Databases migrations in Rails are straightforward and explicity. django doesn't have anything like that builtin but does have a django-evolution app which can be really troublesome in some cases.

* Django's restrictive templating system theoretically lets you not shoot yourself in the foot by imposing a new language. But having to learn a new language and dealing with its quirks sometimes makes you pull your hair. Rails approach of embedding Ruby in templates is much more powerful and practically useful. Sure you can override templating systems in both frameworks but defaults are the ones almost everyone uses.

* There are very few hosting services specifically tailored for django. But Rails community boasts services such as heroku which save you so much time that a django fanatic cannot understand.

* I haven't seen testing in Rails in depth but from the bird's eyeview, automated test-cases in Rails seem much more powerful than in django. I might be wrong here.

* Rails has much better documentation and a much stronger community. Compare the Rails and django books on Amazon, questions asked on SO, blogs, tweets, everywhere Rails now dominates.

Its just that I really love Python and prefer it much more over Ruby. Even then I'll probably completely switch to Rails.

<comment><USER28> You clearly haven't used Django in quite some time:

try "pip freeze > requirements.txt" and "pip install -r requirements.txt" for managing dependencies between deployments

deployment is a matter of making a generic .wsgi file and pointing your server to it, how is that hard?

the "south" app makes database migrations very easy, the fact that you didn't know about this speaks volumes about your "experience"

Django is universally known to have better docs than Rails and virtually any other web framework, see almost every comment on this page

Your other comments lack any objectivity and aren't even worth responding to. I have nothing against Rails, but it's fanboys like you that give it a bad name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Have you been living under a rock or why don't you have some fun with nodejs?

Not saying django is dead here because its not (rails is though lol/Trollman Troll). It has a very vibrant community, almost as nice as the nodejs com.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you balance side project time? - <AUTHOR> I currently have a FT job (thankfully isn't too taxing), but I also have several side projects that I'm working on (browser extension, autonomous trading bot, and just general learning as well). I'm getting to a point where I don't exactly know how to balance my time between all of my side projects. I'm equally interested in all of them, it's just that I'm not sure how much time I should be allocating to each per-day/per-week. I recently read on HN about the "15-minute" rule, where you spend 15 minutes on each so that you don't commit too much or burnout -- anyone else have any other suggestions?<p>What do you do? <comment><USER2> In the six years I've been doing side projects I've learned that only having one project makes everything a billion times easier.

See one to completion, then move to the next.

</comment><comment> q-base Focus on one project outside your FT job, otherwise you will spread too thin and have too much overhead deciding which to work on. Use some time to prioritize/select the one you want to do the most or which has the most potential and then give it all for a few months. Then you can re-iterate. But be wary of perfection paralysis. Ship/get something out the door. Even if it is not perfect. Commit.

And with that said. Don't be afraid to scrap a bad idea. But set ambitious time frames and ship. Then you do not have to worry about the next idea creeping in and stealing the show.

</comment><comment><USER3> While others suggested only doing one side project until completion (which is an overall good strategy), I know the feeling of having tons of exciting ideas/side projects that you just don't want to completely put aside. My strategy has made some compromises on the overall completion date, but scratches the itch I have to work on different projects.

Basically, I spend one month focusing on a single project so that I get good mental focus for the month and then am able to feel like I'm still doing multiple side projects in a reasonable amount of time. Additionally, when I come back around to the same project a few months later, I have a fresh perspective along with some (hopefully) new skills or skill levels. That's how I find a balance.

Per day, I basically just work however long I feel like it. If I have plans with friends or want to work out or something I just go do it. Makes it low pressure and let's me make sure I'm always enjoying doing my side project work.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think that you have to set expectations. Lots of side projects can be managed but what are you trying to accomplish? When I left my FT job 4 months ago I started three businesses. One got a lot of traction very quickly. I shut the other two and focus completely on the one that took off.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea of setting concrete goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I usually do like 2 hours a week. I look forward for those hours. It's like my mind is racing against time and it's long enough time to finish and accomplish something.with 15 mins I sometimes find it hard to get in the right mindset

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea. Limit the time you give yourself, so that in that (relatively) small amount of time, you actually get things done and don't screw around. A slight take on the (time) scarcity principle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Try this instead - work on them for 15-30 minutes a day, fixed. Keep to it for about a month. Find out which one you naturally focus on more. Which gets you excited?

Split focus kills motivation faster than anything.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been farming the development work out, so I can focus on the design, functionality and big picture items.</comment>


Show HN: Notes, bookmarks for iOS, saves to your GitHub repo, drag and drop - <AUTHOR> http://github.kobble.io <comment><USER2> I don't understand why so many app developers put so much effort into building their apps and so little effort into explaining what it does/how it works. The website shows me one screenshot of a list of pages. Zero information on the user experience, how to create the pages, what they look like, can I reorder them in the list, no info of any kind about workflow. The App Store page is actually worse, because the additional screenshot it adds is baffling and not explained. A whole page of "channel" configuration information? What's a channel? I have no idea.

I was intrigued that the HN summary talks about better iOS bookmarking. That's interesting to me, but it's 100% workflow dependent and there's zero information about workflow (or even bookmarking period) that I can see.

<comment><USER3> I think, for solo developers at least, it's very easy to get so familiar with your project that you find it difficult to step outside and see it from the point of view of someone who is not familiar with it.

Also (this is definitely true in my case) devs spend all their time honing the product and then are just too exhausted to do any meaningful marketing. I've often released things to store with minimal information and intended to come back and revisit, to improve the marketing copy. But before long I'm back honing and bug fixing and I've forgotten about the sparse description I left unfinished.</comment></comment>


The Curious Case Of Vancouver Incubator Bootup Labs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/the-curious-case-of-vancouver-incubator-bootup-labs/ <comment><USER2> Danny Robinson, that same person who left the jackass "why art thou complaining?" comment on Jamie's blog, has apologized, finally seeing the light after Techcrunch posted this story:

///////

You're right. We deserve to be lambasted. If you were actually in my shoes, you would have already apologized, in person, many times, and done everything possible to make it right. Which is exactly what we did, and explains why we have not done so in public prior to now. We feel terrible about what happened are are truly sorry. We're still working to make it right and will always be there for these companies.

///// ([http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/the-curious-case-of- vancouv...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/the-curious-case-of-vancouver- incubator-bootup-labs/#comment-1029240))

I'm not sure he gets it. There is _nothing_ he can say, no matter how much apologizing he's done, that will make this seem better. The only thing he can do is to be humble about this, and to say that he'll work to make sure this never happens again.

Danny Robinson might be a good man for all I know. But he's really dropped the ball on this one. And I'm starting to feel sorry for him.

<comment><USER3> I agree, really bad PR and crisis management. I'm just left to wonder, what were they thinking, moving folks from Tucson/ Kansas City with all their dreams just to drop them by the road side; these are definitely not serious people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Techcrunch misses on some of the small details.

For instance:

"... he shouldn't have claimed that Bootup Labs was running out of money (which he did in the _original title of his blog post_ )." [emphasis mine]

I believe that the part in italics should read "original title of his HN submission."

The article also states that Bootup Labs responded in the comments on HN. I haven't read every single comment, but I think Techcrunch is confusing a copy- and-paste of the blog comment by someone not associated with Bootup Labs with a response by Bootup Labs itself. Here's a link to the comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266863>

<comment><USER5> They both also commented here as well.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266872> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1267256>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This type of snafu is not unique to Bootuplabs and can happen even to best run orgs (I remember someone here ranting about ill-treatment at Seedcamp last year). I think managing nerds gets a little tricky when high expectations are involved. After enduring the flames,the guys at Bootuplabs have done their best to explain and apologize about the whole incident. I for one think the world needs more startup minded groups like this, not less. As a startup commnunity, I sincerely hope we can be forgiving.

<comment><USER2> >After enduring the flames,the guys at Bootuplabs have done their best to explain and apologize about the whole incident.

That's the thing, josephd. They _haven't_ done their best to 'explain and apologize about the whole incident'.

[http://livejamie.com/post/522093261/booted-out-of-bootup- lab...](http://livejamie.com/post/522093261/booted-out-of-bootup- labs#comment-44842981)

And the thing is, they're _still_ clinging to this hope that it's possible to spin this story to their advantage. It's only at this Techcrunch post that anybody's actually came out and apologized all the way, and even then, Danny's added the qualifier "if you'd been in my shoes ..."

Which is fine, really, except that just 11 hours ago he left a comment to the effect of "we took you to Canada, and then we dropped you, why're you complaining?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I were bootup, I would've never accepted startuply if I didn't have the cash, but I don't see what else they could've done once they realized they didn't have a backup.

That they didn't have a contingency plan in place or a backup investor is quite ridiculous, however, these things do happen.

<comment><USER8> I think there are VERY different standards for startups applying to seed accelerators, versus companies trying to get VC. A lot of startups who do seed accelerators are, in a large part, going full-time DIRECTLY because of promised investment. That's certainly been true of a ton of YC startups.

They go full-time because a reputable business promises them funding, and signs an agreement to that effect. They wouldn't go full-time without the funding.

When founders are leaving behind their jobs to take part in a program due to a promise from a seed firm, the partners of that seed firm should be mortgaging their homes before they completely fuck four companies by dropping them like this.

And, on Bootup's side, their reputation is irreparably demolished- just google 'Bootup Labs'. How does a budding VC firm recover from _that_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The comment in <http://bmannconsulting.com/2843/personal/keep-calm-and-carry> said it best.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this now can be called "As the Startup Turns" with all this drama.

</comment><comment><USER11> deals fall through.

<comment><USER9> promises broken.</comment></comment>


Strange Maps: Did you realize Africa is this big? - <AUTHOR> http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2006/11/20/35-the-size-of-africa/ <comment><USER2> I think my perception of Africa's size comes entirely from the fact that it's only worth 3 armies in Risk.

<comment><USER3> That perception may be too generous. The GDP of the combined African Union countries is less than that of the Netherlands.

 _<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union#Economy> _

<comment><USER4> What are you talking about? The GDP of the AU is 1 and a half trillion, and of Netherlands is 600 billion. South Africa alone has a GDP of 500 billion.

<comment><USER3> You know full well that I am referring to the about the nominal GDP, while you are referring to the GDP at purchasing power parity. Both are interesting economics measures.

You should not be too surprised that I choose the more surprising one to write about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The dymaxion map reduces distortion: <http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/pub/xplanet/fuller_1280x640.jpg>

<comment><USER6> It's funny how most people from the northern hemisphere don't know their world maps look funny. Particularly European versions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing that many people don't also realise is that Africa is internally broken into 3 or 4 major blocs. West Africa from Senegal through to Cameroun are a bloc, central Africa another, the horn, another and the southern countries.

West African countries have relatively good communication and transport across themselves, but not to the southern countries.

The average American probably knows a lot more about the Congo than the average Nigerian, hard as that may be for you to believe.

<comment><USER7> Except for South Africa of course, the wealthiest country on the continent.

<comment><USER4> South Africa and Namibia are very close economically and culturally. Same with the two small countries in SA, and I believe Zimbabwe used to have a lot of trade too, before the latest problems.

South Africa is rich, but the West African economic zone is almost as rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Theres a fascinating book called "Guns, Germs and Steel" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel>) which attempts to explain why Eurasia was a dominant force for almost the entire history of civilisation, despite that fact that humans evolved in Africa.

The main idea is that Eurasia had a massive advantage in farmable crops (that is crops which were amenable to farming after a small number of mutations) and domesticable animals large enough to replace manual labour. In addition, the climatic differences across Eurasia are smaller than in Africa or the Americas so domesticated species were useful over a larger area.

Agriculture supports higher population densities (larger armies) which in turn leads to specialisation (guns and steel) and highly evolved germs to which the local population is resistant (during Spanish colonisation of

Whether or not you agree with the specific ideas its amazing that its even possible to consider the question and produce an answer that is, at least in part, empirically falsifiable.

<comment><USER9> Probably the best non-fiction book I read in the last 10 years. It puts forward many reasoned arguments for the Eurasian historical supremacy (the Guns, Germs and Steel of the title), but as you say, the crux of it is that Eurasia is the continent with the largest contiguous area of similar climate. In other words, Eurasia is wide, while North America is narrow, and South America and Africa are both tall and narrow, resulting in very large climatic diversity, and smaller ecosystems adapted to each of those climates.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was pretty surprised at how completely inaccurate my perception of Africa's size was. This map really helped put it in perspective.

It also made me think about the potential wealth of Africa. It will be interesting to see how it continues to transform with technology and micro- entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER10> At the same time, this also sheds some more light on Africa's problems. One of which is logistics.

The continent's security is hampered by its sheer size and the massive borders of many of its countries. What this means it that few countries have the funds for large and capable enough security forces to exercise control over the whole of their territory. So outside the cities, large parts of the countryside exist in a security vacuum where thugs, rebels, criminals and assorted other unsavoury types essentially have free reign.

It also hampers trade and communication. With communities being spread out over such huge distances, transport infrastructure and the associated costs become vital. But few African nations can afford to maintain proper highway networks and even if they could, there's a lack of sufficient transport capability to effectively utilise it. As a result, intra-state trade is severely limited and inter-state trade even more so. This logistics problem also affects the delivery of aid.

To be fair, this isn't true of all African countries. South Africa and Egypt, for example, are notable exceptions for having a security presence throughout the country, a well-developed and advanced transport infrastructure and so on. But bringing countries like the DRC, CAR & Uganda up to the same level is not going to be an easy task.

One hope lies in having less of a top-down socialist central-planning approach and more encouragement of a federal self-organising entrepreneurial environment to encourage communities to grow themselves and gradually build their own transport and communications networks outwards. Technology will make this easier, but I think anybody expecting an economic revolution in Africa anytime soon is holding on to a false hope.

<comment><USER11> > What this means it that few countries have the funds for large and capable > enough security forces to exercise control over the whole of their > territory.

Through the majority of US and Canadian history, the same could be said of both countries. (Canada did send the mounties out in advance of the settlers, but there weren't enough of them.)

Let me suggest that the problem is not the lack of security forces but the need for them, especially since they tend to turn into "thugs, rebels, criminals and assorted other unsavoury types".

<comment><USER10> Interesting comparison, but it's not really the same situation. In the case of the US and Canada there were large border regions that were essentially frontier societies with little protection offered by the state, but the major population centres and the areas between them were generally safe. And as time went on, the expansion of both countries were driven in large part by the expansion of their armed forces and the gradual extension of control over more and more of the country. Aside from a few hardy settlers, there were no large population groupings living in areas in which the state had not yet established a basic level of control. The societies expanded their territory only as the security umbrella which protected them grew larger.

For many African countries, such as the DRC, this is not the case. They have inherited borders and population groupings that date from colonial eras and have more to do with arbitrary lines drawn on a map than the actual ability of each country to enforce or protect them. As a result there is seldom a single point of origin from which to begin the creation of a security umbrella and then expand outwards; instead they have to individually try to secure a number of cities and towns situated far apart from each other while trying desperately to get a hand on the largely undeveloped and un-patrolled areas in between. To use the DRC as an example, the national army has virtually no control over the land between Kinshasa, the capital, and cities like Goma and North Kivu. There is no proper level of internal security.

To be fair, your point about the quality (or lack thereof) of African security forces is valid. There's no doubt that if more African armies were well- trained, disciplined and professional they would be able to make far more effective use of the limited resources available to them. Unfortunately, most are as useless and corrupt as the political hierarchies governing their countries. But my point was that even with well-trained forces, the vast distances across which many African countries stretch make an already difficult situation so much harder to deal with on the tiny budgets most African countries have available. And that even those who do attempt to get their act together are dragged down by the fact that trade, the one thing that could lift them out of poverty, is often severely restricted by geography.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another fun fact that impressed me: If you dumped all the people of the world in Texas, it will have the same population density as New York city.

<comment><USER13> DFW Airport is actually billed as "Larger than the island of Manhattan".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Mercator projection has a lot to answer for. Did you know that Sudan is the 10th largest country in the world?

</comment><comment><USER15> As a map nut I take this opportunity to plug the Winkel-Tripel projection that National Geographic chose ten years ago. It's quite beautifully balanced despite being neither equal-area nor equal-angle:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Winkel-tripel- projection....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Winkel-tripel- projection.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER16> More startling to me was the fact that India is roughly a third of the size of the US, yet has about 3.5x the people.

For some reason I thought India was much bigger than it is.

<comment><USER17> And what is startling to me is that US is 3 times the size of India.

<comment><USER18> ...yet has about 2/7x the people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are you talking about the continent or the country :)

<comment><USER20> bwahahahaha, très drôle! You probably needed to stick big blinking irony tags around it though - those of us living in the rest of the world have a poor opinion of American geographical knowledge (justified by the incident to which you refer), and sometimes we forget that the US actually has quite a lot of very well educated individuals.

<comment><USER21> I think more surprising is how easy it is to be Geographically ignorant. I have been to roughly 20 different countries and would be hard pressed to locate some of them on a map. Honestly, who cares where Kyrgyzstan is? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had an equal-area projection map on my wall as a teenager ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_area_projection#Equal- are...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_area_projection#Equal-area) ), so this didn't come as news to me.

</comment><comment><USER23> Yes I do, because I own a globe. No, that's not a "strange map".

This shouldn't surprise you if you're over the age of 12 and you are not named Sarah Palin.

</comment><comment><USER24> Get a globe.

</comment><comment><USER25> What happened to Alaska!?</comment>


The Basics of SEO - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/08/the-basics-of-seo/ <comment><USER2> How did this get up-voted to the front page? Maybe this would have been good advice in 1997 but nowadays it certainly does not work. I have a site with perfectly optimized titles and urls and rankings still terrible... You need lots of links and domain authority to rank well...that's what it boils down to. That's why the NYT, Wikipedia, Forbes, and Fortune rank well for everything.

<comment><USER3> The answer is in the "about" section [1]. The site seems to be run by the folks at YC. They probably have a leg up on making it to the front page at HN.

[1] [http://themacro.com/about/](http://themacro.com/about/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised this article didn't reference Google using HTTPS as a ranking signal [1]. Seems like basic SEO to me at least.

[1] [https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as- ranking-s...](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking- signal.html)

<comment><USER5> That signal is weak. Yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Four points taken out of external resources included in the page. Don't mean to be ironic, but I thought it was way harder to get to the front page of HN.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think a lot gets lost in SEO and developers and marketeers miss the forest for the trees. They spend so much time trying to understand how they can game search engines they forget the number one ingredient for making it to the top : Good Content.

It doesn't matter how optimized your website is, if the content is useless, you will not rank. If you want to rank you should probably spend 90% of your time and effort on content optimization, 10% on SEO.

Check out what we are doing at YourMechanic (YC W12). We introduced an advice section earlier this year and now it drives 50%+ of all our organic traffic. [https://www.yourmechanic.com/advice/](https://www.yourmechanic.com/advice/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, basics is certainly right here. It's the very lowest level stuff relating to title tags, content and meta descriptions.

It's still useful to know (the amount of people who have a useless title or don't set the meta description for the search listings is ridiculous), but I'd say the off site SEO factors matter a ton more than these on site ones.

Because at the end of the day, SEO (like any other marketing) is all about who you know rather than what you know. Not literally in the sense that knowing someone at Google will give you better results, but in the sense that knowing the right influencers to boost your content's 'signal' is more important than how well written or 'good' it is.

</comment><comment><USER9> Digital advertiser/marketer here. As others have rightly pointed out in some the comments--and as seen appropriately in the title of this blog post!--these really are just the pure basics. Elements to understand extend far beyond this to items such as semantic markup & rich snippets, the crucial role of "outreach" and "viral marketing" (that is, essentially digital PR), "domain authority" as defined by the volume and quality of incoming links to a site, and so much more.

As the topic of SEO is fairly rare on HN, some words I want to share while I got some of your attention: if something gives you pause, don't think to trust a single thing that an SEO consultant or agency out there says to you until you read up on it yourself and/or consult another party. In the end, SEO- pitching digital marketers are pretty much selling snake oil 90% of the time and what you really need is someone on your team with a marketing background who can responsibly manage vendors and force performance working to prove ACTUAL traffic/"brand awareness"/sales growth over an extended period of time (and if they can't show growth, they can intelligently explain to you why.)

I can't count the number of times I've been on calls with "SEOs" just rambling off their traffic reports without any real insight nor any technical knowledge, despite the fact that their agency is charging $100-150/hour for such material. I've seen reports from even large, recognizable digital advertising agencies with many locations worldwide that provided flawed or irrelevant data, a lack of focus on client goals, etc. I could go on and on.

</comment><comment><USER10> Here is a recent free chapter from a book (Secret Sauce) coming out soon; it is a bit more hands-on, explaining how to figure what what keyword to go after:

[https://medium.com/startup-grind/seo-is-not-hard-a-step- by-s...](https://medium.com/startup-grind/seo-is-not-hard-a-step-by-step-seo- tutorial-for-beginners-that-will-get-you-ranked-every-single-1b903b3ab6bb)

</comment><comment><USER11> I understand this is just the basics, but the URL is also crucial. Keywords in the URL (that match the page content) will give you order of magnitude better results.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Keyword in URL is the kingpin of SEO.

<comment><USER12> Helpful but not kingpin [http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on- keywords-i...](http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-keywords-in- the-url-16976)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The intro is interesting enough, and there is a good point he makes about needing to satisfy the ultimate user intent rather than just focusing on keywords and queries.

Ultimately pretty basic, but good for beginners to dip their toes.</comment>


The Early Google Papers: Rajeev Motwani's Contributions To Search - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/06/the-early-google-papers-rajeev-motwanis-contributions-to-search/?awesm=tcrn.ch_3IB&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=techcrunch-autopost&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=twitter.com <comment><USER2> Rajeev helped us out tremendously when we were starting out. Was going to touch base with him again soon, and was shocked to hear about this incident. Enormously sad.</comment>


Stratified Design over Layered Design - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/clean-code-development/stratified-design-over-layered-design-125727c7e15 <comment><AUTHOR> A interesting article that presents a very functional approach to design without mentioning functional programming.

I've been trying to get more people adopt this approach ever since watching this talk by Gary Bernhardt a while ago. [1]

I'm also watching the development of this book in progress, Grokking Simplicity [2], which tries to present just enough functional thinking to be useful, without being dogmatic.

I can't help but wonder why these approaches aren't more popular, because they seem to make so much sense to me.

[1] [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/boundaries](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/boundaries) [2] [https://www.manning.com/books/grokking- simplicity](https://www.manning.com/books/grokking-simplicity)

</comment><comment><USER2> Thank you for posting. I've been thinking about this lately and had trouble articulating it. I knew that there had to be some established thinking out there around this approach to design, and now I've found it!</comment>


Ask HN: Which cloud do you use, and why? - <AUTHOR> Hey all,<p>The recent HN post on the "$10 super computer" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9575683) was actually very timely, as I am working at a client in the financial space who is evaluating various IaaS providers (up until now they have been using a small on-site data center).  There is plenty information out there about which services are available, but less about why one should choose any particular provider over another.  I'm curious to hear about the experiences of the HN community on this, and especially from those who have used several different services.  What sealed the deal for you?  Was it the price?  Ecosystem of services?  Ease of use?  Was it the only thing available at the time? etc.  Would also love to hear about any other factors one should take into account when making this kind of decision. <comment><USER2> AWS currently and for the last ~4 years. We have also placed more than a dozen clients into AWS.

We have used SoftLayer, Peak10, Google and Azure at different times while testing things out. SoftLayer we actually ran some processes in for about a year.

I recently had posted on HN about services like DigitalOcean because there are ways for us to save money using those types of services, or even Heroku. In the end the ecosystem, ease of use, reliability (when architected right) and flexibility of AWS is still just too powerful for us. The costs are not the cheapest way we could do something, but when you factor in the minimal amount of man hours we spend on infrastructure compared to what we could be, I think it is a good deal. We try not to get too ingrained to AWS only features, and where we do we will hide their implementation so we can switch them out if ever needed. I also classify them differently too, for example, DynamoDB or MySQL (via RDS) wouldn't be something I'd try to wrap, it is your database and could be used from anywhere so you aren't really locked into AWS as much as your database there. But something like SQS, we used but wrapped, and eventually moved to RabbitMQ with very little extra effort.

I have had to use AWS support a few times, and they have been AMAZINGLY helpful. And for non-critical things they usually answer forum posts pretty quick too. AWS isn't a panacea with no issues, but for my money its the best thing going right now. And they are constantly releasing new things and tweaking things, not everything is for the better, but for the most part it is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Heroku for backend, automatically grow or shrink resources, nothing to maintain, nothing to configure and tons of services available alongside it.

Netlify for frontend, it is a static hosting service with some neat features like url rewriting that lets you proxy e.g. /api to a backend without revealing api keys and under the same origin / domain.

What really draws me to this is:

\- no servers or software to maintain

\- horizontal scaling by design (heroku kind of forces it)

\- deploy process is "git push", fresh deploy is one click (heroku) and a few mins doing config on netlify though they have an api so maybe that's redundant

\- no lock-in, easy to replicate locally

\- databases are managed wrt backups, recovery etc

\- entire front end is static and will scale indefinitely with massive uptime

[https://heroku.com/](https://heroku.com/) [https://netlify.com/](https://netlify.com/)

<comment><USER4> Why netlify and not S3 + CloudFront?

<comment><USER3> The final outcome is the same - static files on a cdn - so it won't always matter but netlify lets you:

1) run a build process

2) own domain with automatic ssl and redirecting to w/e www-or-not, https-only etc

3) deploy with git push

4) url rewriting, header inserting, proxying

<comment><USER5> Exactly, and because of the automatic URL rewriting Netlify will also give you instant cache validation. So when you update your site, unlike most static site hosts, you won't have to wait to see your changes live. But at the same time you get a very cached and very fast site. So best of both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Azure, awesome PaaS services, very easy to set up, good documentation, good pricing, very good performance and I really like the fact that they are working really really hard on Azure. Big new stuff is being released every month.

<comment> at-fates-hands Combining Azure with Cloudflare has really been great for my dozen or so clients I manage.

It ups Azure's performance and adds another layer of excellent security. The Pro plan at $20/month is well worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm using Azure.

Mostly because of this very little known offering called the Microsoft Action Pack subscription: [https://mspartner.microsoft.com/en/ca/Pages/Membership/actio...](https://mspartner.microsoft.com/en/ca/Pages/Membership/action- pack.aspx)

It costs around $500 per year, offers your company access to a large number of Microsoft software licenses, free access to seats of Office 365 Enterprise (for hosted email on your own domain, in addition to the software), and most importantly, $110 in Azure credits per month.

The Azure credits alone make this an amazing deal that essentially cuts all Azure pricing by more than half, making it more than competitive with AWS/GCE/DO on the pricing front.

<comment><USER8> I'm a current Azure user so this intrigued me, but I don't see anything on that page about monthly credits. Am I missing something?

Edit: Never mind, I guess? I found it in some fine print on another page. Weird that they don't advertise it more prominently...

<comment><USER7> Yes it's pretty ridiculous how well they've hidden one of the best perks of the subscription. I only know about it because I was enrolled in a previous version of the program that advertised the Azure credits a lot more prominently.

Their marketing in general is sorely lacking seeing as how few of the people who would benefit from it actually know about it.

For anyone else wondering, I managed to find it mentioned on this page (deeply hidden under "Microsoft Action Pack – cloud and on-premises Internal Use Rights licenses" accordion, under the "Management" section in the dropdown, under the "Cloud Services" heading):

[https://mspartner.microsoft.com/en/us/pages/membership/inter...](https://mspartner.microsoft.com/en/us/pages/membership/internal- use-software.aspx)

"Microsoft Azure

US$100 monthly credit. Microsoft Azure credit is in addition to current on- premises internal-use software licenses."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Digital Ocean

\- I only want to build off base Linux VM, I do not want to be locked into S3 + SQS + ...

\- Price is right for young startups

\- Speed is nice

<comment><USER10> I just wish there was a single VM that wasn't SSD backed. I write web crawlers sometimes and I usually only have to parse the HTML / JS _once_ into JSON or SQL, but I like to keep the data backed up just in case I need to re-parse it later, or to see the changes between crawls. It's completely impossible for me to even fit it on their $640 / month box. But I love Digital Ocean for everything else.

<comment><USER11> Couldn't you potentially push that aspect elsewhere, into a data storage solution like S3 or something (not sure of the cost efficiency, not a huge cloud guy myself). Then you'd just be utilizing the DO server for processing. It would have the added benefit of allowing you to scale your crawling horizontally if you wanted, as all your servers could have access to the same set of data.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I could, and I currently do - but I don't like to. I want the data on the same network for lots of reasons and I also don't like maintaining two sets of deployment systems. I'd prefer to just use Cloud66 + Digital Ocean and focus on writing code, not setting up and maintaining servers.

<comment><USER11> Oh yeah, I totally understand that, was just offering an alternative as a non- ideal workaround. I have the same set up for a service I offer, primarily because (afaik) it's hard to beat S3 pricing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [+] Digital Ocean

        Pros 1. Inexpensive, Pay as you go
             2. automated deployment
        Cons 1. Capped Network I/O

[+] Azure

        Pros 1. Cheap CDN, all-in-one cloud solutions
             2. Pay as you go
        Cons 1. Expensive VM's (0.6gb $13)

[3] RunAbove

        Pros 1. Inexpensive
        Cons 1. Not mature yet, they changed their pricing twice already

</comment><comment><USER13> Linode. Support is great, service is great, pricing is good, and seems less "cowboyish" than Digital Ocean and others.

<comment><USER14> I've been running a VPN over multiple data centres on Linode for the past few months. Seems to work great so far. The performance is good enough for what I'm doing with it and I know exactly what my bill is going to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Microsoft Azure

\- The admin portal is great

\- Deploying to websites is just a simple push

\- I can programmatically spin up new SQL DB instances

\- I really like C#

\- There are a LOT of additional services available

\- Microsoft is very aggressive about keeping prices low

<comment><USER16> I think Azure gets a bad reputation in this community from the old "Microsoft = bad" bias that a lot of us have. However, if you are in a Windows stack and/or a corporate developer (and that is a large but quiet percentage of developers) it really seems like the best solution. Also the variety of services they provide under one umbrella is neck and neck with Amazon for best in the industry.

<comment><USER17> I wanted to try Azure a few weeks ago for a small project. But I found the UI to be confusing. Part old and part new ? Trying to match up with the current Windows look (which I am not familiar with) ?

I also had trouble using one of their API's. Got even thrown out very quickly for abusing it. No idea why, just trying to access. Maybe MS does not like my coding style :-) Never had something like that before. Reference to possible explanation page did not work. Faq did not cover it. Still I got an automated email a few days later to congratulate me with using Azure, while actually I was locked out...

But I have no commitment to Windows, so its easy to switch. I normally use DO and AWS and stick with them for now.

<comment><USER6> If you really want to manage your Azure you'll have to go PowerShell anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Azure for the main infrastructure - I'm running a .NET MVC app and their Paas offering is excellent.

I agree with the other comments about Azure's VM's being too expensive though.

Amazon S3 and Cloudfront b/c Azure CDN doesn't quite have all the features I need.

</comment><comment><USER19> AWS - primarily S3 because their cloud storage is inexpensive and easy to administer.

Azure - websites and mobile services (and by extension SQL Database) because we use .NET

</comment><comment><USER20> AWS, because we make a lot of use of S3 - last I looked there weren't any alternatives that truly rival it. Largely then end up using EC2 for cost (data transfer in-data centre) and billing simplicity.

</comment><comment><USER21> Used AWS for a couple of years but switch to DO and haven't looked back.

Great interface, pricing and service.

Their customer support is also awesome and I've found their support community articles to be thoroughly useful.

[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/)

</comment><comment><USER22> OVH, SoYouStart, and KimSufi with Dokku Alt (for quick apps) or custom Ansible/Docker deployments (for big apps). Since OVH created their North American DC I took the leap and have been very very happy. Knowing just how cheap the hardware/ops game is, I just can't bring myself to spend anything more than what these guys do:

      - $115/mn for a 64GB ECC, 3x Intel SSD, Xeon E51620v2, 500Mbps, etc
      - $50/mn for a 32GB ECC, Intel Xeon W3520, 4TB SATA
      - $15/mn for a 4GB RAM, Atom N2800, 1TB HDD

I scale differently as a result; huge gobs of RAM/SSD/CPU is easily within reach. For instance, I can use Redis Cluster as a primary data store with then op/s an order of magnitude higher than most might be used to.

</comment><comment><USER23> I used to use Rackspace, but now I'm using AWS. Rackspace was nice, but AWS was a bit better on price (thought the two are priced slightly differently) and a secure setup was quicker on AWS than on Rackspace. I tend to use docs or forums to solve issues I have, so Rackspace's customer support wasn't all that useful compared to whatever Amazon offers.

Since then I've started using a few things like Elastic Beanstalk and continuous deployment, and getting them working on AWS was pretty pain free and easy. I don't think I could do as much on AWS now as I could on Rackspace.

Heroku looks nice but because of price I never tried it. Azure is also tempting to use, but as a non-customer their non-Windows offerings seem to be predictably second-rate.

<comment><USER23> All of that said, IaaS is still way too complicated. I'm sure there's room for someone to come along and have an offering that's 10x simpler to manage and use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have provided my own cloud, in the form of a 1U server, since 1998. I run my (very tiny) website there as well as my own mailserver, and I read email over SSH using (al)pine.

Backups offsite go to the obvious place :)

This setup might not be that interesting, but I think it's worth noting that a cloud computing paradigm/model has functioned well for 16 years now with no significant changes. I have not had data on my own personal computers for that entire 16 years - all data has been in the "cloud".

I think a decent goal is to be a peer on the network. I think a good step in that direction is to have your own server, with fixed IP, on the network. You can build quite a bit on that.

<comment> at-fates-hands I would love to do this, but handling the security of your own server to me seems labor intensive.

How easy is it for you to manage keeping your server and data secure? I would really like to do this, but my fears of getting hacked have kept me from doing it.

<comment><USER24> Well, my system runs nothing but sendmail, lighttpd (with no modules or features) and sshd. That's it. So there's not much to lock down.

sshd is hidden behind port knocking, for what that's worth. (No, I do not want to have a religious argument about port knocking this morning)

The real key to the simplicity and security of my setup is email over SSH with a console client. Not only does that remove _oceans_ of attack surface, but it also means you can read email without the emails themselves traversing the network. I guess the characters go over SSH, but that's not quite the same thing...

<comment><USER25> Thank you for introducing me to port knocking (wikipedia link for the unintiated [0]).

Not trying to lure into an argument you're trying to avoid but I'm just curious; what is the religious argument about regarding port knocking? I know about both sides to tabs/spaces and vim/emacs but am curious what people have against port knocking.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_knocking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_knocking)

<comment><USER24> Heh.

In short, port knocking is a very, very short/weak password. And is a very weak authentication measure.

This is absolutely true and nobody could argue that.

So if you only did port knocking, or if you _depended_ on port knocking, you're making a bad decision.

I believe in defense in depth, and therefore I think that port knocking _on top of everything else you already do_ has good value - especially considering how simple and lightweight knockd is and my experience of it running stably for _years_ at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Rackspace

\- pricing and offerings are similar to AWS

\- they answer the phone when you have problems

<comment><USER27> Their support is first rate and the #1 reason I won't change to another provider. There is nothing better than opening a chat window and having someone who is knowledgeable respond and who can get the problem fixed right away. To me that is worth the premium I pay for using Rackspace over a service like Azure or AWS.

<comment><USER28> I've been a big Rackspace Cloud user and advocate here on HN and elsewhere for 6+ years now. This line of thinking was exactly why.

However, in the last year, my experience has been that the quality of support has collapsed. It _used_ to be I could open a chat window and get a knowledgeable person who could fix my problem, but that's not the case anymore. Now I get someone who either doesn't understand what I'm saying or tells me they can't do anything to help unless I upgrade to their gold-plated, top-of-the-line support tier, which would push them from "somewhat more expensive" to "absurdly expensive." It's gotten so bad that I'm in the process of moving all my systems off their cloud at the moment. I can't in good conscience recommend them anymore.

It's all very disappointing, as quality support has been Rackspace's key differentiator forever. My guess is that they've decided to give up competing with AWS on the high end and Digital Ocean et al on the low end, and concentrate on selling into Fortune 500s who need basic VPS services and are willing to pay out the nose for them. But that leaves small shops like mine out in the cold, which is too bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Joyent.

\+ DTrace available

\+ Great predictable performance

\+ Solaris

\+ no VM

\+ fast non-capped network

\- client tools are written in node.js (but you can write your own if you really care)

Doesn't matter to me, but might to some people:

\- Relatively few datacenters

\- Solaris (they do have KVM too, so you can run whatever, but then you lose the many benefits of zones)

Also don't matter to me, but might to some people:

\+ completely open source stack, so you could install the same environment in your private datacenter

\+ it does not use openstack

</comment><comment><USER30> I use AWS:

\- Everything integrates with it, there's a lot of tooling

\- Safety of the herd

</comment><comment><USER31> Using Azure currently:

\- Good PaaS offerings and pretty easy to setup

\- Bizspark ($150 free of services per month per account (and yo u can create up to 5 accounts) for 3 years)

\- Decent speed (Azure SQL used to be a dog, but has gotten a bit better with the V12 updates)

</comment><comment><USER32> AWS, because it's what I know to be productive with from previous work. In the early stages of my current business I cannot afford to take the time to learn anything else.

With AWS I know the two biggest risks to its use are vendor lock-in and cost. Vendor lock-in is easy to mitigate early on through wise tech choices, and cost is something to mitigate later at scale when it matters more. And it preserves the option to use those additional, propriety services if at some point it is deemed worth the lock-in risk.

</comment><comment><USER33> A good first question to ask is what are your needs?

Do you just need to host a web site with some storage? If you're looking at an ecosystem which services interest you?

You might find this article useful: [http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/02/stories- from-trenches-sizing...](http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/02/stories-from- trenches-sizing-and-penny.html)

[Dislaimer: I'm a dev in the Azure Web Apps (was called Azure Websites) team]

</comment><comment><USER34> Historically, Linode. Good performance, and decent value.

More recently, Heroku. Expensive, but I love being able to leave the sysadmin to someone else.

<comment><USER35> I set up my first rails app on Linode about 5 years ago and used to scoff at people that went the "easy" route with Heroku.

Now I'm using Heroku and wonder why I wasted so much time before worrying about disk space, permissions, rotating logs, etc. I definitely get it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I use RunAbove[1] usually. Mostly because it's nearby (low latency), based on OpenStack (opensource and all the tools works ootb), and inexpensive.

[1] [https://www.runabove.com/](https://www.runabove.com/)

<comment><USER37> Looks too cheap. For how long have you used them and is all your experience positive. Their $/GB RAM is more than twice cheaper than DigitalOcean which are already quite cheap (compared to AWS and the like). Apparent downside of RunAbove is that the ration of cores to memory is lower.

<comment><USER36> It's OVH, the largest hosting provider in Europe. Cheap is their thing.

I have been using RunAbove specifically since October. It's fine. Even the sandbox instances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've used Google Compute Engine to host new web sites. It's cheap, it's rock solid.

I'm still running my fairly large wiki on Linode, just because I haven't had the time to properly migrate it to Compute Engine.

</comment><comment><USER39> Cycligent.com - layers on top of AWS. Allows for multiple simultaneous versions of an app on the same URL. Also, the easiest deployment I have ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER40> If I have a standard Rails app then Heroku. For anything more complicated it's either DO or AWS. All services on AWS (R53, S3, SES, etc)

</comment><comment><USER41> Google Compute Engine. Their Cloud Security team is staffed with rock stars in the industry.

</comment><comment> ic-junk Microsoft Azure

\+ Admin portal is good

\+ Git Deploy to "Websites" is slick with no setup (builds binaries)

\+ NodeJS / C#

\+ Azure Integration in Visual Studio

\+ Aggressive pricing

The other reason is there are other services that I can use if I don't want to build my own.

<comment><USER42> Are you posting exactly the same comment multiple times with slightly different wording and a new user account each time?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9583236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9583236)

<comment><USER43> I think the user just copy-pasted the linked comment. The linked comment account is quite old - 2487 days.

<comment> ic-junk No copy and pasting. 2 Different users posting around the same time. We just had same experiences. Mine was originally all in one sentence but I edited it after and reformatted to be bullet points.

<comment><USER44> The same points, in the same order, in the same hour.

<comment> ic-junk It was within 5 min of me posting. It wasn't displayed when I was typing mine in. I don't have the same points. I didn't even mention SQL DB because I don't use it. I see I also mentioned NodeJS where they didn't. I also talked about Azure integration in Visual Studio and they didn't. These points are quite typical for Azure users.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mixpanel Lets Devs Deliver Targeted Messages Through New In-App Notifications - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/22/mixpanel-in-app-notifications/

<comment><USER2> Just the other day, I was lamenting the fact that there weren't enough targeted ads on my phone. Thankfully these brave and selfless people have provided the answer.

<comment><USER3> These aren't ads. They're app specific notifications.

<comment><USER4> Noted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does this compare with what Intercom is offering? Is this a move to compete directly?

<comment><USER3> Intercom offers a way to directly communicate with your customers and have a conversation with them but this does not. In-app notifications are a one-way message to broadcast information in a beautiful way.

<comment><USER6> Don't take this the wrong way as I really like Mixpanel the product, but with the amount of buzzwords in those two sentences I have no idea what you just said.

<comment><USER7> I use both Mixpanel and Intercom.

Mixpanel has been excellent at showing marketing metrics in a typical SaaS funnel (Attention - e.g. visitors/locn./browser a consumable Google Analytics, Acquisition - e.g. did the visitor click the sign up button and become a new user, Retention - how often did the user come back). Mixpanel also has cohort analysis - users that signed up on a certain day, how long have they have been active/inactive and by extension you can calculate the churn. Depending on how you instrument your Mixpanel you can track user activity and understand product engagement. So if you release a new feature and there is no clicks on it, Mixpanel will show you that and you can remove it.

Intercom overlaps with Mixpanel in providing Acquisition information and Activity information (number of sign ins, last sign in etc). What is awesome about Intercom is the messaging feature. You can simply select one or more users and compose your responsive email (and you'll be shown a window on how the email looks in a mobile device) and send the email and track email metrics. To a product manager or customer success person at a SaaS business this is a great way to communicate with users. Intercom also has auto responders. So you can send welcome emails after a sign up (Mailchimp!).

In my opinion, Intercom is heading towards combining Mixpanel, Zendesk and Mailchimp all in one in the most elegant and practical way I can think of. Mixpanel and Kissmetrics are very similar.

(a self-plug: at kanban2go, we open sourced our mixpanel rails engine here: [https://github.com/kanban2go/mixpanel- rails](https://github.com/kanban2go/mixpanel-rails))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought / had hoped that this would be intercom competition. What are the chances of mixpanel adding that? I love Mixpanel and would really like to centralize my analytics / customer communications.</comment>


Phase 4 Of Facebook's Systematic Attack On Twitter: The Everyone Button - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/17/phase-4-of-facebooks-systematic-attack-on-twitter-the-everyone-button/?awesm=tcrn.ch_43I&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=techcrunch-autopost&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=direct-tcrn.ch <comment><USER2> 2 thoughts.

Firstly it will make FB security laughable because people are dozy.

Secondly the concept (minus the everyone button) is something they should have added ages ago. So it's good to finally see.</comment>