My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/my-ideas-are-shitty-so-im-going-on-an-internet-diet/swizec/2239 <comment><USER2> I've been thinking about this lately, too. A long time ago, I spent almost no time on the internet, because there wasn't really much of an internet to speak of. Instead, I wrote code. Lots, and lots, and lots of code. Some of it in assembly; some of it, even, in hex, with tons of printed pages of processor instructions in front of me.

Feats like that required a level of concentration that I find almost impossible to achieve today. I've developed a tic: write a line of code, check a news site; write another line of code, check email; write another line of code, check a social site.

I can't even call it procrastination anymore. It's something far more insidious. I'm fighting it, but the fight itself requires a nearly exhausting amount of effort.

It's got all the hallmarks of an addiction -- a psychological one, rather than a chemical one, maybe. The trouble is, with many addictive substances, completely avoiding them is a reasonable solution. With the internet, looking up a function reference or even testing and uploading a piece of code can lead too easily to diversions; it's difficult to separate necessary things from distractions and impractical to avoid it altogether.

I hate it. I've tried many of the tricks that people suggest, but the simple fact is, a significant part of my personality would rather mindlessly browse the internet instead of focusing intently for a long enough period of time to do something productive.

> _This leads me to believe that the ideas we have reflect the kind of world > we live in._

I think this is insightful. I somehow never managed to lose track of my childhood dreams, but instead I'm constantly preventing myself from accomplishing them.

Good luck on your internet diet. If you manage to stick with it for a full month, you're a better person than I am.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps you don't like what you're working on enough? I am generally in the same boat as you, constantly interrupted by the need for an easy information stimulus. But I have noticed that when I work on something that I truly and deeply love, then the allure of everything else fades and those "let me just check HN" thoughts are disspelled because that thing I am working on is so goddamn cool.

We all like to hack on stuff, but often our projects are a marriage of convenience between the love of hacking and some project idea that makes business sense. It is in these cases I have found there are often some very tough uphill climbs where the mind constantly tries to escape to more rewarding things. If you are smart and lucky enough to find something that is just so sock-rocking cool that you can't not think about it every waking minute, then I think your complaint would soon be that the only thing you ever want to do is work on your project :)

<comment><USER4> You are almost entirely correct. I had severe internet addiction (or so i thought) when I was working at this web dev sweat shop. I found it nearly impossible to concentrate, I was on the internet more than I was concentrating on work. One day I did an experiment. I downloaded the database, and setup my computer to work completely unplugged from the network. I was completely off the grid. Yet I still could not get work done. I would stare at the code, not really caring about it.

I found, I wasn't going to the internet because I loved the internet. I was going to the internet because I no longer had ANY interest in my work.

I quit shortly after that, my new job is extremely interesting, and my web usage has minimized severely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't radical enough. Allowing one hour of Facebook / HN per day is kind of like saying, "I'm going on a diet where I only eat ice cream between 8:00 and 9:00 pm."

Wikipedia is a huge time-sink. Needing online coding references is mostly laziness and habit. Download the docs you need, and if you still get stuck, read the source code of whatever it is you're stuck on. On the whole this is usually more efficient since there's no time lost in collateral browsing. (This is what I do on planes, trains, or when I've got Freedom.app turned on.)

I used to regularly go offline for 2-4 weeks at a time. I'd just go on vacation without a laptop or cell phone. One of the big lessons of being unplugged is just how wrong you are about needing to be all the time. Even as a founder I've managed to get away with going camping for a week by setting up everything so that emergency stuff goes out via SMS notification and throwing a netbook in my backpack (which effectively puts me in "push" mode for going online, which I've never needed or done on said trips).

Pull the plug completely. It'll be a much more instructive experience.

<comment><USER6> Working in PHP I find I could probably easily download the PHP docs and be nearly completely happy. Client side though is a different story, plenty of times I have look for something in the JQuery docs but needed to refer to something like a stack overflow question to really get what I need.

JQuery/ JS seem to lend themselves to many different ways to do tasks and the selectors are a bit like regex for me in that I haven't really committed it all to memory.

It is a trade off though with the distractions, possibly you could try and bank up stuff that docs don't give you the answer to and hit them all up in one go.

<comment><USER5> Pretty much the full web dev stack is open source, including jQuery. If you really get stuck, you'll actually learn more by reading the source code than by getting a piecemeal info on Stackoverflow. I don't remember having to do that with jQuery (most of the JS I write is without a JS library, and I have the rhino book), but I've frequently read the source code to bits of Rails or MRI when I've not understood something and been offline.

<comment><USER6> Yeah you definitely can glean a fair bit from the source, something like selectors is fairly verbose though as it is a parser so often it's far quicker just to Google up the specific thing you need. You can also get a deeper understanding from the source so it does probably balance out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Related: a few years ago, Aaron Swartz took a month-long internet fast.

Before: <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/offline>

After: <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/offline2>

<comment><USER8> Thanks for posting that, it was much more interesting and relevant than the OP link.

By the way, if you (the figurative 'you', not RyanMcGreal) find yourself unhappy and unable to concentrate on your work, consider that you may be depressed. Several years ago, I went through a bout of deep depression. I took Zoloft for about six months and was, for the first time in a long while, able to really focus and get work done. Accomplishing things leads to satisfaction, which snowballs to help ease the unhappiness. I've read elsewhere that borderline ADD-type symptoms are associated with depression, and let's face it, sitting in front of a glowing box all day _probably_ isn't the most psychologically healthy activity in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > There are a bunch of people out there right now solving #firstworldproblems.

> A waste of talent!

No, it's not. You know what's a waste? The common "appeal to worse problems".

Just because you are not working on curing cancer or solving poverty in Africa, it doesn't mean that your work is trivial, useless, or a waste. People in the first world have problems. Solving them is anything but a waste.

Every time you bring civilization a little step further through technology, you inevitably end up helping those who work hard at what you consider worthy problems. I'm sure at some point someone considered the creation of the web as a self-serving project for academics in the first world. It turned out to be the biggest innovation of the century, greatly benefiting people everywhere.

Innovation can come from anywhere. As an example, memcached came from LiveJournal. It's important not to fall into the trap of considering #firstworldproblems as not worthy of consideration or a waste.

<comment><USER10> Mmmh, he probably refers to things like developing Farmville. It is unclear why this solves any problems and not just wastes the time of users. But to be fair, if people wouldn't play Farmville doesn't mean they wouldn't find another way to waste their time :-)

<comment><USER2> That strikes me as one of those perfectly logical justifications for contributing to a problem: "Well, if we didn't produce cigarettes, someone else would anyway." It's also a red herring; it doesn't matter if someone else would or not, all that matters is whether or not _we_ did the deed.

<comment><USER10> Well, you are right here, but that's essentially the point I try to address. Everyone of us has to decide on his own if he wants to work on something, which has no positive effect on overall society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think the Internet has had any detrimental effect on the quality of my ideas, but it certainly has had a detrimental effect on my ability to execute them.

When I wrote my MA dissertation, I suffered from the problem that I would write a few sentences, then check the internet or a book or paper, to make sure I wasn't asserting something false, or to see if I could find something to support my assertions or whatever.

It made for exceptionally slow progress.

To fix this, I took my laptop to a coffee shop where I would have to pay for internet access, without taking any books or papers (or only taking the specific one I knew I needed to refer to). Any time I felt I needed to look something up, I would write it in my notepad, and carry on writing.

Once I had hit my target word count for the day, I would go home and look up the things I had noted down, and make any necessary corrections or footnotes.

Basically, I physically separated the act of writing from the act of research.

I've not tried it for coding, so I'm not sure how well it would work. On the one hand, you can find example code, handy boilerplate, or whole libraries for many problems, saving you masses of time over actually coding it yourself, but on the other hand, I know I've wasted hours looking for existing solutions to problems, when it would have been faster to just do it myself.

</comment><comment><USER12> I find it strange that some people in this discussion thread are trashing about companies that make stuff like farmville or facebook. So they are making something on which people are wasting their time. Does that make these people are bad or "waste of talent"? It sounds like they woke up one day and thought "lets make repetitive but addictive game/site which will enable people to waste lots and lots of their time and thus bring down our GDP". Come on guys, they found it fun to take up the challenges of making such a thing. Why should we look down upon them because they are not solving a "real" problem. To recite acangiano's example, technologies like memcached came from livejournal which was considered the biggest mode of pass time in pop culture. And even if zynga is not open sourcing something like that, so what? They are working on something they find is fun (and can make them shitloads of money) I do not think its upto us to judge their intentions (more over even if we did that, they would just sit on their pile of money and say FU).

By that logic all the game companies and social sites just shut down. (okey this is a major exaggeration of what you said, but added that because I find that a little funny.)

Edit: spellings

<comment><USER10> Don't get it wrong. Everyone has to decide on his own if he wants to work on something useful for society or not. There is no general way to judge that, but it is always a personal decision based on ethics the person considers worth to follow.

<comment><USER12> I get that. But the point is you should not try to demean the choice of others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like how he talks about "solving frivolous problems that ultimately contribute nothing to the betterment of humanity as a whole" and how it's a waste of talent.

But meanwhile, there's a giant "HipsterVision" ad on his sidebar.

<comment><USER14> Every addict has to hit rock bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure that the Internet is the problem here. Often you discover "grand ideas" by seemingly stumble upon them or by being active in a specific problem domain. Going on an Internet diet might not help. Unless, of course, you replace all that freed-up with other activities to fuel your creativity. So if you're looking for BigHuge Social problems to solve, why not getting involved with and picking the brains of organizations that encounter these on a daily basis, organizations such as Amnesty, Greenpeace, The Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. Together they probably experience every significant social, economic, political and environmental problem there is.

But then again, I'm not sure that the author's approach to grand ideas is that fruitful:

 _Lately we have seen a plague of Next Better Widget ™ startups and bright minds all over the world solving frivolous problems that ultimately contribute nothing to the betterment of humanity as a whole._

This is a dangerous fallacy as it can lead you towards a path of entrepreneurial apathy and cynicism. There's nothing wrong in positioning yourself so that you at least are solving everyday problems for people and companies. Ideally you're making a small yet valuable contribution to the improvement of lives and organizations.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not much of a diet, that. You pretty much described what I use the internet for, about 14 hours a day. OK, perhaps I visit HN more often, but otherwise I would fit the mould.

<comment><USER17> It's a diet, not cold-turkey. Maybe he'll develop some healthy habits, rather than ping-ponging between internet binge and internet fast.

....or maybe he'll extend his Internet Hour to his Internet Twenty-Three Hours, but it's still worth a shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> coding reference, wikipedia, blog writing, foursquare, skype, one hour HN every day... that's hardly what we can call an Internet diet.

What about taking some holidays with no Internet at all? Like 2 or 3 weeks hiking in some remote area - it takes a few days to stop thinking about checking emails, twitter, HN etc.

Bring a notebook and take notes about your ideas. Hiking works wonders for that, you'll get tons of ideas in a day hike.

<comment><USER19> Back when my laptop wasn't the size of a fully grown hippo, I used to take day-long train trips with it. Lacking a phone to tether it to meant I had nothing else to do but working and coding. Rarely have I been as productive as during those trips.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Things that work for me: long walks, swimming, talking to myself, writing furiously, reading Sherlock Holmes, wandering around town. Note the internet does not feature in any of those.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm leaning this way lately as well, and do some completely offline work outdoors, reading or jotting things down with pen&paper. That has the advantage of nice scenery, too.

But I think there are upsides/downsides to being 'connected'. Prior to using the internet a lot, I probably concentrated more, but partly because my knowledge and worldview were much more limited: it was easier to just work on one thing because I didn't know that other things existed, and had no way to access them! I wasn't tempted by other problems to work on, but I also didn't know that someone else had already done something similar that I could build off of, or that there's a related thing with a ton of interesting research questions, or a fruitful connection with another subject, or an exciting new development exactly in line with my interests, etc., etc. The Wikipedia-link- wander (and Google-scholar-link-wander) is sort of a microcosm of this: I've gotten distracted by it hundreds of times, but _also_ found a lot of very relevant stuff that way that improved my ideas, and kept me from going off on a tangent developing sort of crazy stuff in ignorance of how my ideas connected to existing ideas.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think allowing himself one hour of screwing off on the Internet every day is going to sabotage whatever catharsis this guy was looking for.

</comment><comment><USER23> Actually this is a bad idea if you want to improve your ideas. The internet is not the problem, the problem is how you use the internet.

You can use the internet to learn about 3rd world problems and expose yourself to different cultures and issues. What you will learn is the developing world major problems are not access to education, technology and infrastructure, access will come with appropriate use of funds. Corruption, mismanagement and large criminal organizations are major problems, they lead to a major misappropriation of funds. Every country has corrupt politician and criminals, some more than others, but when you're in a developing country the effects are really devastating.

And if you want to figure out ways to solve worthwhile first world problems you can use the internet to find people who are working on those things. There are plenty of people doing that.

</comment><comment><USER24> I just finished "Hamlet's BlackBerry," which is exactly about taking time to disconnect to get "depth." A little preachy some times, but thought-provoking.

Basically, we haven't developed the social norms needed to put some space between our brains and maximal connectedness, but we can look to history and personal experience to try and figure out what some of them would look like.

It's got some good historical bits about how different great thinkers have dealt with technological change (writing, printing press, telegraph were as disruptive as the Internet). It's also got some personal anecdotes of the author's decision to have an 'Internet Sabbath' every weekend, where from Friday night to Monday morning there is no connectivity in his house.

I'm not sure that engineering (including social engineering) is going to work in a situation like this, but it's probably not very harmful to try.

</comment><comment><USER25> With that list of yours, you are not being hard enough on banning the internet. I would suggest limit total internet usage to 1 hour (there are browser extensions to help with that), delete all social apps on phone, use IE6 so most good stuff won't work, remove flash plugin etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> What's the line? If they'd had the internet, they'd never have got round to inventing the internet.

</comment><comment><USER27> The best method of not wasting time on HN is just to ask yourself

"Is reading this article going to get my company started or is this content from another random dude complaining, whining or commenting on someone elses work or something irrelevant (google acquisitions, steve jobs's latest ramblings) ?"

Even if it doesnt stop you right now it will in the future - trust me. Keep asking the question to yourself. Slowly but surely it'll start kicking in.

Keep asking yourself this question everytime you are on Quora, Facebook, Hacker News, a Fantasy Football site or anything which is getting in the way of your launching your app.

This solution takes care of my need (addiction) to web reading. My need to write hasnt changed though. Finally my writing has overtaken my reading!

Alright gots to go ...

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't this like admitting you have a drug problem and instead of going cold turkey, you decide to just have an occasional hit. I agree with the authors philosophy, however you need to go full cold turkey!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a matter of practicality. As a web developer I simply cannot afford to go cold turkey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Link gives me 404 (or is that the point?).

But going by the comments, a Bob Newhart therapy is in order: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYLMTvxOaeE>

</comment><comment><USER30> 404 error - page not found. It isn't on wayback machine either, coral cache has the 404 page cached.

Anyone have a working cache of this?

EDIT: go to swizec.com and the post will turn up on the front page.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm curious to see if there will be a follow up where he shares all of the non-shitty ideas he has while disconnected from the Internet.

Personally, I'm a little skeptical of the statement "The main difference between my ten year old self and me is the internet." I can think of many, many things that have changed since I was 10 years old that have far more impact than the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER32> As of writing this, the link is not working for me. How come error 404 has become the new 500 for web servers under load?

<comment><USER33> same here. got a 404 error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> seems like the next next best widgets for hooking up with people at college and telling your friends what you're doing at SxSW have turned out to be things rather important in some of the most pivotal events we've recently seen in developing countries.

the place the first and third world are perhaps the closest in on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER10> Mmmh, would have been good if he would be stricter. I'm not sure why someone can't stay away from Facebook & Co. for 30 days.

However, in general I agree with his perception that the daily flow of news doesn't help us in focusing on the important problems of life.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to go completely without at first. Then I realized 99% of my social interaction happens online and I am not interested in [essentially] walking off into the desert to think for 30 days.

Also reducing "frivolous internets" from 24/7 to an hour a day. A solid hour at that, not interspersed throughout the day ... will be hard.

<comment><USER10> It worries me if I read that someones social interactions happens 99% online. Are there no spouse, neighboors, friends?

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends on how you count. There are only so many IRL people you can interact with on a daily basis and even with most of those I tend to keep in touch online for various reasons.

99% was an exaggeration though of course :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "bright minds all over the world solving frivolous problems that ultimately contribute nothing to the betterment of humanity as a whole."

My favorite quote: "Strange how much human accomplishment and progress comes from contemplation of the irrelevant." - Scott Kim

</comment><comment><USER36> If you want ideas to pour in, just change mind work or information consumption via internet to something that doesn't require it - such as house chores, hiking, any kind of sport. Sightseeing and doing nothing for several hours also make wonders.

</comment><comment><USER37> I found that taking the bus to work has given me 80 distraction-free minutes per day. It's much easier to focus long enough to read an entire paper or chapter of a book on the bus than in my office or living room.

</comment><comment><USER38> Let us know how it goes in the end. Do your ideas actually improve?

</comment><comment><USER39> i am tired of the "the web is destroying people's memories" or "causing lack of focus" jabber. the internet is a big place, its a multipurpose tool! i use it with extreme productivity to learn. i get useful information from it. yes, i fritter by casting about frivolously, and have experienced some of its addictive qualities, but like anything you gotta have goals on its use .. unless of course it is a true addiction, then i am afraid it is cold turkey for you.

</comment><comment><USER40> By all means, cut back on internet use, but if your goal is to come up with important ideas that's not much of a strategy. [EDIT: grammar]

</comment><comment><USER41> I find this to be very helpful:

<https://github.com/leftnode/get-shit-done>

</comment><comment><USER42> OT, but the font used in the blog makes it very hard to read. Font face rendering seems to differ depending on OS and browser so I'm not sure if it's just my system (OSX / Chrome).

<comment><USER43> <http://www.readability.com/>

Takes me only a moment (upon landing at such a page) to hit my R bookmarklet. [Though there is now the pause while they process and resend from their server; I preferred the classic in-browser processing.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> 404 Error...

=\

</comment><comment><USER45> I wouldn't suggest an internet diet to anyone over 15 years of age. Brains feed on information and the information on the internet is vastly more interesting than what most people encounter in an everyday "offline" life. Seems like the problem is the distractions caused by social sites. It's easy to turn that habit off, you are not missing much anyway. If you feel you are feeding too much on web fragments, read some books on a kindle for a break.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know how in the old days people used to travel to experience something new?

This is similar.

Also there's the idea that we get really good ideas when we have time to process the information we have collected. And I do in fact use this to great advantage when developing algorithms. Learn about a problem, then just go do something else.

Let's say for the past few years I've been cramming information into my head, now I'm taking a break to see if I can't come up with some insight.

<comment><USER46> "You know how in the old days people used to travel to experience something new?"

What do you mean "in the old days"? From what I can see people are still travelling a hell of a lot to "experience something new" and this is often _facilitated_ by the Internet. And it's hardly an age thing - most people I know in their 20s seem to be very keen on travelling.

<comment><USER47> ...as long as there is fast wireless internet access at the destination.

<comment><USER48> Absolute worst thing though is a slow or troublesome connection; in that case you're better off with no connection at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CSS3 font bird - <AUTHOR> http://martingauer.de/font-bird

<comment><USER2> Love it. Showed it to my 4 year old and she loves it too ;).

</comment><comment><USER3> awesome effort

</comment><comment><USER4> very nice</comment>


Twitter's Weird Lock In - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/04/21/twitters-weird-lock-in/ <comment><USER2> What ever happened to using social networks the way we used them in the late 1990's? Having fun with your friends? I get it that these sites have plans to monetize and become successful businesses, that doesn't mean you have to vote with your wallet too whether or not it's worth being a part of.

<comment><USER3> There are still plenty of networks/forums where people continue having fun with their buddies, it is just that techcrunch doesn't write about them.</comment></comment>


Modern Web Application Development with Perl - <AUTHOR> http://modernperl.net/developers/web-application-development.html

<comment><USER2> For those looking at Dancer as a framework, be aware that there is a Dancer 2 "rewrite" project. The purpose of the new project is to "fix" the use of globals and also to have a consistent core API.

<http://advent.perldancer.org/2011/8>

</comment><comment><USER3> May I ask.. Is there anything similar to Rails or Django for Perl ?

<comment><USER4> That's Catalyst. Dancer is Sinatra. I don't know anything about Mojolicious. Is that Node?

<comment><USER5> Mojolicious starts out as Flask/Sinatra, with some added options to grow beyond that.

It does pride itself as a batteries-included, modular framework. And one that doesn't pull in loads of dependencies. Which I can appreciate on one hand, on the other, you do reinvent a lot of stuff that would be on CPAN.

(But, well, looking at the dependency list of Moose alone…)

<comment><USER6> I really don't understand where this oft-repeated FUD about Moose having a lot of deps comes from. Take a look at the list of deps on <https://metacpan.org/release/Moose>

I count 18 direct dependencies, 2 of which are core. If you look at the full expanded deps list at <http://deps.cpantesters.org/?module=Moose> it's not many more, especially since most of the 2nd (or more) order deps are core modules like ExtUtils::MakeMaker, Test::More, etc.

For extra added irony, a bunch of the Moose deps are tiny modules we extracted from Moose or Class::MOP in order to make their functionality availability _without having to install Moose_. This includes Class::Load(::XS), Package::Stash(::XS), Devel::GlobalDestruction, Package::DeprecationManager, Eval::Closure, and Dist::CheckConflicts.

Had we just note bothered to break things up we'd have to deal with a lot less complaining.

<comment><USER5> 18 isn't "lots"? I'm not saying that I've got a problem with this, as installing CPAN modules and deploying them isn't really a problem at all. I think in the end it's probably the wrong decision to avoid using features just because of something easily automated.

I just meant that I can understand the desire. We programmers try to make code clear and concise (hopefully), so that we can better keep the system in our heads. Apply this on a larger scale, and you often get reinvented wheels and proprietary solutions. "Other people's code" is often used as a curse.

Hey, my day job involves Catalyst and Moose heavily, and I wouldn't ever want to go back to enterprise Java. So if I came of as "fuddy", I'm sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> this sounds like a very steampunk idea

</comment><comment><USER8> A Python programmer recently told me that Perl is a Write-Only language.

<comment><USER9> I only know a few phrases in Russian, Mandarin, and Japanese. Are those write only languages due to their intrinsic properties or my unfamiliarity?

<comment><USER8> It is a joke. To quote Guido Van Rossum, "if you look at it from 10km above, Python and Ruby and Perl are exactly the same language". I find it funny when people hate on Perl for its syntax, because it's so similar to languages people rave about. Perl's syntax is very expressive and if one knew it, it would seem as natural as Python's whitespace to a Pythonista.

<comment><USER9> Guido's right.

I often forget the trailing colon in conditionals in Python the same way that I almost always include a trailing comma after the final element of a list in JavaScript.

I don't have these problems in Haskell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> s/modern/playing catch-up/g

<comment><USER10> Catching up to what? Catalyst was first released early 2005.

<comment><USER4> Funny you should mention Catalyst, because the last time I tried to return to Perl (2007?) I tried Catalyst and the experience was not positive.

The page reads like a "me too" of web development. The term "Modern Perl" sounds like it will be innovative and different from other options on other platforms. I would love a compelling reason to use Perl again! But I never see one. The innovation is happening elsewhere. Calling things "modern" doesn't make them that.

<comment><USER9> _I would love a compelling reason to use Perl again! But I never see one._

The combination of Moose, Catalyst, Plack, and DBIx::Class is unbeatable for me. Throw in Dist::Zilla, perlbrew, and cpanminus and I'm almost unstoppable. That's my preference, but the difference between this and pre-modern Perl feels to me like the difference between writing client-side JavaScript by hand and using jQuery.

In 2007 you had Catalyst and DBIx::Class with much less maturity.

Maybe you want to see more amazing new ideas that have never been done before (and that's fine), but even if these things are only incremental inventions or syncretized ideas (and Moose alone is more than that), the combination is very powerful.

That combination is all the more powerful when it takes advantage of the entire CPAN ecosystem.

<comment><USER4> I need to look at Moose. Although I've got to say that I think I'm the only person who liked Perl 5's object scheme the way it was.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2010/11/6-startup-ideas-every-nerd-has.html <comment><USER4> It's true that such ideas tend to be magnets for sloppy thinking, but I think most if not all of them could be pulled off if done right.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, what do you dislike or think can be done better with Craigslist?

In other words, if you were going to build a Craigslist competitor what would you focus on doing differently?

<comment><USER6> (I'm not pg, obviously.)

I've found the scantiness of information in Craigslist posts a weakness. I have no idea how to fix that, but I rule out a large fraction of ads based on "Not enough info to know what this person is selling." For example, many ads don't have pictures, and many that do have pictures that are tiny and inscrutable.

<comment><USER7> I'd argue that's a strength for Craigslist. The fact that you don't need pictures (or even content really) lowers the barrier to posting.

What craigslist gets wrong is the posting procedure. It's arcane. My in-laws can't figure it out with the email responses and what-not. Better would be some way to submit posts by email (or mobile app) and have them automatically posted to the site... like posterous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my day (I'm only 32), the startup ideas everyone always wanted to do were:

1\. A better bug/issue tracking system

2\. A custom CMS

3\. A code library/platform for easily building Business CRUD apps.

4\. A word processing app that has only the 20% features that 80% of Word users use.

5\. A better classmates.com

<comment><USER9> It seems like someone did do them! Obvious examples include:

1\. basecamp/fogbugz/jira

2\. Confluence/Sharepoint

3\. django/rails

4\. Google Docs

5\. Facebook

<comment><USER10> I think there is a lot further someone could take #3 (crud apps for business). While django/rails are great, I think you could build some more specific tools that would provide a lot more leverage in some cases. (Maybe something like DabbleDB but with some more specifics built in.)

<comment><USER11> Like <http://www.appignite.com/> ?

<comment><USER10> Maybe? I don't know - the linked page doesn't really have any information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here are some of the other common one's I've heard:

\- A social-networking site that totally respects my privacy and lets me own my data!

\- An app store that lets anybody sell their digital stuff to anyone, not in some walled garden!

\- A drag and drop interface that lets you make any program you want...totally code-free!

I could go on and on...

<comment><USER13> As a founder of a startup doing #3 (Stencyl), I can attest to that idea being an enormous time sink and risk. I can name at least 10 startups or larger companies that went after that idea and either died or pivoted.

What we have is working, and it's working well, but as we press forward, we find that our strongest value proposition is no longer the code-free aspect, which turns out to be just one small part of a larger puzzle. Once you remove that roadblock, other pain points come to light that are far more difficult to solve.

<comment><USER14> any chance we might be able to read about what some of those points are?

<comment><USER13> Sure, I'll list out some of the pain points we're aware of and have tried to address.

\- Not able to think logically. There's only so much you can accomplish if you take logical thinking out of the equation, and when you do, the creations are underwhelming. Many startups set out to make creation _easy_ , and that works to some extent, but the real solution to the problem may be to try to educate users and bring them up to a minimum bar (learn how to fish), rather than trying to lower the bar to the floor (give them the fish). This would be suicide for most startups, but the users of creative apps are more patient and more willing to learn and grow with the app. Sure, we'll shut out some people this way, but we want to lift up the right, motivated people, rather than trying to lift the entire world up.

\- Can't draw/other artistic skill. Shockingly, this ends up being a big problem, and people absolutely _hate_ using placeholder art if they can't draw. We've addressed this by integrating a marketplace for pulling in all kinds of resources.

\- Can't work with other people. Many game projects fail due to bad communication (if you're not working solo). They start out strong when brainstorming and then die somewhere in the middle, usually when the members fall out of regular contact or don't know what's going on. We've integrated some features into our app to directly address this after observing how our users interacted with each other on several group projects.

\- Set their sights too high. No, you're not going to create an MMORPG or RTS as your first project. ;) This one isn't directly addressed by our app right now and falls more under the umbrella of general user education and progression. One idea we have is to incorporate game elements (turning game creation into a game?) to nudge the user towards making baby steps towards completing something through a quest structure, rather than trying to let them go free from day 1.

The take home point is that like any startup, what you set out to do ends up evolving as you move along and that the problem you're solving turns out to be different and sometimes larger than what you originally expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope I don't come across as negative here, but I _hate_ lists like this.

Peopel are always raining on each others' ideas

"Oh, what, you're going to make a _myspace_ clone? Bahahahaha." (facebook)

"Oh, what, you're going to make a _facebook_ clone? Bahahahaha." (twitter)

"Oh, what, you're going to make _another_ dating website? Bahahahaha."

(Okcupid, plentyoffish)

"Oh, what, you're going to make _another_ social bookmarking website? Bahahahaha."

(Reddit, digg, hacker news, etc.)

This sort of "You can't improve on an existing design" rhetoric is usually coming from the same people who champion companies like netflix and say things like "The RIAA suing downloaders is like wagon wheel manufacturers suing car tire manufacturers! GET WITH THE TIMES, HELLO!"

You want to make a better dating website? Awesome, I hope you do and I hope it's better than okcupid! If it fails, guess who's going to come out the other side better than they were when they started?

You want to make an abstract machine learning system? Good! I hope you do! Guess who's probably going to be learning a lot about ML when they come out the other side?

You want to make a craigslist/ebay mashup? Good! Do it today! Start it right now and, if it's better than craigslist, my friends and I are all going to use it! How much are you going to learn about interface/UX design in the process?

You want to apply gaming mechanics to exercise? Good! Do it and tell me about it! That sounds awesome! Make an iPhone app for it, make a facebook app for it, let me pick random strangers across the internet to challenge at it. Make leaderboards and lots of badgers, and blog about it. If you fail, write more blog posts about _why_ you failed.

I'm sorry, I'm sure the author of this blog post had good intentions; trying to help other geeks, but I find this sort of "don't even try this because it's a stupid idea and you're going to fail" attitude _extremely_ harmful.

The first project I ever did was called <http://newslily.com> it was a fark/reddit/hn/digg clone. Did I sell it to google for 2 billion dollars and retire to a yacht somewhere just east of anywhere on the planet? No. Did I go from knowing absolutely nothing whatsoever about web development to being able to turn ideas into things? Yes.

My current project is called <http://thingist.com> . Have people said "oh, psh, you're making a twitter clone...boorrrrriinnnggggggg."?

Guess who doesn't care? My daydreaming about having 50 millions users is forcing me to learn about scaling, and how to use mod_python (oh, and if I get _super_ crazy, maybe nginx as a web cache for my 10 users!). In a year, or two months, or six weeks, or however long it takes me to decide that, yeah, well, it's just another twitter clone and isn't going to get more than 10 users, I'm going to be 1 twitter clone closer experience wise to making something people love. (Although I still think that thingist isn't a twitter clone).

My advice: make 10 twitter clones and 20 abstracted ML frameworks. _NOT_ doing this is like a running coach advising their runners not to waste their time jogging around their neighborhood because they're really not going anywhere anyway.

<comment><USER16> Life is very, very short. Given the choice between not building anything at all and building a "Craigslist killer" that no one will use, I absolutely agree - go for it!

Given the choice between building a cliche project and something a bit more off the beaten path - you may as well put a few extra days of thought into a project before you start, and come up with something unique (as long as you don't spend all your time thinking and none of your time doing).

The problem with the ideas listed is that they're obvious - both myself and my friends have talked about/wanted to approach almost every single one - <USER2> it's not obvious how to actually build a better mouse trap for each of them. It's useful to realize when you're trying to attack a generic problem (that has already been solved) with an equally generic strategy.

<comment><USER17> The ideas are obvious because people want them.

Lots of people want a Craigslist alternative that doesn't have the shittiest search interface this side of 2004. Lots of people want a dating site with a 'market' that doesn't heavily heavily favor women. Lots of people want to exercise/lose weight in a fun game-like way. Lots of people want the concept of TripAdvisor but don't feel like they identify at all with the typical TripAdvisor reviewer.

It's hard to learn about why these things are difficult without actually trying to do them.

<comment><USER18> _"Lots of people want a dating site with a 'market' that doesn't heavily heavily favor women."_

Yeah, they're called men. And given that history tells us that attracting men to dating sites isn't a business-limiting problem, it follows that building a (heterosexual) dating site that appeals to men is not a good business idea.

<comment><USER19> I think what he meant was dating sites suck if you're a man since: 1.) Men do all the chasing/initiating contact. 2.) Women get inundated with a lot of messages from a lot of other eligible men that you're competing with your entire neighborhood for a single girl. 3.) Hence women tend to be really picky and chances of her noticing/replying back you are incredibly low.

<comment><USER20> how is this different from real life?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Versions of #4 have worked, though not usually structured as X% of _all_ future earnings. The most common version is the group-of-freelancers variant, where a group of people are really working independently, but do it legally via a partnership, which pools income to reduce risk, share upsides, smooth cash-flow bumps, etc.

It's pretty well-established in a number of professions outside tech, e.g. in law, a partnership of four or five lawyers will all get rich if _any_ case that any of them took hits the giant-settlement jackpot.

<comment><USER22> A workers co-op is a good alternative to a partnership if your jurisdiction has sane laws. (in other words if you're not in the United States).

The big downside to partnerships is that you're exposed to unlimited liability.

<comment><USER21> The exact terms vary, but in some states an LLP or LLC is a good alternative with limited liability (just how limited the liability is also varies).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think that all of these (or at least most of them) are reasonable ideas that could work. I think the biggest problem is that a lot of them are either technically difficult or involve entering crowded markets.

For example, the Craigslist killer can and has worked. The guys at RentHop and AirBnB are both attacking pieces of Craigslist's functionality.

The problem is that most nerds don't have the ability to pull these ideas off. Heck, most people in general don't have what it takes to build a successful company. There's a big difference between hacking on something for a weekend and building a company out of it (although you can't build a company without starting somewhere).

Overall, a lot of people (including many successful YC Founders) start out with stupid, unfocused ideas, and morph into something that's focused and solves a problem that people need solved. It's all just part of the process - if you wait for the perfect idea to hit you, you might never get started.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is something common with some of these ideas worth noting:

Dating sites, social travel (social anything), and Craigslist killer all depend on network effects.

A common argument for starting a new business is that "hey, someone else already has this idea, they've mapped out the market and proved it can make money." This works really well for things like restaurants where there is no network effect, no incentives for new users to go with well-established providers or disincentives for existing users to switch providers.

In the social/dating/craigslist space, you don't just need to build a better X, you need to convince people to leave the old X (or pray that they've never heard of the old X before and won't consider it) and sign up for your new X.

In terms of dating, social and craigslist at least you're only dealing with one type of customer. As soon as you turn to local events/businesses you needs to do this for two (the people looking for events and businesses, and the promoters and business owners).

Cable networks are similar businesses, but I think the key distinction is that they charged money for their services. Somewhat paradoxically, I think this makes it much easier for people to switch than if all the services are free - there is the immediate incentive of "save $10 a month!"

I think this is why AOL and Prodigy managed to make so much money. Then all the free (ad-supported) online services came along and basically wiped out the paid services, and intensified the network effect and its disincentive for switching to better services.

</comment><comment><USER25> > _Giant, Purposeless, Unfocused Machine Learning System._

There's a YC company that does this in a general way but I would not label their use cases as "purposeless".

<http://www.directededge.com/>

<comment><USER26> You could even argue that is what Amazon.com did with their recommendations. And the main reason I signed up for netflix was after working on the netflix prize. And I have been rewarded by buying things I wouldn't have otherwise and watching movies I had never heard about, but loved. There is $$$ in recommendations and selling solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I feel like this misses a ton of apps. In chronological order:

textbook swap todo list dorm rating apartment/roommate rating/review local business rating/review something to hack the stock market better pet site better dating site better wedding site

<comment><USER28> I agree with your list, but could you please format it for better readability? Each of those on a separate line would do wonders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Amen. Definitely been sucked into and subsequently failed at Social Travel big time. I think that's a sexy one, there is an unsaid allure in it of being able to mix travel with running a startup. Such a crowded space, and most fail out the gate. Once you do the math you realize there is far more travel media out there than travelers, especially in a down economy.

Anyone who loves to travel and wants to get out more, but is stuck inside writing friggin code all day gets this idea at least once. "Wait! How would I combine writing code with travel? I know, I'll make my own travel recommendation site." The irony is in reality I traveled wayyy less as a result of committing to this idea. Bummer

<comment><USER30> "Once you do the math you realize there is far more travel media out there than travelers, especially in a down economy".

I recently shut down my travel startup - a site that offered tours and excursions in many of the world's greatest cities.

Why? The VC-funded big boys have 2,000 affiliates and many thousands of inbound links to their site. This bumps them up in the organic rankings which sends more traffic to their site - enabling them to gather more conversion data. As conversions gradually increase, their product becomes more attractive to other affiliates, and more sign up, thus perpetuating a positive feedback loop.

Learned a ton during the process of building the company, and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

To all prospective founders out there - really do your homework and understand the competitive advantages held by the top competitors in your market - <USER3> that are very difficult, time consuming, and/or expensive to replicate!

For example, 37 Signals now has a passionate fan base of hundreds of thousands of people based on years of teaching and writing opinionated rants. Nearly impossible to replicate for a new startup trying to market simple project management software.

Also, realize that cute innovations and a great user experience might not overcome the massive reach held by existing companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> One idea I hear all the time: Better agile/project management software. I've never met a nerd who liked what they were using (myself included).

<comment><USER32> This is actually an interesting one, because I think it falls into its own specific category: workflow-specific startups. The reason no one is ever happy with project management software is because everyone works slightly differently, and every nerd will occasionally have the urge to write one that matches the way _they_ work.

It's likely there are other startups that fall into this category. Time management and to-do lists seem like fairly obvious ones.

<comment><USER33> This is definitely a huge problem in project management tools. I don't mean to spam, but with AgileZen (<http://agilezen.com/>), we're trying very, very hard to create a project management app that isn't workflow-specific. I'd be very interested in knowing how we could make it even more flexible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I dunno, I agree that everyone and their brother has these ideas, but it's like writing a novel. In literature there are a bunch archetypes (hero, heroine, Christ-like figure, etc), it's the nuance the author brings to the new iteration . Your right in that everyone has these ideas, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't think about ways to do them in a different way!

</comment><comment><USER35> He forgot the data synchronization system, except that Dropbox pulled that off. Also the "social browsing", "see who else is visiting this webpage", except that Facebook is after that one already. Also the "alert me if a website has changed", well, I don't know if that really exists in a usable way or not.

<comment><USER36> <http://www.changedetection.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> _"Gaming Mechanics Applied To X Vertical"_

I have seen real money spent on something along the lines of "Hey, we're in accounting business! Let's make a Facebook of accounting where accountants will create profiles and publish their annual and quarterly reports." (details changed to protect the guinnocent.)

</comment><comment><USER38> Favorite comment: "You should have made us sign an NDA before reading this post."

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm pretty sure that "Better Search Engine" was on the list when Google, Cuil, Bing, and DuckDuckGo were founded. SOmetimes you win, sometimes not so much.

Let's get empirical for a moment. If we are sifting through applications for funding, do you think that there is a significant correlation between whether a business is on this list or not and its eventual success or failure?

If the other factors driving outcomes--founder quality and so forth--have higher confidence levels, this kind of list isn't very useful.

</comment><comment><USER40> Never say never. Ramit Sethi, a smart writer and generally perceptive entrepreneur, highlighted textbook exchanges in May 2006 as his top "stupid frat-boy business idea". He wrote: "NO BOOK EXCHANGE HAS EVER REALLY SUCCEEDED. I HATE TO CRUSH DREAMS BUT PLEASE FORGET ABOUT THIS."

[http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/8-stupid-frat- boy-...](http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/8-stupid-frat-boy-business- ideas/)

But now there is Chegg.

And Chegg is not just Sethi's despised textbook exchange idea -- it started as a Craigslist competitor for campuses! And when it pivoted to its current model in 2007, it first used the name textbookflix.com! And it competes against others on price! So it fits multiple categories from these Ramit Sethi and Elad Gil 'never work' lists.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chegg>

Estimates are that it'll have more than $100 million in revenue this year and is growing to a dominant position in a large market.

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/05/teardown-chegg/>

Chegg's final success isn't assured -- especially given the rise of e-textbooks -- but it's passed the point of "tempting but foolish nerd/frat- boy startup idea".

</comment><comment><USER41> I think the point this author is making is not, "These ideas won't work, so don't do it." but rather, "You might think these ideas are unique, but they're not." So he's not shooting down the ideas per say, but warning people that if they undertake such a project they need to be honest to the fact that your "variant" needs to be something special and/or you have to execute seamlessly to get ahead of the crowd.

</comment><comment><USER42> The stereotypical "never gonna work" idea that I always see is this:

* There's a sort of thing that there are many implementations of (website logins, say)

* Having many implementations is confusing, one canonical one would be better (Hey! Let's make OpenID!)

* They make a new one, announce it, everyone sees that it's not as mature as what they already have (Provider? XRI?)

* Nobody else adopts the new one, now there's one more competing implementation for the next never-gonna-work idea to contend with.

Note: I don't want to pick on OpenID, it actually works pretty well, but I needed an example.

Once you start looking for this pattern you see it everywhere: Linux distros, OpenSocial, OS X package managers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER43> I imagine "social networking site"/"myspace killer" would have been on the list five years ago.

The article sketches ideas that have promise and long odds. Five years ago, most people who were trying to create "yet another social networking site" looked dumb. One doesn't now.

There is are many reasons that most of the cool ideas people come with brainstorming late at night don't work. But it's not that they are bad ideas. The factors for failure include the distance between idea and execution, competition, the need for good design, etc..

It's just a question of whether you want to make an easy bet or a hard bet.

</comment><comment><USER44> He forgot the 3D window manager.

<comment><USER12> Speaking of which ...I wonder if we will hear anything from <http://bumptop.com/> via Google soon?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Another one he's missed : Algorithm to predict stock market movements.

<comment><USER46> And another: Algorithm to predict football scores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This reads like a list of the Montreal startup scene. So far I've met people working on dating sites, purposeless recommendation engines (to be fair, in one of those startups two of the guys were part of the team that won the Netflix prize, the other one is headed by someone who placed second in the GitHub contest, so they're not dilettantes at least), social travel ("we'll get film students to make videos about restaurants... for free!"), I'm pretty sure there was a Craigslist killer there somewhere.

Other hard things of dubious utility people work on:

1\. Local events

2\. Local business directories (I was once removed from this space by working at a company that provided an integrated directory/SEM buying product to various Yellow Page companies around the world; the cynic in me thinks this is a great way to fleece small businesses, although if you try it really can drive a lot of business)

3\. Microsoft Access for the web. Dabble DB tried (acquired by Twitter), I tried, <http://formlis.com/> (HN user warrenwilkinson) is trying. There's probably a bunch more. Google Forms and Wufoo seem to be the most successful with the least functionality. The hard part here seems to be getting people to know about the service. Companies typically contract these apps out, and the contractor companies are more interested in $30k contracts to build custom form apps and making busywork for PHP drones than reselling a solution where the customers or other contractors can cut them out as middlemen. Actually the more I think about it, the more I want to try this again.

<comment><USER47> _Local events_

This is my "Dream Project" - i.e. the one I'll build when I have endless free time that I'd like to devote to working.

I'd love to know why you think it's of dubious utility. (Aside from movie times, I've _never_ discovered an event through an "event site" - but I feel like I could...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The most common thing I see from such people is a desire to break off and do whatever is being done at their current company, but to do it _right_ instead.

</comment><comment><USER49> Dating sites still kind of suck.

If I were building a dating site, it wouldn't be anything like what the original author suggests. Rather than focus on matching algorithms or ways to stimulate initiative (okcupid is already reasonably good at that), I'd focus on providing value after the initial connection has been made. I don't know of any dating site that does that well, at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER50> I would also like to submit a whole spectrum of ideas that have a huge bootstrap problem and that problem is often hand waved away.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think the wrong-headed idea that many nerds have is that creating a startup is mostly about having a brilliant idea. If someone comes along and creates something similar to their idea, they think "that could have been me."

I suspect that the real value comes from execution of the idea, perseverance, and willingness to let your idea evolve until you've created something that people want. Often folks fail to recognize that the ability to execute and evolve (and be willing to fail) are traits that we don't all have, and so it's very possible that it couldn't have been them.

While there are probably some ideas that are doomed to fail, I don't think that label applies to any of the ones from the original post.

</comment><comment><USER52> Does this mean I should stop working on www.craigsmatchsquaretravelocifund.com?

<comment><USER53> there's already an app for that

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I wish somebody would actually make a better Social Travel website. TripAdvisor is _exceedingly_ unpleasant to use, despite the solid content.

I keep hoping that wikitravel will thrive but it's never very good...

<comment><USER55> I'm working on a niche social travel website that's currently underserved. Launching next week; will share on HN!

<comment><USER55> Would love any feedback: parkgrades.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1980478>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> All of those ideas have clearly worked.

<comment><USER57> Of course they all worked at least once. Otherwise the siren song wouldn't be so seductive.

Often half the problem with an idea _is_ that it has already worked once. In a world where you're allowed to assume away Craigslist, cloning Craigslist would have a much better chance of working.

<comment><USER58> Kijiji and Gumtree have also succeeded in this space (albeit in different countries).

What's killing Craigslist/gumtree/etc in practice is their generality, they're no longer the dominant player in their most profitable markets (jobs, dating, housing) all of which are being carved away by specialist sites.

<comment><USER59> If Craigslist is getting killed, they sure are making a lot of money doing it.

<comment><USER58> TV killed the Radio, doesn't stop radio being a big business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> isn't hunch an example of #2?

as an outsider, with many west coast friends, it appears that both start-ups and investors move in herds. for example, six months ago it was location-based check-in services?

</comment><comment><USER61> It boils down to the cliche "if you think you are unique, you are probably an asshole". The mere fact that you manage to find a co-founder in your own country/city is enough to prove that there are lot of other people in ROW going in the same direction where you are headed. It's not about doing things uniquely, its about doing things in a better way or at least trying to do it in a better way. So, I should get back to work now.

</comment><comment><USER62> Meh, these are more like ideas that nearly every person has, and then wants a developer 'nerd' to implement (for free mind you, for x% of future profits).

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm guilty of #4.

Made this but never followed through with it. <http://brandonpaton.com/demo/>

</comment><comment><USER64> I don't see why 1 to 4 shouldn't work. How many failed dating sites are there? Also, many dating sites seem to simply be a matter of efficient advertising - even if you are a newcomer, if you can pour enough money into advertising, you are all set.

Machine learning: I hope Directed Edge is doing well (YC startup).

Social Travel: what are some good social travel sites? I don't know any.

<comment><USER16> >How many failed dating sites are there?

That's the problem, we don't know, do we?

<comment><USER64> I know a lot of successful ones and no failed ones. But asking here, maybe somebody who knows a failed one could speak up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Social e-commerce". I get a lot of project bid requests for variations on this theme. Especially when the economy really tanked every panicking startup tried to pivot their business plan to be shopping related for a while. Very difficult to implement, people are much less amped about sharing purchases than nerds would expect

</comment><comment><USER16> Take-out services / services for restaurants.

</comment><comment><USER65> I know of companies doing well in at least 5 of the 6 spaces listed here. (Future success of friends being the missing one, and there very well may be companies doing well there, and you could almost consider the fact that prominent angels often raise money from other prominent angels as an instance of such.)

<comment><USER66> Ah wheels, I saw #2 and I thought of you. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> No "groupware"?

<http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html>

</comment><comment><USER68> Don't forget MMORPG!

<comment><USER69> Which is often "just like game X, but more complicated."

I think that's the route of most startup pipe-dreams: Take a successful site or product, and make it more complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Quite pleased to see none of these are on the list of ten startup ideas I released a few weeks ago: <http://www.puremango.co.uk/2010/10/ten-ideas/>

</comment><comment><USER71> This site is hilarious. Every successful business idea I've had was met with derision by every respected professional I encountered.

</comment><comment><USER72> #2 works and is a profitable company called tellapart (<http://tellapart.com>).

<comment><USER73> #2 reminded me of Directed Edge's generalized recommendations engine (<http://directededge.com/>).

<comment><USER72> Cool, didn't know about directedge. Any idea how profitable are they?

[edit] Crunchbase says they only received YC's $15k in seed funding. That's weird for a B2B company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> is anyone still trying to innovate in the online dating arena? i thought okcupid has had it pretty much locked for a while.

<comment><USER75> Anyone tried a dating site that works more like a deal-a-day site? I've had that on my list for a while. Figured that if you give people 100+ prospective partners, they will hunt for the best (who might be out of their league) and get nowhere. If you show them one at a time, they might make a "would I go on a date with this person" choice.

HotOrNot tries throwing people at you in a sequence, but do you really make a proper decision when you know there are countless more around the corner?

<comment><USER76> Could work. Okcupid actually offers this feature.

On the other hand if the person is picky enough, they'll just be rejecting everyone they see and give up on the site after a few days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> ... until they do

</comment><comment><USER78> The idea for building a better search engine and a better social network was on a list like that, once upon a time.

</comment><comment><USER79> Social network. That tends to be a common one.

(yes, I spent a long time creating a social network, no it went nowhere special :))

</comment><comment><USER80> How about the best to do list ever!

</comment><comment><USER81> Geeks are so incredibly negative it's why I end up trying to convince friends to find a better career filled with happier people whenever they ask how to get into the tech field.

There's nothing more pathetic then that guy who is the born skeptic and can't see beyond his own inability to find success, constantly putting down every idea his friends give him. I'm told that's what it's like trying to do a start-up in England.

<comment><USER82> That's a very good point; I'm very much that way myself, and more so every year.

Part of it is cynicism from being at the bottom of a pecking order that puts the braying salesman and architypal PHB at the top and consistently having advice and ideas ignored, while given impossible deadlines because people don't know how to manage a development process properly.

However there is also a very negative vibe among geeks in general, especially (but not exclusively) in the UK. No doubt American geeks suffer from the same idiots in charge, but say the hell with it, and go start their own companies. Here there is more of a resigned shrug of the shoulders.

It's not a univeral British trait; people in other walks of life seem to have a more positive attitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I was honestly expecting to see something about a bar revolving around gaming. I've heard it proposed by at least 4 seperate nerd friends.

<comment><USER84> <http://manabar.com/> (Zero Punctuation guy)

<comment><USER85> The site you linked to is for another bar(and a page with a Flash intro that pumps Jennifer Lopez into your ears, I should add)...

This is the correct site: <http://www.manabar.com.au/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> This would have been better with at least a little explanation for why each idea wouldn't work (other than a Nerd thought it up).</comment>


Ask HN: How do you like to be interviewed as a developer? - <AUTHOR> For innumerable times it is discussed on HN that interviewing process is broken. Hence the question. <comment><USER2> Test the actual skills of the damn job.

I feel like I need to maintain two skill sets nowdays. We drill down hard on DS&A in the interview then once you're hired it's like "alright forget about all that we actually need you to be good at something completely unrelated"

</comment><comment><USER3> Pick a random non-trivial line of code of HIS on-line software projects repository and ask him to explain it. As simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER4> A few leetcode style whiteboarding interviews combined with some system design ones combined with meeting the team and having a casual conversation after the first part of thorough technical stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> \- For someone fresh out of college: Don't change anything, the current process is perfectly designed for college grads. So Leetcode it is and whatever the google's, facebook's, etc, are currently using to hire "the best of the bests".

\- For someone with 2 to 5 years of experience: A candidate should have a choice between a full day onsite, working with the hiring team on a mini feature or a bug fix. Or, a 1 week project assignment with a shared/public repo between the hiring team and the candidate. In this case the candidate could work remotely on the evenings/weekend. Code should be reviewed and pushed into the repo at the end of the assignment period. Collaboration along the way is highly recommended for the candidate. The hiring team should be at least available to answer the candidate during the process. The onsite would include a lunch with the team to get to know each other. If the candidate chose the 1 week assignment, he or she would have to stop by for the last step if everything went well, which would also be a lunch with the team to get to know each other.

\- For someone with 5 to 10 years of experience: Same as 2 to 5 years of experience, but would involve more technical choices from the candidate. This could also be a feature or a product optimization task, etc. Requirements have to be very high level and the candidate has to make design choices and define a scope as well as delivering a working prototype. If the candidate is closer to 10 years of experience, he or she should assign a coding task to at least one member of the hiring team and make sure to help and review the work. This process could also work for +10 years of experience as a Dev, or even a "Tech Lead".

\- For an engineering manager: No Leetcode please! Stop now! :) The candidate should take over the current sprint from the hiring team, or part of it. This could also be a sprint exclusively designed for the interview process. Stories could be made up or could be real stories from the team backlog. This could be a 1 week project assignment. As a Hiring manager you should be able to keep track of stories and to host standup meetings remotely with the team (5-10 min conference calls all week for example). The team would simulate blocking issues and conflicts between peers and the descriptions of these problems would be sent to the candidate for review. You would have to show up onsite and host 1-1's with the related folks in order to go over these problems to try to fix them. This would also include a team meeting to share the status of the project with everyone. During this day onsite, they might also simulate a mini hiring process for a new Developer. Team members would be the actual candidates and you would be the interviewer (a quick 15 min interview for each candidate). Other hiring managers would be involved in this process as well where you would discuss about the candidates and make a final decision.

That's it. As you can tell, this would require companies to do a lot the work in order to set that up. Unfortunately, not enough energy is allocated to hiring new people. Companies rely on the existing and broken process started by Google in the late 90's... this was the only company asking academic and weird puzzles to candidates. Also, I cut a lot of corners because my post is already way too long, but you get the picture...</comment>