Hey HN! A while back, my co-founders and I were talking about how difficult it is for real beginners to get started making web applications. Between setting up a development environment, learning how to program, configuring servers, etc., the entire idea can seem insurmountable to someone who's never done it before.
We brainstormed for a while, decided we would do a video series, and then went straight to creating videos that would teach absolute beginners how to go from nothing to deploying a site on DotCloud. Twifbook (our silly portmanteau) is the site that everyone who watches our series will launch (live) to their own domain name (we'll walk you through that as well).
I want to give a huge shout-out to CodeAcademy for doing an incredible job getting the general entrepreneurial community jazzed about programming. Our goal is to put a more practical spin on it--and get people using their programming knowledge to actually launch things.
Says that I need a Mac to "use the How To Program Installer" (which I don't have), is that a big part of the deal? Do I need a Mac for anything else related to this 'course'?
Right now we only have an installer for the mac. The course should be similar on a Windows machine but some things are a little different (i.e. opening up the terminal). We're hoping to support Windows OS in the near-future, but for right now we only have Mac OS support. If you purchased the program, e-mail us at support AT elmcitylabs DOT com and we can either give you a full refund or help you through the process.
Ok, but say that I figure out how to install Python + Django myself (on a linux box), is there anything else that would be missing from the Mac installer?
You'll also need dotcloud's python library. After that, it should be fine, but sometimes there are unexpected issues. If you e-mail us, we'd be happy to help you through.
Sorry about that. We haven't had any issues before, but we might have faster connections. We're currently serving the media from Amazon S3, but we'll switch to Cloudfront to see if that helps. If you're still having issues, e-mail us at support AT elmcitylabs DOT com
I'd be curious to hear the feedback you guys are getting about using Stripe.
I had the same concern as the grand-parent when I first arrived on the page, then checked your HN handles to check your backgrounds.
I wonder if is a recurring theme when devs use Stripe, and if so, would a simple "secure payments by stripe" icon or logo suffice to communicate that aspect of security.
We brainstormed for a while, decided we would do a video series, and then went straight to creating videos that would teach absolute beginners how to go from nothing to deploying a site on DotCloud. Twifbook (our silly portmanteau) is the site that everyone who watches our series will launch (live) to their own domain name (we'll walk you through that as well).
I want to give a huge shout-out to CodeAcademy for doing an incredible job getting the general entrepreneurial community jazzed about programming. Our goal is to put a more practical spin on it--and get people using their programming knowledge to actually launch things.
Let us know what you think!