FROM BUILDERS, FOR DOERSVOL. 03 / QUALITY-FIRST DISCOVERY

Their experience.
Your next move.✳

Discover hard-earned lessons, useful tools, and business ideas
hidden in the conversations on Hacker News.

Traceable sourcesBilingual readingPractitioner perspectives
3,000experiences and insights05ways to explore02interface languagesLess noise. More perspective.

Ideas worth your time3000

Real experiences, useful perspectives, and things you wish you’d known.

Tool picks

Let Postgres Do the Work (2013)

Original English

because I worked many years in large ISPs where Network Engineering folks designed everything, built it in test labs, verified everything, documented how to deploy …

Field notes

The other kind of staff software engineer

Original English

I started getting push back from higher-ups asking why I was billing projects I wasn't working on.

Business ideas

Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases

Original English

I answer, I'd personally use whichever one provides the smoothest checkout experience w/ a reasonable cost. (I'm not going to pay $5 more because apple's …

Business ideas

FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects

Original English

I initially tried paid ads, but they only netted about $200 per month—not great.

Hard lessons

Syncthing Android App Discontinued

Original English

JellyBean hadn't even reached 10 years old before my app broke, it's pathetic that app support crumbled and rotted away that quickly.

Field notes

Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

Original English

I personally run my business[1] with direct contact with my customers because I don't want them to feel the frustration I felt in these situations.

Field notes

Everything I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Demoing SaaS

Original English

Sharing a bit of my own experience: I used to do a lot of demos for my SaaS (usually 1 to 2 hour long, because …

Tool picks

PostgreSQL is enough

Original English

PostGraphile didn't have any first-class migration solution back when we started using it.

Business ideas

Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

Original English

Having lived through a couple failures (personal and professional), it's probably easier for me to spot these behaviors (again, because I used to do it …

Experience is a head start. The next step is yours.

Stay curious. Think independently. Start small.