
How to Build a Web 2.0 Dating Site in 66.5 Man-Hours - vlad
http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/how-i-built-a-web-2-0-dating-site-in-66-5-hours
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nickodemus
It doesn't seem as though he was actually going for a "parting the sea"
effect. If that was the case, he probably would've spent quite a bit more time
than 66.5 hrs on it. My first opinion was that it is actually one of the
better designed websites I've seen recently, although everyone seems to be
going for the green and orange scheme lately. While I agree with what omouse
said about social networking sites not needing to be aesthetically appealing,
there will have to be some features that people look for that differentiate
them from one another. Simple and beautiful are two that come to mind,
although that is a pretty subjective matter.

~~~
SwellJoe
Good design seems to be working for Facebook. LinkedIn is also reasonably
well-designed (if a bit busy and inconsistent). MySpace is the only social
networking site with egregiously bad design that is worth speaking of, and it
won't last forever.

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omouse
It's a myspace clone. The nudge thing is the same as facebook's poke and
OKCupid's woo. There are no dating-specific features and I really don't see
anything novel about copying the Myspace browse option.

It looks better than those websites maybe, but obviously people don't care
about the looks of a social networking site.

Other than that, it's awesome that he got a copy-cat site up and running 66.5
hours using PHP.

~~~
Goladus
The big thing about Myspace and Facebook is that they aren't overtly "dating
sites." You can use them as dating sites, but don't have to tell anyone if you
don't want to.

For most people, Free Online Dating is way too much like personals in the
newspaper so they don't bother.

It'll be interesting to see if this works. My prediction is that it will wind
up overrun by porn spammers.

~~~
omouse
"For most people, Free Online Dating is way too much like personals in the
newspaper so they don't bother."

Yeah it's a bit...not creepy but not the norm.

Your prediction has a flaw: it assumes that it'll grow large enough to be
attractive to porn spammers :P

Also, I still don't see what there is to have "work". It's just basic features
that I'd expect any social networking site to have. There's nothing dating-
specific and no hints seem to be dropped as to what's going to be added.

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vlad
Description from the article:

 _Let this be a testament to Web 2.0 and the effectiveness of rapid
development frameworks such as CakePHP: I built a full-featured dating
website, from concept to launch, in 66.5 hours. In a typical 9-5 job this
would amount to about a week and a half._

~~~
omouse
He should stick to his 9-5 job...

~~~
SwellJoe
You're an idiot.

It's not the most original idea, but it's executed very well. Good looking
design, responsive site. What's no to like? It's not something I'd use, but
it's cool that he built something.

~~~
omouse
Thanks for the ad hominem.

But I'll concede that I am an idiot. I'm looking at how original this idea is
and what features separate it from other websites instead of looking at how
awesome the design is and how cool it is because he got it up and running in
66.5 hours!

I wasn't impressed when there were a few Lisp clones on Reddit made and I'm
not impressed that there's yet another clone of MySpace made with a nice
design.

But you're right, "it's cool that he built something."

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dawie
I think he got a lots done for 66.5 Hours. I couldn't build something like
this in that timeframe

~~~
nostrademons
Bootstrapacitor.com (now presumably dead, but of similar complexity to
Mingle2) was done in about 66 hours. So was Scrutiny
(<http://www.amherst.edu/~scrutiny/).>

The key phrase in his article was "This is the fifth site I've built using
CakePHP so I know my way around." Bootstrapacitor was my second site using
web.py, my 4th Python app overall, and reused a lot of code from an earlier
Python webapp (which still hasn't launched yet, after 3 months and 200-300
man-hours in development). Scrutiny was my 3rd PHP application - the second
(FictionAlley.org) took several hundred man-hours over 3 years to finish. (The
first was a minor automate-this-task script and took about 30 hours over 4
days.)

You always become much more productive once you're familiar with your tools.
The "writes code as fast as he can type" state that we all aspire too is
nothing more than knowing your tools and knowing your problem domain so well
that coding is just the act of connecting them. I've found that I can write
about 100 lines/hour under these conditions (this is like 20 WPM, well under
typing speed). 66 hours at 100 lines/hour is 6600 lines, enough to build a
fairly full-featured app.

~~~
whacked_new
A sustained 100 lines/hour is insanely fast to me. Is that a common speed? I
doub't i'd be able to cook up something on the same caliber of M2 in a mere 66
hours. Moreover, after 9-5 I usually feel completely beat (I fall asleep
standing, in the train).

While M2 is arguably simple, in terms of coding, I'm still amazed at how
quickly he had everything from brain dump to production. I had a seed idea
which required me to think and rethink, read and reread, draw and redraw. And
this whole process took a matter of months.

Is this speed within the norm though, considering you have a decent knowledge
of the language you use? Does this time include rereading your code and
rewriting for optimization?

~~~
nostrademons
Sustained 100 lines/hour is fast for me too. Burst speeds of 100 lines/hour
over an hour or two are entirely reasonable. That's less than 2 lines/minute -
if I'm coding as fast as I type I can usually do 7-8 lines/minute, so it's
ample padding for debugging, optimization, design work, etc.

The conditions for burst productivity ("flow", in the psychological
literature) are:

1\. Well-defined, achievable goals

2\. Automatic knowledge of your toolset - you don't have to look things up
about your platform.

3\. Fresh & well-rested

4\. No interruptions

His article explicitly addresses 1, 2, & 4, and I suspect he arranged his time
so 3 was satisfied too. He knew what he wanted from his site, and ruthlessly
trimmed it so he only needed to implement features directly relating to the
core goal. It was his 5th Cake PHP app, so he knew his toolset in and out. The
66.5 hours were not all spent in a row, and he had no interruptions or
overhead while working on it.

These conditions also held in my Scrutiny example (done over Thanksgiving
break my senior year of college, with some cleanup over winter break) and
Bootstrapacitor (done over 2 weeks + 1 week of cleanup, finished about a week
ago). They did not hold for FictionAlley (my first PHP webapp) or my startup
(my first Python webapp, and we also don't really fully understand the problem
yet), and those two projects take significantly longer.

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niels
I agree on his point that web 2.0 names will look dated pretty soon.

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Readmore
It is very pretty, I had almost the exact reaction that you wanted from people
when I first saw it. What program did you use for your graphics?

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Goladus
I'd like to know what sort of day job he has that manages to squeeze 66.5
hours of project time into a week and a half.

