[HN Gopher] I recorded vlogs to show how I built side projects
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I recorded vlogs to show how I built side projects
Author : damechen
Score : 157 points
Date : 2020-07-30 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (indielog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (indielog.com)
| damechen wrote:
| I started to build IndieLog (formerly Lonely Dev) since the
| lockdown to fix my own problem. The other project Backlogs is
| like a by-product while building IndieLog.
|
| I never did something like this, putting myself in the public. It
| sounds scary. Indeed it was in the beginning, but it's an
| incredible journey so far!
| nicholascamera wrote:
| Congratulations Damon. I believe personal vlogging has a bright
| future. I am excited to see where your project goes.
| damechen wrote:
| Hey Nicholas, thanks! Yes, the world is becoming more
| virtually. Video content definitely has lots of potentials to
| release.
| lukevp wrote:
| Nice looking site and product! I watched your drag and drop
| demo for the kanban board. You may consider having a "best of"
| at the top, I wouldn't watch a vlog because of the time
| involved, but I would definitely watch a couple of top rated
| videos from your journey where you talk about pivots, big
| feature demos, etc. you could manually curate the top ones for
| now and influence them with thumbs up and view as there are
| more user metrics. Good luck!
| damechen wrote:
| This is such a great idea lukevp!!! I will consider to have
| those featured ones.
| frsandstone wrote:
| You might also take a look at how popular influencers use
| Instagram Stories to collect throughout-the-day updates
| into cohesive stories across days and weeks.
|
| IE: "My trip to Cabo" might include 1-2 stories out of 10
| posted that day, but they are the user's favorite and tell
| a cohesive story.
|
| Another analogy is Youtube's "Playlist" feature.
| damechen wrote:
| Yes, we kinda have that feature, but in a different way.
| As most of our members are bootstrapping their own
| product. Any video if it is related to a particular
| product, it can be attached to the product. Like our
| member David creates a product called Remake, all related
| videos can be linked to Remake in this page
| https://indielog.com/product/remake
| jfernandez wrote:
| I love the thought you covered in your first video about "why
| not YouTube?", so best of luck with building a more specific
| community.
|
| I think some will say that you'll lose a sense of discovery by
| not being on one of the largest video platforms, but you'll
| gain an opportunity to build something from scratch and see
| what you can cultivate. It really comes down to your
| goals/intent, and I think you did a great job of explaining
| your choice so far!
| damechen wrote:
| Thank you Joseph! It feels amazing to build a niche community
| out of nothing.
|
| Also it's interesting to see most of our members never did
| vlog before. But they still love to share their updates on
| IndieLog. I think it's because people feel that there are
| like-minded people around. You can't get the feeling by
| posting a video on YT.
| cschep wrote:
| very cool, thanks for putting in the work to share!
| ZinniaZirconium wrote:
| But why?
|
| Reality is not at all like Mr Robot. Building a side project in
| real life doesn't involve rapidly typing memorized boilerplate
| code to blaring techno background music.
|
| Reality is sitting alone in the darkness staring at a screen all
| night piecing together code that doesn't do anything yet and
| won't do anything for days until it's complete enough to be
| debugged and even then it certainly won't be fully functional or
| bug-free on the first execution. Reality is discovering your
| assumptions were wrong and huge parts of your code need to be
| scrapped and replaced. Reality is tediously testing your code to
| discover why the performance is so bad and what needs to be
| optimized to fix it. Reality is discovering that the tools and
| languages and platforms you are using are all complete crap with
| undocumented bugs that you will have to do original research to
| work around if you ever want your project to work as intended.
|
| Reality isn't a TV show and it doesn't fit neatly into a vlog.
| Unless you're a poser who doesn't code.
| natchy wrote:
| Hey I was just thinking about doing something like this, but just
| on Youtube.
|
| I was recently on Indie Hacker's podcast and got a lot of
| followup emails from other engineers asking questions and it was
| cool talking with random developers.
|
| Is there a way to post a link to a youtube video on IndieLog so I
| can double dip?
| damechen wrote:
| Hmm, I think that would be cool to have. Indeed some of our
| members are Youtubers as well. It would be a duplicate effort
| for them to upload the same thing on IndieLog. Thanks for
| sharing this idea. I will definitely see how I can make it
| work!
|
| I added it to our backlogs:
| https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/allow-indietubers-to-share...
| ed wrote:
| Backlogs is a cool idea! But I feel like it really wants to
| be a Trello Powerup. Show a popup asking for CC info after
| install, using Stripe Checkout. Then give people a CNAME
| record that displays a public board in an iFrame, available
| at backlog.yourservice.com. This would be like a 3-5 day
| project, instead of weeks, to duplicate most of Trello's
| functionality. And you'd benefit from the visibility in
| Trello's marketplace. You could really simplify your
| implementation and still validate the idea. Just a thought!
| damechen wrote:
| That's so true! If I heard Trello Power-ups, I will
| definitely give it a go.
|
| Actually for Backlogs, some features are already taken from
| IndieLog, like the upvote and commenting. I just
| implemented the roadmap boards and the changelog page.
|
| Haha, I built the Backlogs on the side, so it is a slow
| process :)
| surajs wrote:
| This just gave me the idea to use YouTube for the same thing.
| damechen wrote:
| Haha, do it, it's going to be fun!
| gregalbritton wrote:
| Great concept and nice implementation! Feels a bit like Justin.tv
| meets Github. Very cool.
| damechen wrote:
| haha thanks! It's the first time I heard someone described in
| this way (justin.tv + github).
|
| The platform is still very young, 4 months old. I am trying to
| bring more features into it. Audio update is the next thing.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| years ago, I'd proposed (to the 5 people who used to listen to
| me!) that we put together a protocol to be able to tie audio
| files (for comments) to specific commits in a subversion system
| (2006 maybe?).
|
| perhaps if GitHub gave us a way to do media attachments with
| particular commits, we could let people embed
| instructional/teaching moments in their code bases...
|
| not suggesting GitHub is the only player out there, but may be
| big enough to give this a try as a side project for some of the
| internal folks.
| damechen wrote:
| This idea is mind blowing!!! We can make Github more fun,
| like giving users options to attach audio, or video along
| with the commit. World nowadays is no longer text-based, it
| needs more context!
| apineda wrote:
| Waaay better name! Good choice. :)
| damechen wrote:
| Glad you like it!!!
| macspoofing wrote:
| Awesome! It's not easy to put yourself out there like this, but
| it will make a difference for somebody who will either take value
| from your videos or be inspired by them (or both!). Kudos!
| damechen wrote:
| Indeed! We are like virtual colleagues, help each other out,
| cheer for any achievement, and grow ourselves and our products
| together.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Bug report on the site itself: with the way you've styled _both_
| body and html, body is a separate scrolling pane from the
| document scroll area, which causes the header and the "give
| feedback" buttons to sit on top of the scroll bar, and breaks
| keyboard navigation (arrow keys, Space, Page Down, _& c._) until
| you focus the body (by clicking on the page or with Tab). A
| simple additive way of fixing this is to set `overflow-x: unset`
| on at least one of html and body (if you just do one, it actually
| doesn't matter which, because html and body are a bit special),
| but removing the offending overflow declarations altogether would
| be better. A top-level `overflow-x: hidden` is generally a bad
| idea anyway--if it changes anything, it suggests that you've got
| some other styles somewhere wrong (though there _are_ one or two
| genuine cases where there's no good alternative), and doing
| things that way invariably ends up going wrong and truncating
| important content sooner or later.
| damechen wrote:
| Haha, you made my day Chris! This issue bothers for quite a
| long time, and I just didn't know how to fix it. In fact, I
| thought this is just some css issue, and didn't affect the
| functionality, so didn't invest too much time on it, also
| because of my procrastination :)
|
| Thanks for suggesting the fix!!!
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Nice. I did a test project and just let screenflow record for
| hours - I think I have around 26 hours of stuff, but ... it's
| definitely not fit for consumption or learning from. I look back
| and think I could edit it down some and make it useful, but then
| think I may just start the next project with a more focused eye
| on the recording in the first place.
| damechen wrote:
| 26 hours nonstop? You didn't take any sleep?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| oh no, it was a few hours a day for a few days, then...
| picked up a couple weeks later, etc.
| Fiveplus wrote:
| I quite like the concept of keeping each video under 2 minutes.
|
| Congrats on getting to the 100-mark! What do you think was the
| best thing to come out of vlogging simultaneously?
| damechen wrote:
| Yes, 2 minutes is like a standup update. Our members also think
| the limit is very helpful to keep them concise. A good way to
| practice speak in some sense.
|
| The best thing so far is definitely making lots of friends
| around the world. We can see each other, hear each other. It's
| the feeling that none of those text-based forums can give.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I've been tempted more than once to vlog programming, but what do
| you do about the (frequent, for me) times where you're just
| searching stackoverflow or reading docs or barking up the wrong
| tree? I'm more tempted to write the thing, then vlog starting
| over from scratch as if I know what I'm doing.
| adamfeldman wrote:
| That's all a normal part of my process, and true for many
| people. Seeing that is as valuable as anything else.
| damechen wrote:
| Totally agree!
| damechen wrote:
| You are right! We may spend days and hours on triaging some
| bug, but it only needs one-line change. The researching and
| investigation are more valuable than the final deliverable!
|
| For me, I will basically say anything from getting the idea, to
| doing some research, to implementing, then to demoing it. It's
| all about the journey!
| felubra wrote:
| Hi, I just tried to login in the site via Github, but a popup
| flashes and nothing happens. I've tried the Feedback tool
| (https://feedback.indielog.com/post/), but this page gives me a
| 404. Thank you
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Multiple people here seem to be thinking this is recordings of
| the actual building of side projects. Rather, it's videos not
| more than two minutes long, mostly just a person talking to the
| camera about the work they're doing.
| natchy wrote:
| Yeah same. I uploaded a little vid to see the experience since
| I like being involved in the Indie Hackers community.
|
| (https://indielog.com/video/yo-indie-log-you-ready-53ab5efa)
|
| It would need to support longer than 2 minute videos to do
| that. I'd like to see Indielog pick up momentum.
| damechen wrote:
| Hey Sam, glad to have you onboard!
| webosdude wrote:
| Yeah even I thought it would be concise demos or screen
| recordings of everyday progress but it's just person talking.
| Is there a blog or Youtube channel which slowly builds a
| project which you can follow too?
| egfx wrote:
| There is an in site IDE at gif.com.ai and I was thinking
| about recording a few demos of how to build gifs using it.
| But I thought it would be better to contact existing computer
| graphics bloggers who post videos. It's hard to both build an
| app and vlog about it full time. It's not like you can just
| stream your screen.
| LeonB wrote:
| (TimeSnapper developer here) -- you can use TimeSnapper to
| continually screenshot your work. Run it together it
| creates a super fast movie.
|
| For the purpose of indie log it might be sufficient to
| handroll a custom script that takes the snapshots and then
| use ffmpeg to convert them to a video.
| sakopov wrote:
| I sometimes find myself hacking together a quick console-based or
| vanilla JS prototype for an idea and then just stop there because
| messing with different cloud providers, containers, react,
| webpack and etc is just soul draining. I remember when I was 14
| I'd throw up a quick PHP script for my project, upload it to my
| host and get it up and running in just a few minutes. A month ago
| I spent week trying to get Cognito working with a Serverless API
| and by the time I figured it out I was mentally done with the
| project. I cannot ever seem to get over this hump. I love working
| on side projects but getting things up and running properly is
| just a huge drag these days.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| Maybe just go back to PHP :D
|
| I mean, I am enjoying the custom webpack setup that I built for
| my work project... but just because I can do that stuff doesn't
| mean I should.
|
| Nothing wrong with tossing a php script on some shared hosting.
| sosodev wrote:
| This is why I still love Ruby on Rails. I can rapidly build
| something robust and throw it up on Heroku with no issues. I
| recently built a little thing for myself and had it built and
| hosted within a few hours.
|
| Rails 5 with webpacker and turbolinks strikes the perfect
| balance between classic and modern web dev imo.
| godot wrote:
| I'd be lying if I said this wasn't the case for myself :) All
| the new stuff also drains me and I'm a lot more motivated to
| hack up stuff in PHP and jquery for these side projects. I
| think you shouldn't let "the modern way to do things" stop you
| from hacking up prototypes in whatever way you want.
|
| I'll say though, after having done a few side projects with
| modern SaaS/stack -- e.g. Netlify, Heroku, nodejs -- it does
| start to look like to me that it's a time trade-off. When I
| embrace the JAM stack with static site gen (with Svelte/Sapper)
| and an API layer (nodejs on Heroku), what I'm doing is trade
| the time to get started (more time/effort) with less
| maintenance and deploy effort later. But if you have the
| passion to hack up something right this moment and can't deal
| with that drag to kick off the project, and you don't know if
| it's a product that'll work out and get traction anyway, by all
| means hack it up in PHP and jquery.
| skohan wrote:
| I feel this. When I was younger, I would focus more on just
| getting something working, and now I feel more the need to do
| things "the right way" since I know better. I think I need to
| get back to just getting things working.
| mrmonkeyman wrote:
| It is not normal and it'll self-correct eventually. Do what you
| think is smart.
|
| Do you need all that shit? Why? Why, exactly? Try to do
| without, indeed throw some PHP on a shared hosting. PHP is like
| assembly these days and you'll be amazed at the speed and grace
| of it (compared to the other BS). You don't need to
| containerize your bullshit little app. It's not that complex.
| You win nothing.
|
| Less than 1K users? Throw it on a raspberry. I'm not even
| kidding. Kids these days sjeez.
| chrisrickard wrote:
| Build with the Boring Stack! (tm)
| pattrn wrote:
| Was in the same boat (regarding the Javascript ecosystem) until
| I discovered NextJS. It's pretty opinionated, but lets me get
| fully functional React sites up and running in with sensible
| defaults in minutes. Not exactly as clean as PHP, but for quick
| projects, it's removes a substantial amount of overhead.
| freehunter wrote:
| I'm running into some of the same issues working with cloud
| native applications. The tooling and observability just isn't
| there yet. I think the future is bright for the tech but it's
| just very early. Fighting the AWS console is the worst.
| bitten wrote:
| what about netlify drop? you can get a website up and running
| in seconds ;)
| danso wrote:
| Very cool, and great presentation! Have you considered getting on
| a service like Twitch or YouTube? Not so much as a way to produce
| the step-by-step snippets you're already doing, but to document
| yourself working in livestream, with all the upsides and
| downsides it entails?
| damechen wrote:
| I want to try livestream, but my 19mo daughter would not allow
| me to do that.
|
| Actually as you can see, most of my videos do not have good
| lighting because I recorded them in the evening time after my
| little daughter went to bed. In the day time, I only got
| fragmented time slot so I can add things, whatever bug fixes or
| new features, little by little.
|
| So blocking hours to do livestream would be hard for me as for
| now :(
| batt4good wrote:
| I wish there were more live-coding and / or code snippets!
|
| This guy is a UX pro!
| damechen wrote:
| Would like to see if we can bring the live streaming and code
| sharing to our platform! Wow, you just opened up some hidden
| potential to IndieLog. Thanks!
| jsnk wrote:
| Love the idea. Is there a plan to support Email only sign up?
|
| I dislike using social account because I might get suspended and
| lose the data and access to the website.
| damechen wrote:
| Yes, it's on my todos, will make it in this week!
| dgoberna wrote:
| I love the idea and the implementation! Great job!
|
| If I had time for side projects I probably would use it.
| Bookmarked for when that time comes.
|
| How many active users (uploading videos) are already? How you
| feel about speakers in other languages?
| damechen wrote:
| The visitor are like hundreds every day. But today is totally
| different :)
|
| For speaking in another language, so far we don't have people
| do that. I am not an English speaker as well.
|
| But if you think our platform is useful for you to simply
| document your own journey, feel free to say it in your own
| language :)
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(page generated 2020-07-30 23:00 UTC)