“Double” StartUp or how the customer became a performer
Once in the sandbox with my first draft, I realized that I didn’t really talk about anything. Although initially the idea was this - to share experience not with professionals ( where I really am ), but with those people who have a choice - to try or not to try to do something with their own hands. Correct.
Not by itself, of course, but from a wild and barely controlled desire to somehow get close to one pretty lady, the idea arose to create a service that allows you to know the attitude of people (who know you) to yourself. First of all, it concerns personal relationships and clarifying the essence of the sympathies of the two “individuals” to each other. Secret elucidation of this sensitive issue.
For a while, I rummaged around the network in search of alternatives, but I did not find anything like it. Is that some dating sites offered some tests for psychological compatibility. I also needed a service that would “say” what “Masha” thinks of me, quite a specific “Masha”. Of course, I can look badly - I do not exclude.
')
Taking into account the fact that I was extremely far from programming, design and layout, but I had the opportunity to use the company's financial resources indefinitely and relatively irresponsibly, I decided that I would order the site.
Before buying something, I needed to understand what exactly I want to get at the exit. The consumer task of the service was set as follows - the service should help, “penetrate” the true feelings / desires / sympathies of one person to another. An important component is that the two objects know each other, at least at the level of everyday communication. That is, the service can not assess the user's chances in relation to Scarlett Johansson, but should help identify reciprocity, for example, in relation to a colleague or a classmate.
By itself, an important criterion for the operation of the service was determined - it is anonymity. That is, a user blinded by passion (whom I was) should not risk revealing his feelings in the event of failure of the whole event (all of a sudden the user already has a spouse or girl), namely in the absence of reciprocity.
Now it was necessary to put a price tag on the project and involve someone in its execution. However, it was necessary to understand the scope of work. And the first idea that arose at this stage was to create a service for the most popular social networks. But, despite the terrible prevalence of the latter, the work within their framework would dictate certain restrictions. And what if the person of interest does not have his page? Even then, I began to read various thematic articles and discovered the concept of API. Actually with this concept a solution came - it must be a site that performs the task and it (the site) must have some external use toolkit (API) so that the project can be retransmitted.
To estimate the cost, of course, the data was not enough. There was a lack of awareness of the architecture of the project. In my understanding, it was the structure of the database and the scale of work with it. I did not evaluate the layout and design in any way, because I underestimated it.
It took about another month to, as far as there is free time, to make sketches of the future database scheme, and outline the operations with it.
And so, armed, taken from the ceiling figure of 100K, I began to look for hungry students, in the presence of which I had no doubt. I will make a reservation, I did not trust and do distant work. In addition, I really wanted to control the process, I wanted to take maximum participation in the process. For this, everything was: office, workplace, money for the contract - all that remained was to find people. I, naturally, did not find fools. For some reason, the applicants, recognizing only the number of related tables and the need for an API, wrote in response to a bunch of emoticons at 50K for the project (they wanted to hire two) and nobody wanted to listen to my favorite one - “but here we should redo it.” Another minus month.
“There are no students - I will try the studios. How much will they ask for? I'm sure 200K will be enough for them. ”- I turned to the city studios with such a thought. The proposal closest to my expectations promised separation from 300K and 2 months of work. The most “experienced” studios, without blushing or blinking, asked for up to 700K for the same 2 months.
Surprise knew no bounds. Why give such "money" when I already thought of everything myself, thought it over and invented it? For creating a couple of tables and drawing two triples of pages? Dormoyedy - I had no other word for the studios at that time.
It is necessary to admit that the money, though not personal, was not wanted to give it away. And the matter is not even in the “toad”, but rather in the conscience that I took up, and I nevertheless refused the idea of abusing the position.
At this moment, I made a decision that I advise you to take to all those who have a favorite answer to an extraordinary proposal - "I have no time for this." I decided to make the site myself.
To delve into a completely new path through articles from the network is clearly a dead end. So I went to the bookstore, where I learned a lot of new words like: perl, php, java, C ++, SQL etc. And of course I did not buy anything.
About two weeks it took me to learn new terms. As a result, I settled on a newbie recruitment: php + javascript. Bought a book, began to read. Then another book and another book. Something came up to me, but something did not, but to begin to delve was already enough. And I just wanted to delve, not sculpt. I wanted to get a less profound idea of “site building” (sorry for the clumsy term).
At what point my workman turned into a start-up hobby, I didn’t really understand, but the process obviously fascinated me more than the goal itself, and that pretty girl that was the catalyst, faded into the background. The process itself turned out to be much more interesting than waiting for the result. And the development has begun.
However, it took only a month to understand the need for planning when creating a site. This is where I did not expect. As a person who has always been in the place of a customer, I had a firm stereotype that having a plan in the process of creating a website is another reason to “play with the terms of this nasty performer.” Minus month and the plan was ready, which I strictly adhered to in the future.
Another minus five months to develop, a couple of parts of which I will dwell upon. The first thing that confused me quite a lot was the abundance of negativity with respect to IE. Although, personally for me, with this browser everything was pretty good, although the work was carried out mainly in Opera. But with Chrome, on the contrary, I had to tinker about the layout.
Secondly, speaking of mastering the language at its basic level, I expected some serious difficulties, because I had no experience. But that PHP, that JavaScript was quite easy for me (to the extent that I thought was sufficient for the project).
But there, where I did not expect problems, problems arose. This is a hosting. It was necessary to start testing outside the laptop, and for this we needed hosting. But, as it turned out, hosting hosting is different, which I did not even suspect.
In the articles on the "correct" hosting, I very quickly drowned and finally got confused in terminology. And then it turned out that you need to understand how and what is configured at the hoster and, as a rule, not the hoster adapts to you, and you pull up your website to the hoster (although the price can correct the situation). In general, I decided to solve the problem of locating a resource in the network by the old, kind and time-tested "at random method."
Difficulties arose with the name of the project. Not only did it turn out to be very difficult to invent it, so strange things happened as well. As soon as the name appeared in my head and was recognized as suitable, I checked it through the recorder. But I missed the first two names. By accessing the same registrar, after a couple of weeks and readily buying a domain, he was already busy. As a result, the project gained a name - LovePinger and was immediately registered in the zone “.com”.
Minus a month and try three hosters with a stop in the United States. Honestly, did not even think about it. But, as it turned out, for a beginner with a very modest knowledge of English, it was much easier to fill in and set up the site on its own, outside the boundaries of a dearly beloved Motherland.
As a result, after eight or nine months (I don’t remember), I still put the project online, but I’m more pleased with the emergence of a new hobby. A sort of “dual” StartUp came out, and new useful and useless ideas are already spinning in my head, which I can already think of as an embodiment, not as a customer, but also as a performer, which is undoubtedly much more interesting.
At some point, I called back to the coder that dealt with our corporate site. I called and apologized for my "there need to quickly redo it." I also changed my view on the pricing of studios, and also understood smiles of not accepted students. Yes, I guess I was wrong. Yes, perhaps “drawing a couple of pages” is extremely far from the real work of the developer.
This is the story of the creation of the project, which has only the beginning and, who knows, maybe there will be a continuation. Time will tell. Link to the project - www.lovepinger.com . Valerian took, breathing smoothly.
For newcomers who are on the way: to do or not to do, I can summarize my experience ; it may help:
Successes and good luck!
UPD # 1
Whoever you are, thank you friend for an invite :)
UPD # 2
Many thanks to all habrovchana who paid attention to my modest post and project.
Special thanks for your advice and feedback. I already took into account some of them, time is needed for something, but in any case, thanks to your cordial reception, I want to work on the project further.
May the power and good mood come with you!
Not by itself, of course, but from a wild and barely controlled desire to somehow get close to one pretty lady, the idea arose to create a service that allows you to know the attitude of people (who know you) to yourself. First of all, it concerns personal relationships and clarifying the essence of the sympathies of the two “individuals” to each other. Secret elucidation of this sensitive issue.
For a while, I rummaged around the network in search of alternatives, but I did not find anything like it. Is that some dating sites offered some tests for psychological compatibility. I also needed a service that would “say” what “Masha” thinks of me, quite a specific “Masha”. Of course, I can look badly - I do not exclude.
')
Taking into account the fact that I was extremely far from programming, design and layout, but I had the opportunity to use the company's financial resources indefinitely and relatively irresponsibly, I decided that I would order the site.
Before buying something, I needed to understand what exactly I want to get at the exit. The consumer task of the service was set as follows - the service should help, “penetrate” the true feelings / desires / sympathies of one person to another. An important component is that the two objects know each other, at least at the level of everyday communication. That is, the service can not assess the user's chances in relation to Scarlett Johansson, but should help identify reciprocity, for example, in relation to a colleague or a classmate.
By itself, an important criterion for the operation of the service was determined - it is anonymity. That is, a user blinded by passion (whom I was) should not risk revealing his feelings in the event of failure of the whole event (all of a sudden the user already has a spouse or girl), namely in the absence of reciprocity.
Now it was necessary to put a price tag on the project and involve someone in its execution. However, it was necessary to understand the scope of work. And the first idea that arose at this stage was to create a service for the most popular social networks. But, despite the terrible prevalence of the latter, the work within their framework would dictate certain restrictions. And what if the person of interest does not have his page? Even then, I began to read various thematic articles and discovered the concept of API. Actually with this concept a solution came - it must be a site that performs the task and it (the site) must have some external use toolkit (API) so that the project can be retransmitted.
To estimate the cost, of course, the data was not enough. There was a lack of awareness of the architecture of the project. In my understanding, it was the structure of the database and the scale of work with it. I did not evaluate the layout and design in any way, because I underestimated it.
It took about another month to, as far as there is free time, to make sketches of the future database scheme, and outline the operations with it.
And so, armed, taken from the ceiling figure of 100K, I began to look for hungry students, in the presence of which I had no doubt. I will make a reservation, I did not trust and do distant work. In addition, I really wanted to control the process, I wanted to take maximum participation in the process. For this, everything was: office, workplace, money for the contract - all that remained was to find people. I, naturally, did not find fools. For some reason, the applicants, recognizing only the number of related tables and the need for an API, wrote in response to a bunch of emoticons at 50K for the project (they wanted to hire two) and nobody wanted to listen to my favorite one - “but here we should redo it.” Another minus month.
“There are no students - I will try the studios. How much will they ask for? I'm sure 200K will be enough for them. ”- I turned to the city studios with such a thought. The proposal closest to my expectations promised separation from 300K and 2 months of work. The most “experienced” studios, without blushing or blinking, asked for up to 700K for the same 2 months.
Surprise knew no bounds. Why give such "money" when I already thought of everything myself, thought it over and invented it? For creating a couple of tables and drawing two triples of pages? Dormoyedy - I had no other word for the studios at that time.
It is necessary to admit that the money, though not personal, was not wanted to give it away. And the matter is not even in the “toad”, but rather in the conscience that I took up, and I nevertheless refused the idea of abusing the position.
At this moment, I made a decision that I advise you to take to all those who have a favorite answer to an extraordinary proposal - "I have no time for this." I decided to make the site myself.
To delve into a completely new path through articles from the network is clearly a dead end. So I went to the bookstore, where I learned a lot of new words like: perl, php, java, C ++, SQL etc. And of course I did not buy anything.
About two weeks it took me to learn new terms. As a result, I settled on a newbie recruitment: php + javascript. Bought a book, began to read. Then another book and another book. Something came up to me, but something did not, but to begin to delve was already enough. And I just wanted to delve, not sculpt. I wanted to get a less profound idea of “site building” (sorry for the clumsy term).
At what point my workman turned into a start-up hobby, I didn’t really understand, but the process obviously fascinated me more than the goal itself, and that pretty girl that was the catalyst, faded into the background. The process itself turned out to be much more interesting than waiting for the result. And the development has begun.
However, it took only a month to understand the need for planning when creating a site. This is where I did not expect. As a person who has always been in the place of a customer, I had a firm stereotype that having a plan in the process of creating a website is another reason to “play with the terms of this nasty performer.” Minus month and the plan was ready, which I strictly adhered to in the future.
Another minus five months to develop, a couple of parts of which I will dwell upon. The first thing that confused me quite a lot was the abundance of negativity with respect to IE. Although, personally for me, with this browser everything was pretty good, although the work was carried out mainly in Opera. But with Chrome, on the contrary, I had to tinker about the layout.
Secondly, speaking of mastering the language at its basic level, I expected some serious difficulties, because I had no experience. But that PHP, that JavaScript was quite easy for me (to the extent that I thought was sufficient for the project).
But there, where I did not expect problems, problems arose. This is a hosting. It was necessary to start testing outside the laptop, and for this we needed hosting. But, as it turned out, hosting hosting is different, which I did not even suspect.
In the articles on the "correct" hosting, I very quickly drowned and finally got confused in terminology. And then it turned out that you need to understand how and what is configured at the hoster and, as a rule, not the hoster adapts to you, and you pull up your website to the hoster (although the price can correct the situation). In general, I decided to solve the problem of locating a resource in the network by the old, kind and time-tested "at random method."
Difficulties arose with the name of the project. Not only did it turn out to be very difficult to invent it, so strange things happened as well. As soon as the name appeared in my head and was recognized as suitable, I checked it through the recorder. But I missed the first two names. By accessing the same registrar, after a couple of weeks and readily buying a domain, he was already busy. As a result, the project gained a name - LovePinger and was immediately registered in the zone “.com”.
Minus a month and try three hosters with a stop in the United States. Honestly, did not even think about it. But, as it turned out, for a beginner with a very modest knowledge of English, it was much easier to fill in and set up the site on its own, outside the boundaries of a dearly beloved Motherland.
As a result, after eight or nine months (I don’t remember), I still put the project online, but I’m more pleased with the emergence of a new hobby. A sort of “dual” StartUp came out, and new useful and useless ideas are already spinning in my head, which I can already think of as an embodiment, not as a customer, but also as a performer, which is undoubtedly much more interesting.
At some point, I called back to the coder that dealt with our corporate site. I called and apologized for my "there need to quickly redo it." I also changed my view on the pricing of studios, and also understood smiles of not accepted students. Yes, I guess I was wrong. Yes, perhaps “drawing a couple of pages” is extremely far from the real work of the developer.
This is the story of the creation of the project, which has only the beginning and, who knows, maybe there will be a continuation. Time will tell. Link to the project - www.lovepinger.com . Valerian took, breathing smoothly.
For newcomers who are on the way: to do or not to do, I can summarize my experience ; it may help:
- To do or not to do, if there is no experience and knowledge at all? Do. There are no people who know everything, but anyone can become knowledgeable. And knowledge (in any amount) does not bring harm.
- Learning to do something on articles from the network is the path to nowhere. It is necessary to read books.
- To use someone else's code is quite normal, but it is correct to take it as a basis and create your own, in order to understand the logic of the author, but suddenly it is wrong.
- Planning when creating a site is a very important thing. For example, as a beginner, it seemed to me that the question of authorization is the last question. An, no. The question of authorization is the foundation of the architecture and needs to be thought out in advance so that you do not have to redo the project closer to the final.
- Modularity is a great thing. The more functionality to allocate to specialized modules, the more mobile the code becomes as a whole, the easier it is to edit and control. My first steps, as a philistine, came down to “stuffing” everything in one file, but it’s like a book without division into chapters and without page numbering.
- A controversial experience, but the forums did not help me choose a host, but only confused me. So I tried several and stayed at where my project worked, as I wanted.
- The choice of technology, at a minimum, the choice of server-side language, depends only on the functionality of the project. PHP seemed to be the easiest. But in order to make a choice, I first had to realize what I want. Only knowing the requirements for functionality, I was able to choose the language, trite studying the table of contents of books.
- The "correct" site does not tolerate chaos. Server daddy should be an example of order and logic. Scripts for external access to one, internal to another, pages to third. There will be order - it will be easier to understand and work on the security of the project.
- "Cool function" (technology) is not always good. An effective solution is first of all a solution that is understandable to its author.
- There are no “minor” mistakes, that is, there are no mistakes for which you can “score”. If you do not know the cause of the error, then there are no guarantees that the error does not go sideways somewhere. Several times I wanted to turn a blind eye to the shoals with layout, which manifest themselves only in one of the browsers, but as it turned out, the error concerned all browsers, they simply did not ignore one, and others "jammed" (ruled). Take at least an incorrectly closed tag (less) br / (more). Yes, yes, for a newbie - this can be a problem.
Successes and good luck!
UPD # 1
Whoever you are, thank you friend for an invite :)
UPD # 2
Many thanks to all habrovchana who paid attention to my modest post and project.
Special thanks for your advice and feedback. I already took into account some of them, time is needed for something, but in any case, thanks to your cordial reception, I want to work on the project further.
May the power and good mood come with you!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/132832/
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