

Ask HN:Help please. Single person developing complex website - harip

Hello HN,<p>I am a mechanical engineer and a Masters in Business from Canada.<p>I had a flourishing job but resigned from it, since i had a good idea on which i wanted to capitalise.<p>The idea requires a very complex website and I looked in at freelancing websites. However, I was not interested in them since the quotes were not good nor the portfolios were impressing.<p>I then contacted couple of webdesign companies and the quote ran to couple hundred thousands.<p>Now I am planning to invest my own time in developing this as at this point I am not in position to invest that amount.<p>I have now shortlisted on the grails framework and planning to roll up my sleeves and start. With a novice (just started) programming background is this a good approach.<p>HN please guys help me out here.<p>1. Is grails a good framework or should i consider Ruby.? I am not interested in php.<p>2. What do you suggest me to do here? How to get help from community? Where should i look for help?<p>Thanks in advance.
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aaronbrethorst
Read this first: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product>

And then this: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Steps-Epiphany-
Successful/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Steps-Epiphany-
Successful/dp/0976470705/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)

And then go validate your idea with prospective customers.

 _then_ figure out whether you want to use Grails (Java-based) or Rails (which
is written in Ruby. Ruby is a programming language). Or something else
entirely.

edit: And, for all that is good and holy, don't do a marketplace as your first
startup. It'll fail. And I know you won't listen, but you heard it here first.
Still, good luck!

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harip
Thanks Aaron, I would love to hear from you as to why you say a marketplace
will fail. just mentioned u on twitter!

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Marketplaces are _incredibly_ hard to get right, even for people who've been
through this before.

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vorg
> I have now shortlisted on the grails framework

How did you shortlist grails? There's a grails conference coming up next month
in Denmark, perhaps you should go to that. _(I'm assuming here you're not one
of the groovy/grails consultants running that conference who're promoting
their product via a newly-created handle on Hacker News.)_

~~~
harip
No Vorg, I am not groovy/grails consultant. But i just looked at few
frameworks and looked at websites running them and decided on that basis

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ra
Although your approach would seem valid, looking at websites built with x is
not actually a good approach for choosing a framework to develop a website.

For 99% of problems, any framework will do.

As a new programmer, you probably want to choose something with the best
support for new programmers.

Having used pretty much everything over the years, I would recommend you pick
a 'batteries included' language / framework with excellent documentation and a
community with excellent support for beginners.

On that basis alone, I'd recommend Django or Rails over Grails.

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t0
You may wish to find a student developer interested in investing their time
into your idea. It may not be the best idea to try to build it yourself if
you've never programmed before. It would certainly take longer.

Can you tell us a little bit about the idea?

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harip
thanks t0, the idea is more similar to evisors website. A place where people
can reach out to professionals for career development. But its complicated in
the sense it involves integration to paypal and other bank transactions etc.

I want a clear design too.

